Toad in the Hole

Here's a fun new thing to add to my list of awesome things. When I get the itch for putting fiction through my fingers, I'll post it here and compile them under the fictions heading. How about a story?

The gray-blue doors of the elevator stood hard and unmoving.  There was a sign on the right-hand sliding door framed in beige masking tape – “Out of order”.

“Shoot.”

I hit my head against the wall.  I didn’t feel like doing anything, let alone walking up five flights of stairs.  My bag was weighing heavily on my back and shoulders, pulling my arms back and knotting muscles from the weight of my cleats, clothes and books.  I was still slick with sweat and had a dirty mix of blood and mud caked around my calves.  My intramural team had gotten soundly pounded in another game, and the loss was draining.  I had nearly passed out from the heat and humidity in the game, but kept on playing from a lack of subs.  I had worked a full shift at the bar, and had a paper to write for the next day.  Today was too long.  I thought the end was in sight, but it was five floors up.  I wanted to shower terribly, wash the stink and grime of a hard day off of me.  But the elevator was out.

Fly Paper

Working on something novel, so here's a thing to tide you over.


I've covered a fair bit of the 1990s and the alt rock contained there in. One of my favorites one hit wonders deserves a little love, so I thought I'd spend today's allocated space on something distinctly turn-of-the-century. Something that contains some elements that are distinctly indicative of the period. I speak of The Flys. 

Rocking some bug-eyed shades, this band was full of late-90s attitude. Their big single, which peaked at #5 on the Billboard charts, was 'Got You Where I Want You', off the album Holiday Man. Their songs were featured on not one, not two but three terrible teen movies from the end of the decade. One, The Crow: Salvation, is hardly worth mentioning despite featuring a young Kirsten Dunst. Teen movie two was the oddball cheerleader heist flick Sugar and Spice, which had a cameo from Conan O'Brien, of all people. The third was the forgettable Disturbing Behavior, featured a young Katie Holmes as a heroine and unsuspecting future wife of Tom Cruise. The big single for the band was on this soundtrack, whose video also featured Ms. Holmes making an appearance, which sadly seems to be the sole claim to fame for the clip. I still dig it, though. The song is still great.

The song itself is a fantastic slice of late 90s alt rock, too. It's built around a solitary, octave riff that plunks back and forth on the low E and A strings, a simple little lick that's memorable and easy to play, which established it as an easy, "Oh yeah I remember that!" kind of a cover for budding bands to pull out of their hats. The verses are long, drawn out calls of teen angsty "What's the point of this?" and "I think you're smart, you sweet thing - tell me your name". Nothing revelatory or incredibly insightful, just fun to sing and easy to learn. The hook is just the band's singer crooning in falsetto and howling the title. I'm being quite reductive here, in all honesty - the song is a pretty solid, catchy piece of alt-rock, even if it's a tad dated. It still works really well, despite the requisite du jour white-boy rock-rap breakdown in the middle section. We can cringe all we want but we still made Limp Bizkit (ugh) famous. So this seems quite tolerable in comparison.

I love this song, in fact. See how I've warmed up to it, even in the short space of writing about how endemic it was of the era? It's simply that catchy and accessible. Not everything needs to be over-wrought and anguished insight, giving way to a secret on the human condition. Hey, the band's Wikipedia page is short enough to be an indication of their cultural footprint; but it's no big crisis, just saying not even a member of the band beefed it up for vanity's sake (which is more common than you would think). Sometimes a guy just wants to rock, and if it requires a song from some bad teen movie soundtracks, so be it. I'll deal with the consequences myself.

Bad Wolves

What's good, gang?


I'm back in the saddle, comfortably in the world of wireless internet. Sad how fidgety I could get without it, but it makes things so much easier to have it. Another beautiful day out, went for a longer run when I got home from the office. Another great album from a mid 90s punk band came roaring through my ear buds and I thought 'Good lord, why don't I listen to Rancid more often?'


Rancid are a band that has always enjoyed a reputation of harder than the poppy fore-bearers of Green Day and The Offspring, but have never broken as widely as their counterparts, either. This is not to say Rancid wanted the audience. They just never got to the same level of selling out/buying in that these other bands did. Rancid, in fact, had great success and mainstream press with their seminal 1995 album ...And Out Come The Wolves. I love this album.

Released on Epitaph amid the mid 90s resurgence of commercially popular punk, Rancid's third album was an instant classic in the genre. There's a vibrancy and touch of life to ...And Out Come The Wolves that was lacking in other albums at the time; even now, fifteen years hence, the album is alive with warts and blistering guitar squeals and the vocal dissonance of Lars Fredriksen and Tim Armstrong. It's as though this album, with it's flaws and heart worn brazenly on it's sleeve, was a counterpart to the clean and mass-marketable appeal of Green Day's Dookie. Dookie was the Frampton Comes Alive! of my generation. This album is more like Black Sabbath's Paranoid - more dangerous, a little more left field, a little less calculated.

Look, for example, at the opening. Clocking in at a scant minute and twenty five seconds, 'Maxwell's Murder' is blistering and manic, from the staccato blast-beats to the strung-out bass solo that centers the track. Singles like 'Ruby Soho' and 'Roots & Radicals' were slightly more radio friendly, but still had the band's cracked vocals and loose, live-wire playing. The reggae/ska influenced 'Time Bomb' is as infectious and memorable today as it was when it was released. It's a song that makes you think you've already heard it before, like it's somehow based on another more famous song. The deeper cuts are fantastic, too. 'Journey to the End of the East Bay' is a magnificent exercise in the punk genre, showing what the band can do when given free range to be as anthemic as they please.

Sure, Rancid has released plenty of solid, quality punk albums over their massive and prolific career. None of them hold a candle to Wolves in my eyes, however. This album is so amazing, end to end. The passion never ebbs, the vibrancy never waivers. If you've never heard it, you've missed a huge part of where modern punk, post-punk and hardcore all get their moves from. Listen to it, you'll be astounded at how real and relevant it feels, all these years later.

Your Land, My Land

Sunday night is quickly escaping me.


Still stranded in the life of no wifi. The outage continues and I struggle to survive, my information addicted brain confused by a drop off in data input and a sudden jump in sleep. Still, I have to credit the clarity to being able to run again. I went jogging down the trail by my apartment yesterday - it was gorgeous. A clear sunny day, one that I could really savor while I ran. I admit I blocked out the natural ambiance by using headphones but an album came on that actually pushed me faster and gave me momentum boost. The day was even more amazing, the faster I ran. My knee hasn't felt this good in a long time. I again thought back to soccer practices starting up during high school and how I would listen to all this intense punk music to pump myself up.


The album that gave me the boost yesterday was one I picked up with strange expectations. Knowing he band had a specific, consistent sound, I picked up the album with no raised hopes. Over the years it's kind of stayed with me, but as good as it seems, it still feels kind of odd and distant. That my be due to the timing of the release. But we'll get to that.

Land of the Free? was released by Pennywise in June of 2001. I bought it right as my team was starting their two-a-day practices. I wanted something new to listen to as I drove in and got my gear out. It was distinctly Pennywise - socio-political lyrics over hurtling hardcore. What any fan of the band would expect. There was plenty of stuff on the album about America and some of it's less flattering qualities.


Then the big attack happened, and I always started to look at the album a little differently. 


Without getting too deeply into my personal beliefs I found it strange to listen to an album so critical of Western living while simultaneously experiencing one of the most outspoken time of patriotism I'd ever seen. Regardless of how you feel, to anyone around at the time, the album would have stood out among a sea of pro-Americanism. It was kind of jarring to hear the contrarian tone. Despite the uneasy discord the album created in my head at the time, I've really come to appreciate Land of the Free? for what it is.

I love the passion and momentum the band has, they play with conviction. The production, given the source material, is pretty solid. It never works for a band in this vein to have a weak, thin sound. The whole album is absolutely Pennywise. From the opening notes of 'Time Marches On', you know what you're in for. Even though it can feel oddly like there's never a distinct melody, the songs are darkly catchy.


These late summer days when I run always bring me back to that time of my life when I became so much more aware of the world outside mine. The world had a new element of flux that I had not been conscious of; permanence become relative. Music may be static on record, but constantly changing in how I absorb it. Listening to Land of the Free? has been a lot of different things. 

Now when I hear it as I speed past the lake, my legs exhausted, approaching ten years since, the nature in which I perceive the world has changed. The album feels somehow more relevant. Apparently despite the change in me, some problems can stay consistent. Give the album a listen for yourself and see if you get what I'm saying - think about how it would feel to hear it back then. Strange business, how it's changed over the decade.

Urgent Call

Sometimes my futuristic lifestyle fails me.


My internets been down for the last 48 hours, with no estimated time of repair in sight. Various other obligations have kept me from getting to a coffee shop to just sign in with my junky old laptop (courtesy of my wife - thanks honey!). As such, I'm stuck once again pecking this out on my phone. As I won't be able to get a chance to edit this post until I get service back, I'll try to keep it brief, both for your patience and my thumb's sake. 


What I will tell you about, then, is Gob. 


Not Gob like George Oscar Bluth, played by Will Arnett, although that is awesome as well. No, this is Gob like 'hard g sound' colloquialism for hocking a loogie, the Gob in question being the British Columbian pop-punk band who had a significant hit with their song 'I Hear You Calling' back in 2001. I loved Gob back in the day; hearing them reminds me of the period in my life in which my family had just moved to a new house that required satellite to get a tv signal, which brought in the joys of Canadian music channel Much Music. Much Music was way better than MTV, even back then. They actually played videos; I actually found a lot of great music thanks to Much Music.

So I look back on that time in my life fondly, watching Canadian music videos with my younger brother and asking each other incredulously "who the hell are all these people?" as we took it all in. It was fall, then, or close to it, anyway. The air was cool at night. I would come home exhausted from soccer practice and sit in the basement of our new house, feeling quite cut off from the rest of the world. Seemingly out of the ether these great new videos would come on, showing ms the world was more than terrible top 40 radio and AC/DC repeats on the radio. These strange Canadian bands were like a breath of fresh air and the sudden rush of connectedness was not unlike the convenience afforded by wireless internet these days.

Out of all of these bands that surprised me, Gob has always stayed with me. I love 'I Hear You Calling' - it has everything in it to make it a solid,memorable rocker. It has a great catchy and memorable riff to build the song around. The drums are powerful and satisfying with their pseudo-surf aesthetic. The hook has a tension filled build to it that gets better every time. In a move of prescience and highlighting the band's sense of humor, the video is a mix of performance footage intercut with them playing a soccer match against a zombie squad. The climax features the zombies busting out the requisite 'Thriller' dance routine, all of it becoming very absurd and awesome.

While they haven't hit the same level of prominence since this single, Gob are still grinding away. Look them up, they're a fantastic band that deserves a whole lot more recognition in the U.S. and the larger world. I'll check back in later to update this post with images and links, but you kids go dig up Gob - you'll be glad you did.

Haunting Grounds

The week ends, finally. 


I spent some of last night indulging in a little late night videogame session with my 360. Having finally made it to the current generation of consoles (I always seem to wait, saving tons of time and money as a result) I have had quite a backlog of the Best-ofs to work through, to my joy and my wife's dismay. One of the games, though, was rather fresh and less acclaimed. Alan Wake, a freaky deeky affair drawing heavily on Silent Hill, Twin Peaks and Stephen King, was a no-brainer. Touching on all the hallmarks I love, it's been super fun and super creepy so far. I'm only into the third chapter as of this writing. What came leaping out of the blue, though, was the song that closed the second chapter, 'Haunted' by Poe. As soon as I heard it, I had one of those striking moments of clarity where you see just how much overlap there is in your life when you really hone in on what makes you tick. Hearing the song set the gears in my head to work and I sat listening to the track, marvelling at the coincidence and how great the song is.

It's a shame Poe hasn't had wider success. She's had some, but not to the level she deserves for her craft. Born Anne Danielewski, Poe has had stop-and-start jaunts in her career as a singer. Her first album, Hello, was a hit in the mid 90s with the single 'Angry Johnny'; it even went gold. Her second outing, Haunted, was a struggle to get done and under-performed, despite strong reviews. Her label dropped her, only to see her fight against the current and keep grinding, making more of a name for herself in the world of independent music and fighting legal battles over the rights of her music. So while she is making progress every day, her music languishes undeservingly in relative obscurity. At one time she was huge, these days not so much. One has to wonder, given the quality of the music Poe creates, if it's just a twist of fate and not a fickle public that has kept her from broader success. Such is life.

Despite the decrease in momentum, there are still people discovering her music. Such was my case, as I was doing research on House of Leaves a few years ago, having only gotten a chance to read it some 5+ years after its release. I've already written about my love and confusion over the dense and symbolic text. So when I had read that the author Mark Danielewski's sister had created a companion album that loosely tied in with the book, I was quite curious. What I found was fantastic. Poe made a great album. In particular, though, the song 'Haunted' stood out as definite high point. 

Starting off with drums and a chiming guitar fading in like wind blowing the tune in from a window, Poe sneaks into the track by airily singing onomatopoeia, just bopping along to the eerie pop song. When it becomes fully realized for the first verse her voice is suddenly full and rich, her notes having weight but not feeling overwrought. The manner in which the song transitions from minor key verses to a major chorus is slick and subtle, a catchy if curious trick of the trade. The hook is pure pop, Poe's voice becoming light and lilting in contrast to the stark and ominous verses. It's a great contrast that shows her talent as a writer and musician, the back and forth of styles growing each time it occurs. 


I love this song - that it keeps popping up in my life only makes me appreciate it's vibe and story all the more. I dug Poe back around her first album; this song was in the soundtrack of a movie I took a date to, which was an all around disaster; I fell heavy for it during my first read-through of House of Leaves; now it pops up in one of my favorite games. I love little coincidences like that, that this same song could keep popping up, this little thread running through my life whether or not I'm aware of it. It reminds me of how 'Make Your Own Kind of Music' kept popping up in Lost. It becomes a sort of leit motif. 


'Haunted' by Poe is no doubt going to keep popping up in my life, whether I want it to or not. I'm going to embrace it and count myself lucky that it's a great song by an artist who would appreciate the attention. Maybe she doesn't want to be a multi platinum act, selling out stadiums. That doesn't mean I shouldn't spread the good word about this talented, criminally under-appreciated artist. Go download her music now, before another label causes problems. 

Road Construction

Well hello, there!

I walked to the office again, this morning. I love starting the day off with a little exercise, even if it's just the long walk from my apartment to downtown. The quiet stroll through the neighborhood, the sprinklers in Loring park spraying mist into the air. The feeling of a city waking up as I walk down Nicollet Mall, seeing the vendors setting up for the farmers market. I was struck by the sensation of the morning sun and the warmth coming into the air after a cool night. It brought me back to the summers, particularly this time of year, when I would work with a local contractor, building houses and decks with him even though I was a mere 14 or 15 years old. His projects were often far out in the country side and it made more sense to sleep at my grandparent's house for weeks at a time. Being the young musically obsessed nerd that I was, I struggled with the limitation of being able to only bring a few of my CDs. No big boom-box, either - just my little Walkman. See how different life was before mp3 players? These were choices that had to be made, hard ones that would shape your day.

 So I had a couple of my favorites and a new one at the time with which I was particularly obsessed. In hindsight it was a bit of an unusual choice to bring with, but I found that as I stayed up late into the night reading, it was a great (if, at times, creepy) choice. The CD was the Lost Highway Soundtrack, composed and arranged for the David Lynch film. Featuring more than a few artists I was into, I had looked forward to it with great anticipation. Repeated listenings over those late-summer nights made it really grow on me, as well as pair the music with the feeling in the air. So I would listen to the soundtrack all night while I read, then get up and trudge off to work with the kind contractor with a sunny disposition completely at odds with my overly dramatic teenage angst. Despite the isolation I felt at the time, I still love this soundtrack, both for the memories it conjures as well as the specific tone and mood it sets, the artists coalescing surprisingly well.

 I should clarify - I love Lynch. His films are heady, strange outings into a world only he truly understands. In particular, Twin Peaks is a favorite of mine, with it's strange stories and soap-opera dramatics. So a soundtrack to a film I had yet to see actually was a great introduction to a world of music with which I would become deeply enamored. Spooky numbers by Trent Reznor. Absurdly over-the-top heavy metal by Rammstein. The Bowie-aping theatrics of a post-Antichrist Superstar Marilyn Manson, juxtaposed with electro tracks by David Bowie himself. All of this filled out with slinky, jazzy little creepers by longtime Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. In a word, a knockout. 

Each of these artists made great contributions - 'I'm Deranged' by David Bowie is an eerie bit of night music that made him feel relevant to my teenage petulance. Badalamenti's contributions made me aware of the great things that can happen when you play such fantastic mood music during your daily life - it works so well as a personal soundtrack, especially at night or for Halloween. He's got a great, consistent feel that permeates his work. Rammstein was absurdly heavy, but a little strange and engaging nonetheless. Catchy for being so chunky and German. The Manson tracks were interesting introduction to his work, having both a rocker (the old cover 'I Put A Spell On You') and a creeper ('Apple of Sodom') on the compilation. I've already written at great length of my love for the Nine Inch Nails contribution. 

What really got me to purchase the album at the time, however, was the inclusion of the Smashing Pumpkins track 'Eye'. After the mammoth release of Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness all eyes were on the group for what they would do next, especially in the wake of their touring keyboardist dying from a drug overdose and the band firing their drummer for his supplying the drugs. The track was the first new thing I had heard from them and was supposed to be an indication of what the next album would sound like. It was...not far off. The electronic samples and synths were definitely present on Adore, with 'Eye' almost being a precursor to 'Ava Adore'. Needless to say, I played it a whole lot during those summer nights. 




This soundtrack is phenomenal. It creates the whole tone of the film. It has tons of great artists doing strange things. It also brings me back to a strange, solitary place in my life, which only makes sense given the Lynchian nature. In our world of single downloads and self made playlists, this album benefits from being heard as a group. If you have to wait until Halloween, that's cool. I'll wait. You listen. You'll dig it.

Not New

Evening, one and all.

There are times, it would seem, that I make a plea for the obvious choice. That I take something solid and hold it up, saying "See? Solid," as though it's some grand pronouncement. I do this not out of a sense of self-satisfying delusion, but because while something is solid we forget that it is solid. That's a big reason of why I do this every day. There's just so much amazing music out there that some of the stuff that has been vetted and adored becomes neglected, relegated to Best-of lists but never really listened to. Hopefully I can get you to dust out these gems and give them a real examination, together seeing what all the fuss was about.

Today is one of those days.

Bjork, despite the jokes people make about her eccentric personality or unusual vocals, is an incredibly talented and undeniably unique presence in the world of music. I've written about the genius of her 1997 release Homogenic here, and that stands out as a master work. As much as I love that album, there is an earlier, equally celebrated album of hers that holds a more special place in my heart. Her 1993 work, Debut, will always represent something much larger to me, something somehow more hip and urbane. It is something I listen to that still has the same effect on my head now, all these years later, as when I first purchased it.

As I've written great lengths on, growing up in a rural Middle Western town afford little in the ways of the hip and urbane. The simple act of wearing one's hair longer than their ear earned scorn and taunting. So a dude like myself, inclined to writing, reading and unusual music was not likely to have a great deal of exposure to things that excited him. I did the best I could, given the circumstances, which resulted in a lot of grunge and alt-rock, Nirvana, Pumpkins, STP. Even those standards earned derision, though. Having no internet (at least in its modern form) compounded the problem; I didn't even realize how isolated I was, at the time. MTV, Rolling Stone and Spin were the sole bastions of the larger musical world for a long, long time. Now imagine reading a music mag and not being able to Google or Youtube everything you see. Imagine reading a magazine, period. I count myself lucky for turning out as well as I have. 'But Bon Iver hails from the next town over!' you might object, to which I would counter this was almost 20 years ago, when there was no segmenting of music audiences and no one gave a crap about indie.

Occasionally, though, there would be these flashes or snippets of something, just these fleeting glimpses of a little pixie woman bobbing around excitedly and dancing to something not-quite-techno but not quiet anything else. I would see logos for her album(s) in print, or a glimpse of her video on Beavis & Butthead when I could sneak an episode or two. It all added up to something mysterious and tragically hip. Even her name was unusual - Bjork. I had no idea how to pronounce it. So this little bug gets into my head that Bjork somehow represents the larger world, the big city where things happen and people dress well and don't punch each other over accusations of a lack masculinity. Years passed before I would have the occasion to dig in, though.

On a whim in high school while shopping for CDs I realized I had never looked into Bjork, so I picked up Homogenic. It was magnificent. It was revelatory. It was not enough, and not quite what I thought it would be. So I dug for more. Less than a month after I fell in love with Homogenic I went out and picked up Debut. This was the album that clicked with me. Much more subdued, or perhaps just less aggressive and intense than Homogenic, it was a serene experience for my ears. I loved the sounds put down on this record. It quickly became the album to put on when driving home at night, the 20 minute drive into the countryside to my parents home transforming into contemplative journeys.

Another excellent album I adore produced by Nellee Hooper, Debut is quite electronic. In contrast to the production, however, is Bjork's exceedingly vibrant voice, the machine and human contrasting so well. While there are a handful of Euro-pop dance numbers ('Big Time Sensuality' 'Human Behaviour' 'Violently Happy') there are also a good number of subdued, trip-hop tunes ('Venus As A Boy' 'One Day' 'Aeroplane') as well as a couple jazz numbers ('Like Someone In Love' 'The Anchor Song'). While the album has drawn criticism for these changes in sound (even from Bjork herself) I still get a sense of cohesion from them, that there's a common thread to the songs. To me they're relaxing, soothing. They feel like wrapping my mind in a warm towel. It's not her most adventurous work, but I like that it sets a base level, establishing who she was after The Sugarcubes dissolved.

Debut is a phenomenal album that everyone ought to listen to again. It's critically hailed now, of course, but who ever goes back to listen to the established hits? I love it - both the sound and the feeling it gives me. Riding the bus downtown to my office this morning, I realized as I listened to it that I have become the person I used to wish I could be. This album reminds me of that success. Hopefully you'll find as much joy in it as I still do. 

Reassembly

I'm typing this during a rainstorm while wearing gigantic headphones.


Not because I mind the sound of the rain, I should clarify, but because I'm trying to pay rapt attention to the music. After yesterday's long winded autopsy on Nine Inch Nails and the stretched-to-the-max The Fragile, I wanted to go back in for one last peak at the body. What I found surprised me.


As I tried to convey yesterday, there's an undercurrent of decay and collapse running through The Fragile. From lyrical references to song titles to the cover art suggesting entombing, the album has a pervasive sense of death and decomposition. The coda to the album, the incredibly divisive and derided Things Falling Apart, addresses this theme in a rather meta-contextual manner.

Released in freshly on the heels of The Fragile in 2000, I picked up the remix/manipulation compilation almost on a whim, as I had really enjoyed the source material. There were a few tunes that stuck out as interesting but they were surrounded by a relentless army of remixes of 'Starf*ckers, Inc.', an already abrasive track whose problems were only exasperated in their re-working. These others, though...something was trying to get through. 


I should clarify that I am aware of the reputation Nine Inch Nails have for theatrics and heavy handed emoting. I get it. I do. I see the overwrought nature of the posing and hit-you-on-the-head subtlety of some of the themes and analogies Reznor has employed. Despite these obvious quirks and flaws, I am still a fan of the band, if not for the unconventional sounds, then for the groundbreaking distribution methods and innovations they conjure. So hopefully that stops any internal monologues about "well what does this guy know?" because, hey - it fits with the rest of my obsession with spooky nighttime music.


Moving on.


The point I was making earlier in the post was that if The Fragile represented Reznor accepting the death and decay of a relationship and the loss of life we all accept as people (subtle stuff, right?) then Things Falling Apart would be the process of replacing the failing parts with mechanical workings, swapping out decayed tissue for metal plates. Strings and guitars get swapped for thumps and clicks, whirs and hums. While critics bagged on this release for it's lack of new sounds, save for a Gary Numan cover appropriately titled 'Metal', I loved the re-working of the sounds from The Fragile.

Hearing Reznor take 'Into The Void' and transmogrify it into a slippery, robotic chant where the only vocals are Reznor insisting "I keep slipping away..." is a strange and evocative thing when you love the source material. 'The Wretched' becomes a swarm of angry robotics, clicking and buzzing instead of churning over a piano beat. 'The Frail' becomes an uncanny hybrid of machine sounds and violins, illustrating the dichotomy at hand in gorgeous fashion. 'Where Is Everybody?' sees Reznor's vocals completely hacked into new sounds and phrases, creating the feeling of machines imploring the question in the title. 'The Great Collapse' is a new track but in keeping with the concept, it is a wholly metallic and synthetic tune, reminiscent of material from the Pretty Hate Machine era.

I can go all apologist with this material, but I still unabashedly adore what Reznor can do with simple ideas. The Fragile is both great and flawed for it's simple concepts stretched to long form. Here we see the same ideas flipped and turned inside out, only now it does sound more fresh than at the end of The Fragile. While I love the corpse of The Fragile, the cyborg/reanimated monster of Things Falling Apart is just as fascinating.

Breaking Down

Evening, kids.


To be honest, I initially had big plans to do a two part write up on my favorite Nine Inch Nails album, 1999's The Fragile, similar to how I approached Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness. Upon greater reflection, however, it's not really necessary. But before you assume that I'm dismissing what many consider to be Trent Reznor's magnum opus, let's take a look at what led me to this conclusion.

As I stated, this is hands down my favorite NIN album. I picked it up on a trip to Europe when it was released, allowing me plenty of time to listen to the entire thing and digest all 100+ minutes of music Reznor put down. In the ensuing years I continue to return to it, no matter where I am in my life or what I would otherwise be enamored with. There's something in the personal nature of what is on tape that I find simply fascinating. I definitely enjoy the majority of the NIN canon but this is my favorite, for some reason I can't quite pin down. Maybe it's the subdued and more introspective nature to the music. Maybe it's the use of motifs and thematic repetition. Hell, maybe the artwork hit something on a subconscious level. Whatever it is, I can't get away from it.


So why the single post on it, if I love it so much and there's so much material? 


I suppose it has to do with the united and singular nature of the music and ideas Reznor put forth in The Fragile. While Trent has stated in interviews that there's no over-arching plot, it still is a concept album - one whose themes have been stretched a hair thin. There are absolutely moments of great music here - the massive orchestrations and wild climaxes, the evolution of ideas and motifs. Despite these successes, though, there are still times when it's apparent a stronger hand in editing might have trimmed some of the fat. As far as double albums go, however, this isn't that egregious of an offender.

The personal nature of the album makes it hard, at times, to decipher what the actual concept being presented is. It is telling, though, that it starts with the song 'Somewhat Damaged' and ends almost two hours later with 'Ripe (With Decay'. It would appear the main element is one of loss and breaking apart, in every facet of the word. The first (Left) disc establishes this theme with titles like 'The Day The Whole World Went Away' followed by 'The Frail', then 'The Wretched'. The last track on the first disc is titled 'The Great Below'; the second (Right) disc picks right up where we've left off with 'The Way Out Is Through'. The titles and lyrics and sonic structure of all these songs show the narrator (Reznor or whatever perspective he claims to write from) almost looking forward to an end with acceptance and contentment. 

The musical themes are carried here by common instrumentation and motifs that sneak in and out, weaving their sounds into the album. This creative design choice does a significant part of the uniting of the album; were the instruments and soundscapes to shift over two hours, this album might not feel so cohesive. Piano melodies are introduced in 'The Frail' only to blossom into the eponymous track 'The Fragile' fully formed. A jazzy bass-line comes to life in the dreamy track 'La Mer' on disc one, only to pop up in the raucous single on disc two, 'Into The Void' as the main groove. When listened to as a single piece (which is no small investment in these harried days) it creates the subconscious feeling of one massively orchestrated album.

Interestingly some of the strongest work and the singles stand out almost as too unique. They tend to stray from the central themes, as though they're the meat in the musical sandwich. As great as 'Into The Void', 'We're In This Together' and 'Starf*cukers, Inc.' are, they stand apart from the generally subdued and ominous tracks that fill out the album. They're rocking, at times even funky songs. Not like Kool & The Gang funky, but stuff you could almost hear at a club, due to their liberal use of drum machines and thumping bass. The Fragile, as a whole, seems to be more about moments like the orchestral and string experiments Reznor creates in songs like 'Just Like You Imagined' and 'Ripe (With Decay)'. Maybe it's just softened in the years I've heard it, though - there are still burners like 'Where Is Everybody?' and 'Complication', so maybe they don't stand out as much as I perceive them to.

What I feel the only real flaw here is the fact that at times there is little in the way of lyrics and broader ideas. While it's a very united and cohesive album, it feels like it's two or three massive, twenty-minute songs that have been stretched out thematically until the album gets thin at certain points. That's where the quiet parts come from, I suppose. Despite this problem, I still love The Fragile. It's grand, fantastic stuff.