Some time in the late 90s, Trent Reznor holed himself up in a house
near the ocean to write some music. But while he did use that time to
start to piece together some of the songs that would become Nine Inch
Nails's 1999 double-album The Fragile, Reznor - who at the time was struggling with various addictions and other personal problems - really retreated to that house because he wanted to kill himself.
This
was the story Reznor told from the stage at the Comcast Center on
Wednesday night. It has a happy ending, of course: Reznor is still
alive, healthy, clean, and has even found love. He mentioned he was
actually planning to marry his bride-to-be, West Indian Girl singer
Mariqueen Maandig, at that very house, to exorcise the demons once and
for all perhaps. He then proceeded to play "La Mer," an instrumental
composition he wrote during that time of his life, as his way of
demonstrating that he has overcome his demons, and he's out on the
other side of it all now.
Roughly
an hour later, Jane's Addiction played consecutive songs about Jesus
Christ participating in a threesome with two debauched "Marys" and the
benefits of finding comfort in the arms of prostitutes. The contrast
was noticeable: we went from a guy laying his troubles for all to see
to a band who seem completely untroubled by anything. Even though it's
reasonably well-known that Farrell and company have battled addiction
and other such troubles in their past as well, it still feels like
they're incapable of much of any emotion beyond "hey man, relax, we're
all just trying to have a good time here," although Farrell did ask a
guy who threw a projectile at him (looked like a wadded up piece of
paper) to leave.
Both Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction seem
frozen in time, both veterans of a time when anyone who played guitar
and wasn't hair metal would get lumped into the "alternative" category
and was forced to fight for airplay with bands they had absolutely
nothing in common with like R.E.M. and the Pixies.
Pretty Hate Machine is on the verge of its 20th anniversary;
Nothing's Shocking
already passed that milestone last year. They're both great albums, yet
Reznor's body of work is more relevant in 2009 than that of his
tourmates. And sure, a big part of that is the simple fact that Reznor
has continued making quality albums into this decade, something many
bands with shorter careers than Nine Inch Nails have been unable to do.
But it isn't
only that - Reznor simply makes over-the-top angst
work in a way that few others can pull off, and a lot of that is his
ability to connect with his audience and present himself as one of
them. His songs are intensely personaly, of course, but he manages to
find a universal quality in his own feelings. His pain is the same as
your pain, his anger is your anger, and his outrage is your outrage.
Whether he's directing his hatred externally - as he does in "Burn,"
"Wish," "Head Like a Hole," "March of the Pigs," and "The Hand That
Feeds," all heard last night - or internally - last night's examples
include "The Fragile," "Hurt," "The Way Out Is Through," "Echoplex" -
he's voicing the concerns of others, rather than telling them what to
think. This could also help to explain why he's reportedly "retiring"
Nine Inch Nails;
he's at peace now and doesn't relate to all the self-loathing.
Perry
Farrell, on the other hand, is like a guy who corners you at a party
and won't shut up. Maybe some of the stories he tells are mildly
entertaining and kind of titilating, but after a while it gets a little
tiresome. Chris Dahlen once compared him to a homeless guy ranting on a
street corner while panhandling in
a Pitchfork review, and that feels
about right. He went off on some rant praising Boston for its role in
the American Revolution, which probably wouldn't have been so bad had
it not come in the middle of "Then She Did," the band's most haunting,
beautiful song, one of very few introspective moments for the band.
Farrell's onstage antics were not terribly distracting otherwise, he'd
dance, strut, walk across the stage with his arms held away from his
sides like somebody doing a bad John Wayne imitation, and struck poses
where he'd jerk the microphone away from his face and freeze in
position. He didn't appear to be showing any ill effects from his
recent calf injury. His voice, though, sounded restrained, like he was
holding himself back. This could be a function of any number of things
- he
is older now, after all, and maybe he simply can't hit
some of those notes nowadays. The rest of the band, though, sounded
great. Say what you will about Dave Navarro, but the guy can play, as
can Stephen Perkins. This was billed as a "proper" Jane's Addiction
reunion (as opposed to their previous three reunions) because of the
presence of original bassist Eric Avery, but I'll be honest and say
that I'm not sure I would have been able to tell the difference.
Latest Slideshows
