Sunday will always feature some odd bands, just because and only day with three. This week it goes to bands that would be called Alternative in the old days.

Average Metacritic score 69 (22 reviews):

www.pitchforkmedia.com




Nine Inch Nails
With Teeth (Interscope)
US release date : 03 May 2005
Rating: 6.5 (65)

To some degree, Trent Reznor was a victim of his own success. As a fresh-faced misanthropic hottie screaming about god, money, and the two-backed beast over a 'roid-ragin' Tron soundtrack, he was exactly what the kids wanted. But when Reznor journeyed into the center of his sound and his soul, the kids took a rain check, finding their fix of synthesized cathartic self-loathing elsewhere. (Linkin Park, I think you might owe somebody a thank-you card; ask Reznor about the one he sent to Wax Trax! Records.)

In 1996, the dude was so money that an EP of Downward Spiral remixes went gold, while both NIN full-lengths were well on their way to multi-platinum status. But in 2004, a full-length remix album covering the entire NIN oeuvre festered on the shelves of mall record stores, while Reznor's then most-recent studio LP (the double-your-pleasure doozy known as The Fragile) was shipping a measly one million copies.

Meanwhile, the Bennington-Shindoa think tank (and their many contemporaries) were setting both young pierced hearts and old moneyclips aflutter with sexless, sample-soaked tunes of dismay and despair. Where once they screamed, "You get me closer to God!," kids now shouted, "Shut up when I'm talking to you!," which is in line with, "I'd rather die than give you control!", except Reznor's "you" is some disembodied existential thing, the stuff of stylized drama. Chester's "you" is someone he knows; this time, it's personal, and he wrote it down in his journal. In AABB form.

In 2005, Reznor kicks off With Teeth with "All the Love in the World", a track that can easily be read as a response to his fading celebrity in the wake of the success of countless imitators ("No one's heard a single word I've said/ They don't sound as good outside my head"). From the start, it seems he's about to go spelunking up his colon yet again, ninth-grade poetry in tow. It begins pensively, with a wet drum machine beat punctuated by soft piano notes while Reznor asks the question on nobody's mind: "Why do you get all the love in the world?" And then comes the disco break.

The beat locks down. The piano gets in line. Reznor returns to the titular question-- this time in a falsetto-- and screams it back, call-and-response style, harmonizing with himself. A bass drum, tambourine, and backing vocals hop on board. And when the bassline kicks in, and it's as though he's dropping a mirror ball on Goth Night at Club Velvet, as all the young Robert Smiths and Siouxsie Siouxs in the crowd proceed to drop it like it's hot. "All the Love" has nothing on the porn-serious bump-and-grind of "Closer", but it's not trying to horn in on that action. For about 90 seconds, there's an epidemic of full-on Kool and the Gang dance fever-- and it actually sounds fantastic.

On "Only", Reznor speak-sings his way to each chorus, playfully talking about picking scabs and other sorts of self-castigating things. And, wow, what a ridiculous chorus: "There is no fucking you/ There is only me." It's like he's singing to himself in the mirror, either restaging the Buffalo Bill scene from Silence of the Lambs, or the Jena Malone/Susan Sarandon hairbrush bit from Stepmom. "You Know What You Are", meanwhile, is in line with what typifies hyper-aggressive NIN teeth-gnashing, though it's accentuated with the unmistakable might of Dave Grohl on the traps, ripping off those machine-like 16th notes. Elsewhere, lead single "The Hand That Feeds" finds some on-the-one magic, while "Getting Smaller", the record's poppiest track, comes off as a faster-paced cousin of Pixies' "Planet of Sound" (with a Pere Ubu quote thrown in for you hipster cats). And let's not leave the Mark E. Smith nod from "With-ah Teeth-ah" unmentioned.

As expected, the album does eventually find time for a brief detour into the sort of twinkling soundscaping that's perfect for staring off into space and forgetting the pains of quotidian torture, but for the most part, With Teeth manages to flip the script on Reznor's recent M.O. Instead of fronting like a more feminine Al Jourgensen-- hard, coarse, yet not totally abrasive-- Reznor comes across as the masculine yin to Shirley Manson's alluring yang: playful, coy, and with a flair for the dramatic.

The disc ends with the tortured Bowie-esque balladry of "Right Where It Belongs". Here, Trent's piteous ruminations on what-the-hell-ever-- ("What if all the world you think you know/ Is an elaborate dream?") are slyly undercut by an audience's cheers and applause. It's Reznor as a leather-clad Elton John, sitting at the piano to play "Candle in the Wind" one more time. But rather than indulging in a pointless rehashing of past glories, With Teeth finds Trent Reznor moving forward by coming to terms with what he hath wrought. This head like a hole's come a long way, baby.

-David Raposa, May 11, 2005

----------------------------------
*Note: second reviews will have letters after the number. Number is only showing a new round of reviews for the new day.

**Most reviews now will be the whole review, but will edit out stuff from time to time.

***Want me to feature an album? PM me and I will look up the info and thanks in advance.

****Some really big ones to follow next week...

I kinda like the singles I've heard on the radio, but I have no interest in hearing the rest of the album. I like that song where he goes, "Yes, I did!" Whatever it's called.

"All the Love in the World" is still an amazing track to me. I own this record and unfortunately haven't listened to it much, but I do know every time it has been in the player I've dug it.



np: Vitalic-No Fun

Same. Its a same because I remember in middle school when I heard broken it was such a revolution going on inside my head. Trent now just seems like a novelty act, and unfortunately has lost the edge he once had.

I disagree. Trent has shed his industrial skin and has made another excellent album. He continues to evolve and move forward musically. It has a great range for an artist that has been pigeonholed in the past. This album is top 10 material for me.

I think you appreciate With Teeth more once you see NIN perform the songs live - at least that's my experience. When I first bought it back in May, I thought it was a letdown considering how progressive The Fragile turned out to be. Well, after seeing them live in October, With Teeth went from collecting to dust to being #6 on my Top-20 of 2005 list.

In fact, I actually like how the album is more stripped down than Reznor's previous work. Many of the songs would lose their edge (or "Teetha" as Trent puts it) if they were saturated with layers of keyboards. I mean, the production quality you expect from Reznor is still there, it's just that NIN feels more like a band on With Teeth than simply one man using every available track on his sequencer.

I wouldn't mind it if Reznor decided to do another Downward Spiral or Fragile though. I still think those albums are brilliant to this day.

NIN will be in Richmond in March, I plan on attending.

This is another I've thrown on several times lately. I've never been a huge NIN fan. My favourite is Broken, if that means anything. This album has it's charms. I don't know if it's top 20 material, but it's close. I never want to throw on The Fragile as much as this one.

It's not his best album. In fact, it's easily his worst -- but he's one of my favourite artists, so his worst is still better than pretty much anything else I listen to, so I still like it.

Why I don't like it is because all of his other records were so groundbreaking. Downward Spiral sounded nothing like Pretty Hate Machine; Broken sounded like nothing else that came before; even The Fragile was laced with something new and different (for Nine Inch Nails). With Teeth probably had the least new to offer, but yet it's still good. I dig 'm.

Well said, with good points.

Broken is beyond awesome. It's like blended glass.

Thanks.

And: Broken is my favourite -- I listen to that one all the time. It's like one of the greatest e-metal* albums ever.

*e-metal == my term for that kind of music

Pretty Hate Machine was my first and only tape for the longest time. The Downward Spiral was my first and only CD for the longest time and I played it out. The energy, the production skills, the melodies were all spot on. I can still listen to PHM and be wowed. The detail of Downward still impresses me. Broken's cool in an angry teen angst sort of way. I was the kid who collected the halos feverishly.

When the Fragile came out, it was obvious Reznor had lost the Midas touch. His production skills were still top notch, but his songwritting skills had clearly diminshed.

Which brings us to With Teeth. It's not that he went back a step, he went back an influence. While peers like Radiohead, Beck and Bjork focused more on found sound, Reznor, an innovator in the field, opts to focus more on guitars and outdated programing. The songwriting is a failure on Reznor's part, crafting together at best, Dark Side of the Spoon b-sides, at worst dated My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult extras. A shame considering Pretty Hate Machine, an album released over 15 years ago had done so much to elevate the industrial scene out of the underground and into the forefront of modern culture. With Teeth simply reminds why industrial had the half life it did.

It's been six years since his last record and his lyrics and sub par sequencing prove that he has nothing new to say. I just cannot fathom how anyone would say his music has grown.

I think he definitely has grown - this is a much more mature sounding album. I can see how some would complain that it's not pushing in any new direction, but I see it more as he's developing his sound a lot more. And, for the first time, I feel like Trent's making an effort to just create music, rather than make industrial music. I will, however, agree that, lyrically, it's still the same-ol' same-ol, and that same-ol' is pretty tired and adolescent.

That's pretty much my take on it as well. Lyrically he's not exactly writing Shakespeare caliber material or anything like that, but on a musical level, what more can you really ask from him? He's dabbled in almost a half dozen major genres over the years and more importantly, expanded on those genres.

Reznor himself summed up With Teeth best by saying, "It's more song-oriented [than 1999's The Fragile.] It's much more lean. It's going to be twelve good punches in the face — no fillers, no instrumentals, just straight to the point."

God bless the new sober, beefy Trent Reznor.

I like his excursions. The Downward Spiral and With Teeth are practically the same album, the only differences lie in the lack of "fat" With Teeth has. But Reznor is so good at creating "fat".

Compare "Only" to "Ruiner", two very similar songs. The difference between the two is that "Ruiner" is filled to the brim with ideas, it's overflowing. Take away all the soundscaping and filler and you have a very dry and bland song. It turns into something similar to "Only" which falls back on things Reznor isn't so good at: lyrics, harmony, and recently conviction. And this hits on the very important problem. Broken sounds light years different from PHM on even the most basic of levels. The same for Broken and TDS (except for Man with a Gun). There's even a huge change between TDS and Fragile, better or for worse there's something different underneathe it all. The basics of "Even Deeper" are on a whole nother plane of existence than anything Reznor had done before. On a sonic level, where TDS is a colage of sounds and ideas being compressed all at once, the Fragile works as a labyrinthe with twists and turns leading into and out of open areas and sublevel corridors. With Teeth has no complexity, no intricacy, no value. It just sits there beating its chest vocalizing all the things we've known about Reznor but never had the chance to focus on. The fact he's not worth focusing on in the first place.

even though i was disappointed with this album, it definitely was more focused and engaging from first-to-last-song than "the fragile". i agree with the review that said this would've been a great, lauded followup to "downward spiral". but now, many (12?) years later, it's ok. (there's so much more in 2005 to dig, that nin's almost pointless now.)