Scot and Jeff talk to Jane Coaston about Nine Inch Nails.
Introducing the Band
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Jane Coaston, formerly political writer for MTV news, now featured in the New York Times and ESPN News, among others. Follow Jane on Twitter at @cjane87 and read her (older) work here.
Jane’s Musical Pick: Nine Inch Nails
Perch those toasters precariously close to edge of the bathtub and prepare to slide into a downward spiral, as the gang tackles one of the 90’s most influential acts (and one whose massive mainstream success was frankly surprising), Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails. Jane has loved them ever since she first found The Fragile as a teenager — a gay kid in Catholic school, more than a bit confused about her place in the world — and immediately bonded with Trent Reznor’s anger and sadness. Jeff marvels at the fact that he had never really listened to NIN before Jane pushed it on him a couple months ago, and calls them one of the most wonderful (belated) musical discoveries he’s made in the last several years. In particular he taken with the technical excellence of Reznor’s production, from the endlessly layered synth sounds all the way to the overdriven guitarwork.
KEY TRACKS: “The Fragile” (The Fragile, 1999); “Head Like A Hole” (Pretty Hate Machine, 1989)
Beginnings: Pretty Hate Machine and the Hardcore Turn of the Broken EP
Jeff gets a huge kick out of pointing out that, technically speaking, Nine Inch Nails is an EIGHTIES band. And it’s true! Even though we don’t think of them or Reznor as belonging to that decade because how much he went on to define the sound of the ’90s. But the entire gang actually enjoys Pretty Hate Machine quite a bit (though Jane thinks its final two tracks are the worst NIN ever did). Jeff points out commercial this music really is — “Head Like A Hole” was Reznor’s first hit for a reason — and frankly loves the way Reznor mutated the typical industrial genre by deigning to actually, you know, write songs with catchy hooks in that mode.
If Pretty Hate Machine is sometimes dismissed by aficionados of industrial music for its New Order/Depeche Mode synth-pop underpinning, nobody does that with Broken, an EP that Reznor recorded in secret while trying to escape from under the thumb of his original record label. Broken is only 21 minutes long (31m if you count the bonus tracks), but in many ways it remains one of the most definitive industrial ‘statements’ ever released and is also the most impressively brutal thing Nine Inch Nails released. Everyone loves “Wish.” Jeff argues that the unexpectedly quiet transitional instrumental “Help I Am In Hell” is the moment where Reznor’s conceptual ambition (and genius) first emerged. And Jane wants you to watch the video for “Pinion.”
KEY TRACKS: “Terrible Lie” (Pretty Hate Machine, 1989); “Sin” (Pretty Hate Machine, 1989); “Something I Can Never Have” (Pretty Hate Machine, 1989); “Wish” (Broken EP, 1992); “Help Me I Am In Hell” (Broken EP, 1992); “Gave Up” (Broken EP, 1992); “Suck” (Broken EP, 1992)
A Beautiful Corpse-Flower: The Downward Spiral and the Album as Art-Form
In some ways there’s not much to say about The Downward Spiral that hasn’t already been said elsewhere: this is the one Nine Inch Nails album everyone should own, and the one that will, from track 1, completely subvert the received stereotype of Reznor as a mere noise-merchant. Jane, Jeff and Scot all marvel at the layers and layers of sound that Reznor one-man-bands into a titanic groove on songs like “Piggy” (Jeff’s favorite) and “Closer” (Jane wants to a erect a shrine to the instrumental playout alone). The gang laughs at how Jeff was scandalized by the lyrics of “Closer” as a bluenose teen, and Jane points out that far too many people fail to realize the song isn’t supposed to be a seductive song at all. Then the inevitable discussion of “Hurt” where (perhaps surprisingly) the whole gang agrees that, as great as NIN’s versi