There's something inherently grand, fascinating and repellent about Nine Inch Nails, like discovering a 6-foot cockroach in the stall next to you in a public restroom at midnight. Run for your life! Scarily intense or doo-wop
and back bayouReviews by Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comTrent Reznor's dripping-basement nightmare, which largely existed on the digital plane of recording production, has been transferred to stage with every squeak, power minor-chord and anguished wail largely intact, which is a tribute to the backup band and to the dozens of audio technicians accompanying the tour. It's like hearing Pink Floyd live -- you can't quite believe they pull it off.
But making it live also increases the aural space. The claustrophobic feel of NIN's earlier recordings have burst out here, like a thunderstorm erupting from a hothouse. They sound like they're having fun being bad boys, which is not something you'd have guessed on Reznor's earlier recordings.
The material is a decade worth of Reznor from 1989's "Sin" to 1999's "The Mark Has Been Made." The music has a fuzzy, choked texture and over-driven dramatics. Very big among those experiencing puberty.
"And All That Could Have Been"
Nine Inch Nails
(Interscope)
There's a parental advisory on the cover for good reason; there are naughty words in the choruses, and the music is scarily intense. But the parental advisory will make kids snatch it up.Take a headache pill before listening to it full-bore on headphones.
The production is fine and neatly separated aurally, but the too-clever fold-up CD jacket features a booklet that won't stay in place.
There may come a time -- and judging by this recording, it may be soon -- when Chris Isaak becomes some sort of national musical treasure. The reason is that he, like Ry Cooder, is almost single-handedly keeping a certain genre of American music alive, and doing so with style and oomph.
In Isaak's case, he, with his Silvertone band (Kenny Dale Johnson, Rowland Salley and Hershel Yatovitz), are toiling in the arbors of California country, a place once-upon-a-time hugely popular and heavily populated by The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris and others, and featured ringing guitars, wistful tenor harmonies and rock-solid, spookily hummable melodies.
"Always Got Tonight"
Chris Isaak
(Reprise)
Isaak enthusiastically plows these fields and plants equal measures of '50s heartbreak doo-wop and back-bayou howling-dog mysticism (who else these days dares wail a Roy Orbison yodeling lament?) into his patented snub-nosed bad-boy with a heart-of-gold groove.Isaak wrote all the tunes here, and his archetypal American persona is front and center -- a suffering romantic, baffled by love and breaking hearts, an aching tenor voice near-cracking under repressed emotion, but determined to go on, with True Love perhaps around the next corner.
The production, by John Shanks, is first-rate, and a little old-fashioned sounding in the way it skips digital gimmicks in favor of instrumentation.
There's no filler. "Always Got Tonight" and "Notice the Ring" have bouncy sly humor; "One Day" and "American Boy" are addictive rockers with fabulous hooks; "I See You Everywhere," "Let Me Down Easy" and "Worked It out Wrong" ache with bad cases of the unrequiteds.
The weakest tune is "Courthouse," and only because it sounds too much like a Bernie Leadon-era Eagles melody, complete with those soaring and irresistible harmonies. Could be worse.
Why isn't this guy a bigger star than he is? (Well, he does have his own show on Showtime -- is that big enough? -- Ed.)
Every song here deserves radio play. Maybe there's too much good taste and tenderness on display to get noticed.
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