Nine Inch Nails -- With Teeth

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8/10

Sometimes musical change is a bit tough to take. Trent Reznor went six years (1999-2005) without releasing a new Nine Inch Nails studio album. In that time period, after years of alcohol and drug addiction, Reznor became sober. He changed as a person, and his music changed, too. Nine Inch Nails 90's output almost sounds like a noise collage melted into songs--buzzing guitars and synths bashed into acoustic and found sounds, interspersed with ambient textures. Yet with all of those sounds, NIN sounded like a one man show. With Teeth sounds like it was recorded by a four-piece band...and it's only dark...not bleakest black!
Listening to these 13 songs, one can easily imagine Reznor on vocals and keyboards, next to a bassist, guitarist, and drummer--indeed Dave Grohl(!) pops up to provide live drums on nearly half With Teeth's tracks. "Live" might actually be the key word here, as these songs sound like they could be live performances. The more acoustic sounds and ambient textures have been dialed back to nearly nothing. "Bah," went my initial impression. "This doesn't sound special any more--it just sounds like humans playing music."
Time brings change, but it also flattens out previous changes until they no longer seem so insurmountable...or even that significant.
I can listen to With Teeth now, and appreciate these 13 songs for what they are, and not what I want them to be--turns out, they are actually quite good. With Teeth's music bounces between something close to funky (check out some of those drum and bass grooves!) and pummeling (check out Dave Grohl destroying some innocent drum kit on "You Know What You Are?"!) Almost every one of With Teeth's tracks is memorable and sounds like it could be a single (this is not meant to be derogatory, there's just a strong dedication to song-craft apparent in each song), and they all fit together nicely.
Reznor does a fine job of exploring his rehab and post-rehab emotions, as he feels mechanical, cold, and wonders if he even has an identity outside of his former life. There's a through-line here that Reznor is starting to doubt the existence of reality itself. He even posits that the entire world might exist in his or your head. In that vein, there's a great circulation of ideas between the opener "All the Love in the World," and the closer, "Right Where It Belongs." Reznor actually mentions the title of the latter in the former, as well as "hiding in a crowd," only to add the distorted noises of a crowd cheering in "Right Where It Belongs," over the lyrics:

What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems
What if all the world you used to know
Is an elaborate dream?

This gives the album a (not to be redundant or over-obvious) dream-like quality.
 Also, and this is going to be difficult to explain, With Teeth strongly evokes 2005, the year it was created. I can't explain why, and perhaps the feeling is intangible (technically, all feelings are intangible), but Reznor's lyrics, and the way this music sounds reminds me of 11 years ago. Not that the music sounds dated--it doesn't--but it evokes that time...something in the air of the recording, which I think you can hear in other popular "rock" albums from that year, like Weezer's Make Believe, or the Gorillaz' Demon Days. Or maybe that's just my memory mucking things up...what's the difference between memory and reality, anyway?


2005 Nothing/Interscope
1. All the Love in the World 5:15
2. You Know What You Are? 3:42
3. The Collector 3:08
4. The Hand That Feeds 3:32
5. Love Is Not Enough 3:41
6. Every Day Is Exactly the Same 4:55
7. With Teeth 5:38
8. Only 4:23
9. Getting Smaller 3:35
10. Sunspots 4:03
11. The Line Begins to Blur 3:44
12. Beside You in Time 5:25
13. "Right Where It Belongs" 5:04

Comments

Graham Wall said…
Random thought: for whatever reason, I always thought "Every Day is Exactly the Same" would make for a perfect song to play during the credits of a movie.

Also, thanks to you, I somewhat recently had the pleasure of seeing that hilarious Ashlee Simpson video from 2006. I've never been much into football, so I hadn't seen it until then, but wow ... just wow ... your commentary on that was priceless!
Definitely!

Man, she was so bad. She had that, and the SNL flub where an audio error accidentally revealed she was lip-syncing right around the same time. I don't wish her any ill will, but when you see far more talented people struggling to make ends meet, then see the opportunities given to someone who can neither sing, nor write good songs, and it's kind of infuriating.

Hey, do you know what's going on with "Breakout Press?" Are they going to get that website off the ground? I haven't found a decent replacement for IndieVision.

Hope you're doing well.
Graham Wall said…
Yeah, bad popular music is kind of baffling when you think about it. Do so many people really enjoy such mediocre entertainment? Or does popular media merely give the impression that "everybody" enjoys it?

That's a good question. Breakout Press won't be happening, but Indie Vision Music is in the process of being re-launched. I also miss the site (and forum) and greatly anticipate its return.

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