Once I Start I Cannot Stop Myself

A few weekends ago Susie and I were riding in our car. She was driving and I was riding shotgun which means I'm in charge of keeping good music on the radio. We were listening to Jack-FM when "Closer" comes on. It's easy to forget what a good song it is. Almost fifteen years ago it's really good for both shaking your fists or for shaking your ass.

I like "The Fragile" as much as I like "Pretty Hate Machine." Still the matter is Trent Reznor writes better songs when they drive. When he's being atmospheric and ambient, he's good enough to get by. When he's rocking (and not in the way the new R.E.M. album strives to rock), there are few who can keep up. Which is why I was happy as I listened to the new Internet-released Nine Inch Nails album, "The Slip." Here are some of the songs which stuck out for me.

999,999 Just a minute and a half of ambient humming. One might ask what's the point of putting a track like this on an album. It's kind of a waste of space on your hard drive. I like to think about it within the context of "the album as a performance." This track is like the moment when the lights go down and before the band steps on stage. This is the album telling you to get ready for the show to start. Hence the connection between the title of this song...

1,000,000 ...and this song. Like a good concert opener, it immediately grabs you and like a good NIN song, it punches you in the mouth for a good four minutes. There's a moment I love three minutes into the song. The song stops abruptly and you ask yourself, "Is that the end?" Then it comes back in after four or five seconds like comic timing. It absolutely slays me.

Letting You I was one of a few kids in middle and high school who were good at sports but not a jock-ass-motherfucker. So while I didn't hang out behind the loading docks sneaking smokes, I heard of Nine Inch Nails before "Closer" entered my peer group about 1995. (Things were different back then and it might take a year between the release of an album and when it even high school freshmen had heard it.) The first Nine Inch Nails song I ever heard was actually "Happiness in Slavery" on a cassette of songs from Woodstock '94. This song absolutely takes me back to that moment.

Discipline There's this phrase which was created by the early-80s English ska band and oft co-opted since then: FUCK ART LET'S DANCE. You can sing all of the songs of pain and angst you want. Unless you throw in a song you can move to occassionally, you're just complaining. So let's dance motherfucker. See: Boy, Fall Out.

Lights In the Sky Okay, I take back a bit of what I said earlier about Trent being good enough to get by when he writes "quiet" songs. Because, if I really am being honest, the best song he ever wrote was not "Closer" but "Hurt" as completely validated by Johnny Cash. This song is just Trent's voice and a piano sounding as heart-achingly beautiful as both are possible of being.

(Hi CJ. How are you?)