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Reznor coaxes beauty out of despair
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
NEW YORK - Trent Reznor climbed to the top only to discover it's lonely at the bottom.
After winning legions of fans and achieving the success he'd craved since his teens, he
dropped through a trapdoor into clinical depression.
'The Fragile': Eerily glorious
The coats of polish on Nine Inch Nails' art-rock opus can't camouflage Trent
Reznor's perverse and subversive paths to musical glory. The Fragile
( out
of four) is a 23-track marathon of cyberized omni-pop, meticulously honed and twisted to
baffle, tantalize, disarm and challenge the listener.
Armies of guitars, riptides of bass and swarms of strings are filtered through Reznor's
merciless computers and warped imagination, resulting in rich orchestrations poisoned by
otherworldly racket and industrial-strength din tethered to sublime pop hooks.
These are sounds shaped by an uncompromising auteur confident enough to assemble his
visions on a foundation of quicksand. True to its billing, The Fragile is spindly
and impulsive. Monster riffs hobble over cliffs into rivers of static. Even the gentlest
piano interludes have an eerie menace and instability. The electronic pulse quickens, then
turns erratic, as ambient beehives of noise engulf pristine melodies, huge choruses and
disfigured violins, cellos and ukuleles. Part of The Fragile's unsettling charm
lies in its constant threat of imminent doom, a reminder that Reznor is dancing on a high
wire suspended over flames and demons.
The misery in Somewhat Damaged and contempt in Starf******, Inc. (presumably
a swipe at estranged pal Marilyn Manson) are familiar NIN hues. While there's
gloom-a-go-go, Reznor lets hope, albeit fading, seep into his self-lacerating tirades and
seems more inclined toward enlightenment than suicide. Despite the music's emotional and
structural frailties, The Fragile has the creative sturdiness of a classic.
- Edna Gundersen |
"Emotionally, mentally and spiritually, I arrived at a place of utter
unhappiness," says Reznor, the visionary behind industrial-rock icon Nine Inch Nails.
The despair that initially paralyzed him ultimately triggered a search into soul and
sonics that resulted in today's release of the long-anticipated The Fragile,
NIN's first studio album in five years, an infinity in the pop music continuum.
The wait proved excruciating for an industry hoping NIN could reverse rock's decline and
reclaim market turf lost to rap and boy bands. Early indications are encouraging. The
Day the World Went Away, though lacking a video and not serviced to radio, sold
70,000 copies its first week, landing in Billboard's Hot 100 at No. 17, NIN's
highest-charting track to date. First single We're In This Together was the top
add to modern and active rock radio formats. Though evolved beyond NIN's early nihilism,
neither song indulges today's appetite for syrupy confections.
"To me, this record is an attempt at repair," says Reznor, gulping coffee in a
hotel suite overlooking the concrete circuit board of midtown Manhattan. "It attempts
to put the pieces back together, but it's inherently flawed. In the end, you don't arrive.
You swallow your tail."
The 23-track double CD, a complex fusion of organic and synthetic forces, sprawls
restlessly across alien terrain, erasing boundaries and confronting challenges with a
level of ambition and abandon foreign to late-'90s pop. The Fragile faces
expectations that have escalated sharply since 1994's The Downward Spiral, a
fury-filled industrial rock grenade that sold 5 million copies globally and earned Reznor
artist-of-the-year titles in Spin and Musician. Spin anointed
him "the most vital artist in music." Time named him one of the 25 most
influential Americans.
Since 1989 debut Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor has issued 10 records, won two
Grammys, founded Nothing Records, produced Marilyn Manson's CDs and did soundtracks for The
Lost Highway and Natural Born Killers. He'd conquered the masses, yet a
two-year tour promoting Spiral ended in retreat.
Sycophants, sudden wealth and a rootless existence in hotel rooms "distorted my
personality," Reznor says. "It's New Year's Eve every night. I had everything I
wanted, and I wasn't feeling good about it."
That gloom was compounded by an absence of scapegoats. He could no longer blame his misery
on a lack of fame, money or opportunities.
"I neglected things that make me human," he says. "I gave up friends and
relationships, thinking, 'I'll get to that later.' And I forgot I was in this for the
music, not to run a label or to get sued or to hear Courtney Love make up stories about
me."
Hollow career victories, the strain of touring, lapsed friendships and the death of a
grandmother who raised him fed reluctance to record.
"The Downward Spiral came true," he says. "Through self-analysis,
a shedding of skin and breaking down everything around me, Downward started at
one spot and ended a lot lower. The process was healthy, but I arrived in a very raw
place. I wasn't strong enough to make another record. I wasn't tough enough to be
critiqued and picked at. I wanted to hide out and get away from me."
Reznor finally entered the studio with a mental blueprint: the concept of fragility,
conveyed in lyrics about betrayal and aural constructions teetering toward collapse.
"I wanted it to sound distressed and delicate, like it's not strong enough to hold
together," he says.
The theme dictated his approach and the music's form. To underscore issues of alienation
and rage, a cold, impenetrable armor cloaked Machine and Spiral. The
Fragile required a frail, less icy exterior.
"I grabbed every instrument I didn't know how to play right," Reznor says.
"If I play keyboards, I think too much. On guitar, I don't really know what I'm
doing, so there's a naivete I like. It was a matter of letting the subconscious take
over."
Feral and sophisticated, gentle and violent, ominous and inviting, Fragile's
machined beauty is as dual-natured as its creator.
"The overanalytical guy in me was fighting the guy who plays by ear and follows
whatever feels natural," he says. "It came time for the analytical guy to step
in and say, 'How do we make this a cohesive piece of work instead of, at its worst, a
self-indulgent exercise in studio nonsense?' At times, I thought I'd built the whole
empire on a fault line."
The process entailed a posted list of code words and desirable influences: Tom Waits,
Atari Teenage Riot, Dr. Dre, Daft Punk. Reznor cyber-crunched ukuleles, cellos, violins,
pianos, guitars, drum machines and vocals into swelling symphonies and waves of
inscrutable noise.
"I'm envious of a band that sounds like a band," Reznor says. "I always
wished I had the structure of The Cure or The Smiths. Every song I've ever done starts
with a feeling I want to get across or a visual in my head. Do I want drums? I don't know.
Let's make it sound like wood falling off a ledge. Real instruments? Synthesizers? A
choir? A whisper? I was mad at Nirvana for recording an album in two weeks. It takes me
that long to find my notebook."
He and co-producer Alan Moulder spent two years painstakingly crafting The Fragile in
Reznor's New Orleans studio, a former funeral parlor. The process lifted Reznor's spirits
and restored his confidence but did little to end his painful isolation. Is there life
outside music?
"Absolutely not," Reznor says in his most emphatic response yet. "What are
my hobbies? Hmm, I like guitar pedal effects. Every day was Groundhog Day: sleep
four hours, wake up to the same song over and over. Same clothes, same people, same three
restaurants to choose from. There was something almost endearing about that kind of
camaraderie, like soldiers going off to war. But it's also a way of putting off real life,
whatever that is."
Conventional yearnings for marriage, children and suburban languor tug at Reznor, but so
does an impending tour and a restless muse.
"I realized these last few years that there's a human being in here that needs basics
like friendships, love," he says sheepishly. "I can't make great art based on
memories of what it's like to be a human being. Through more mature eyes, I realize some
of my early goals - a record deal, a plaque on the wall - were very shallow spiritually.
Now I want to achieve some sort of peace and well-roundedness. I'll get to that.
Someday."
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