Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth

Trent Reznor is pretty much the God of all techno-rock groups. He was doing the same things that they were doing, but about 3 years early. The Stabbing Westwards and the Orgys of the world looked at Nine Inch Nails and said, “That’s great! Let’s do that!” They didn’t do exactly that, finding subtle touches to add or subtract from that original sound to forge their own path. The point is, Nine Inch Nails was the first. Every other band of that ilk worships at the altar of Trent, and now perhaps now more than ever, we know why.

Nine Inch Nails was great when I was 14 and at least thought that my life was hell, but now that I’m a lot older, the dystopic society that NIN created seems pretty lackluster. It was especially disheartening when The Fragile came out when I was in college, because Trent didn’t seem able to escape the tortured woe-is-me template that was so beautiful for his first three albums. That was still a good album, because though Trent hadn’t seemed to grow at all with his lyrics, the music was very stylish and catchy. With his latest outing, With Teeth, he’s changed completely. Thankfully, he’s progressed beyond the “life sucks” paradigm he was stuck in, but what he’s replaced it with isn’t exactly cause for celebration.

This seems to be a more thoughtful and contemplative Nine Inch Nails, but that isn’t exactly a good thing. While before he made the way clear for bands like Placebo and Godhead, he apparently has taken the genre as far as it can go, and is now imitating the aforementioned bands. “The Hand That Feeds” is kind of cool with its Depeche-Mode-meets-Rammstein aesthetic, but the rest seems sluggishly stuck in already-mined territory. “Only,” the album’s second single, is set firmly in soundscapes already established by New Order, and doesn’t offer anything new. The video, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Any genre that is dependent on technology as its base is bound to run out when the technology stops getting newer. I would wager to say that is happening with techno, even dirgy metal-techno like With Teeth. However, I think Trent Reznor knows this, and that is why he isn’t trying to fight it. Throughout the whole thing, With Teeth seems to be celebrating the past, not looking to the future like basically all of the music in this genre before it. Looking behind you is all well and good, but eventually Trent will have to look in the direction he is facing. I think he has already realized that he has hit the wall.

Oddly enough, it is when he’s NOT heavy-handed or over-eager that makes for With Teeth’s best moments. This is strange because techno’s legacy seems to be rushing out of the gate to show the world all the new bells and whistles. The best track, “Right Where It Belongs,” starts off as a quiet contemplation, and ends with a doomy quality that suggests the worst is yet to come. Hmm. Maybe techno is a few steps away from the wall after all.

Prime Cuts:
The Hand That Feeds
Right Where It Belongs

22 Rating: 5

Switchfoot - Nothing is Sound

Most rock and roll bands go through a certain progression. It’s a little different for each band, but the formula usually holds true, whether or not they want it to. The progression goes like this: dough-eyed optimism, sudden disappointment, bitter jadedness, passing acceptance, wise disregard. Not only do they follow that general path, but it usually shows in their music.

Switchfoot, however, did not follow that pattern. While it seems that all the elements are in place, they are out of order and disproportionate. Switchfoot’s first album, Legend of Chin, definitely has that dough-eyed optimism full force, even if they embed it in wise musings. Well, wise for a 20-year-old, anyway. A few years later, Learning to Breathe did the wise disregard thing. They realized that there was no use making music people would like, so they just did whatever they felt. The result was a pointedly non-pop, marvelously inconsistent album. Then came The Beautiful Letdown on the other end of the spectrum. In a very short period of time, it sky-rocketed them to superstardom, following the passing acceptance phase. It’s easy to see why it appealed to the secular market, since it is very pop. And now, we have Nothing is Sound, and we’re scratching our heads again. This seems to be the sudden disappointment and the bitter jadedness in one.

With this album, I imagine Jon Foreman hanging his head in defeat, at all the drooling music moguls pawing him hungrily. He seems surprised and disgusted at the ways of the secular world he’s been thrust into, but he should be familiar with them by now, 10 years into his career. Nevertheless, Nothing is Sound is a good album, if a bit of a dark one. Indeed, it’s the darkest of their five albums, but it still bears that surfer dude mentality under the surface. Even ten years later, they have not completely lost that optimism they established on their first album. When things get tough, go to the beach.

Songs like “The Blues,” “Happy is a Yuppie Word,” and “The Shadow Proves the Sunshine” are steeped in melancholy and passive aggressiveness, bemoaning the problem without presenting a solution. That solution is key to a Christian band, and many have done both things with splendid results (Jars of Clay, Plumb, Lifehouse). “Stars” is an exciting bit of pure rock and roll, while “We Are One Tonight” rings true for anyone who feels that they are not quite up to the task. Switchfoot must not feel that they are up to the task, but they are thankfully forging ahead anyway.

This is a Switchfoot that is battered, bruised and broken, but wanly smiling. They’re strapping on their guitars with aching muscles and screaming joints, grinning through the pain, or perhaps because of it. The question is, how much longer can they go on like this?

Prime Cuts:
We Are One Tonight
Stars
The Blues

22 Rating: 12

Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

Over the past few years, the garage rock sound has come back in a big way. Bands like the White Stripes, the Strokes, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are taking the garage band format and updating it, both sonically and aesthetically. Near the top of the heap, though, is Franz Ferdinand. Why are they at the top of the heap?; because they are a little more sophisticated than the down-and-dirty approach of the Strokes or the frenetic energy of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The very name of the band draws from an Archduke of Austria from the early 20^th century. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand started WWI, but most Americans don’t know that. The fact that Franz Ferdinand know that could be due to the fact that they are not American. Hailing from Glasgow, being Scottish lends them a somewhat different consciousness and outlook than us here in the U.S.A.

Also, the record just sounds better than those aforementioned bands do. The sound is tighter, more focused, and maybe a little poppier. While I normally shy away from pop, this is pop done correctly. It bears in mind the sound, the feel, and the overall experience. By pop I don’t mean mindless breakbeats marketed to teenagers, but sophisticated management of sound to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Now, if you asked Franz Ferdinand, they would probably say they don’t care about appealing to as many people as possible; they probably just want to play. But truly good pop music comes when you don’t try. It’s kind of like love in that way. You only find it when you’re not looking for it.

But I digress; on to specifics. The opening of their debut album is gentle and soft-handed, but that’s deceiving. In short order, it breaks into a hard-driving beat. Remarkably, unlike many bands nowadays, the record doesn’t break down as it wears on. Rather, it favors a steady stream over peaks and valleys.

The most intriguing track is a song near the end, called “Michael.” Now, I don’t know a great deal about the members of Franz Ferdinand, but I assume that they are just normal European musicians, which means they stay up late, drink a lot, and have over-active libidos, as well as somewhat chauvinistic ones. So where does a song like “Michael” come from? I’m assuming the members are straight, so a song like “Michael” seems dreadfully out of place. The sexual overtones of this song seem normal and standard, until one realizes that it is a guy talking to a guy. In addition, the machismo and testosterone associated with a guy talking to a girl seem to be completely intact. Still, the homoeroticism cannot be denied. Most intriguing.

Franz Ferdinand are very intelligent, and it shows, but not so much that it’s off-putting or seems other-worldly. They make visceral music that comes from and goes to the gut, while tempered with just enough subtext to make it interesting on multiple listens. As it is, they are a fabulous combination of the carnal and the well-read. But make no mistake; this is pop music.

Prime Cuts:
Take Me Out
Michael
Darts of Pleasure
Come On Home

22 Rating: 14

The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives

I just listened to Tyrannosaurus Hives, and I must say I am completely exhausted. What it most reminds me of is getting hit by a train that’s going 50,000 miles per hour, but the train is only a millimeter long. You don’t know what the hell just happened, but you’re really sore. Sweden is normally associated with big burly blonde men, as well as ABBA, but the Hives, who hail from Fagersta, Sweden, couldn’t be more unlike those two things. For one, none of them is blonde, and only one of them is big, and he’s not burly. For two, ABBA specialized in dance music. You can’t dance to the Hives. Well, you can, I guess, but it’s closer to having a seizure than actual dancing.

Right out of the gate, the Hives are blazing. The pace, energy, and pure volume of the opening track, “Abra Cadaver,” staggers you and pushes you back, and then the song’s over. Its minute-and-a-half length brings to mind that millimeter train analogy from before. That pattern basically persists through the entire album, which clocks in at 3 seconds shy of 30 minutes. The best track, “Walk Idiot Walk,” starts off with a really dirty scream that sort of reminds me of “Rocks Off” by the Rolling Stones. It’s a little hard to pick out particular songs, since all of them have such brevity. They all tend to be the loud, in-your-face type, but at the same time, they don’t all bleed together. Each song is a definite entity, and you can definitely tell where one starts and another begins. They just all have the same spirit in mind, which is blowing your face off.

The Hives are a gang, a club, a society. They all wear the same thing, adhering to a strict black and white dress code. This gang has only five members, and there isn’t any room for anyone else. A possible exception is Randy Fitzsimmons, someone who’s not actually in the band but writes all their songs (and may not actually exist). The members of the band even adopt amusing monikers like Nicholaus Arson, Chris Dangerous, and Dr. Matt Destruction. This is a band that likes to blow stuff up.

For a band that is so focused on fast, intense, cranked-to-11 rock music, they definitely take their sweet time in releasing music. In their almost 9 year career, they’ve only released 3 albums. They didn’t show up on the public radar until 2002, when their single “Hate to Say I Told You So” broke, two years after it was released. I think the band is focused on paring down the crap until they’re only left with the good stuff. Unfortunately, this process takes a while, and it doesn’t produce very plentiful results. It is odd that such an exacting process makes for such frenetic music filled with an energy I haven’t seen in a long time. The Hives may desperately need to go on Ritalin, as well as a strong sedative, but they are a fun ride.

Prime Cuts:
Walk Idiot Walk
Diabolic Scheme
Love In Plaster
A Little More for Little You

22 Rating: 12

An update

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