Pretty Hate Machine – Nine Inch Nails

The forces that collided in 1989 around the release of Trent Reznor’s “Pretty Hate Machine” caused major shifts in several genres of modern music, and in the overall critical trajectory of alternative music. This record succeeded in tapping the rich underground traditions of industrial electronic music, and by combining it with strong melodic songwriting both catapulted the sub-genre to a larger audience, as well as brought a new sonic palette of inspiration to multiple artists from other genres. But this single debut album became a monument in the musical landscape not only because of its transformation of genres, but also as work of the auter – the masterwork of a single artist as opposed to a group or band effort. This single source creativity would go on to inspire further music as digital music and recording technology became more widely available to non-professional and, importantly, musicians not sponsored by the recording industry.

In context, “Pretty Hate Machine” wears its influences proudly on its sleeve. Its release in 1989 shows its clear sonic link to the industrial and electronic dance music of the time. The whirring mechanical rhythms, dark ambient synth fills and grinding white noise distorted guitars were lifted directly from the playbooks of underground dance groups like Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, and Front 242. But within 40 seconds of the first track, Head Like a Hole differentiates itself from its peers. The song builds predictably enough through whirring mechanical percussion loops and visceral vocal grunt/scream sounds reminiscent of the implied bodily violence of the electro-dance movement to a throbbing bass melody. But at the 40 second mark, the inhuman composition fades back in the mix for the entrance of the vocal. Unlike the vocals of typical industrial music where the human voice is either a percussive chant, or a distorted/over processed textural fill (Ministry’s Stigmata being the ultimate object lesson for this aesthetic), this vocal is something completely different: a lyric. And not only is it a lyric, but it’s composed in melodic rhyming couplets conceptually rooted in a single theme, all gathered together in a verse chorus framework. All this of course is a very convoluted way to say: popular songwriting structure.

Song by song “Pretty Hate Machine” proves again and again how the sonic palette of industrial music can be translated into popular songwriting. From the rock-anthem styling of Head like a Hole, to dark pop songs like Sin, to the rap driven Down In It to even haunting ballads like Something I Can Never Have, Reznor unflinchingly indulges the driving beats, harsh mechanical textures and distorted guitar noise of his influences. But instead of using these elements to dominate the song and bury the listener in the abstract isolationism and dehumanization that is the core of the industrial aesthetic, he uses them as independent instruments in arrangement to support the vocal. The lyric content itself then takes the next step of the transformation and anchors the dysfunctional / dystopian aesthetic of industrial music around the personal confusion, anxiety and tortured self-pity of the singer. In this, he succeeded to embody and personify the emotional and psychological alienation and dehumanization of modern life that the industrial movement sought to express in abstraction, by paradoxically giving that alienation a very human and emotionally identifiable persona.
The slow building popularity that built up around “Pretty Hate Machine” in 1989 became a fevered pitch which kept the album on the charts for two years, and became not only a commercial success for Reznor and his indie label TVT, but it sparked a new interest and new audience for industrial music. Though they were his initial inspiration, bands like Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, Einsturzende Neubauten and KMFDM rode the coat tails of “Pretty Hate Machine” to a new broader audience by taking lessons from Reznor’s new use of traditional songwriting. In turn, the sonic elements of the genre found their way into the songs of new generations of bands to follow who further explored the crossovers between techno, metal, and alternative genres – Filter, Marilyn Manson and Garbage to name only a few.

But the innovation of this album doesn’t stop at this crossroads of genres. The importance of the recording is best captured in an anecdote that embodies the emergence of Nine Inch Nails at the time of its release. When I was first introduced to Pretty Hate Machine by a friend in 1989 it was the classic word of mouth marketing that indie music was built upon in the late 80s. A friend asked me if I had heard this “new band called Nine Inch Nails”. When I said I hadn’t, my friend told me “Well it’s really not a band, it’s just this one guy, but he recorded this album playing all the instruments himself and recorded it at home on his Mac…” From here a myth was born. From my first listen and my own limited knowledge of new computer recording techniques, I could easily imagine Trent Reznor building samples and drum machine loops in a basement studio somewhere in Ohio, creating this dark brooding soundscape as a backdrop for his own tortured personal psyche. And the music holds up to this myth. Compared to the “wall of sound” noise-scapes of the industrial music of the time, this music seems pared down, almost simplistic. Yet it’s simple enough for the listener to hear isolated textures, sounds and rhythms that would otherwise be lost in the sonic onslaught of Reznor’s peers. Listening to “Pretty Hate Machine” for the first time in 1989 was in many ways akin to listening to a Velvet Underground album in the late sixties – it seemed suddenly attainable to grab a guitar, form a band and write some songs. But in this case it was the realization that you could hook some instruments up to your computer and start creating music. In effect, “Pretty Hate Machine” shattered the idea that industrial and electronic music was an experimental, rarified genre of music, and brought it to the level of immediacy that was characteristic of Rock and Roll.

Of course the myth of the auter in this case was not completely true. While Reznor wrote and recorded the demos for “Pretty Hate Machine” on his own, for the final recordings he paired up with renowned engineer/producer Flood for the studio recording. Flood undoubtedly deserves the credit for being able to boil down and isolate the samples and drum loops in the mix to allow this recording to walk a fine line between the overwhelming wall of sound passages, and the subtly textured flares and sequences that fill in the gaps between Reznor’s vocal and the more aggressive musical bursts. (If there’s any signature sound to Flood’s approach behind the mixing board this may be it!). But as remarkable as the production is this record, it’s most remarkable in the way it disappears behind the myth of the auter. Even today, part of this album’s appeal is it’s artifice as a “one man show”, a soundtrack to a highly personal journey of introspection and, importantly, a singular burst of creativity. With all heady notions of musical theory and historical genre stirring aside, it’s the hallmark of a great work of art that despite the circumstances of its creation, it inspires the listener to creativity of his or her own. As “Pretty Hate Machine” seemed to lay bare the process of connecting a computer to a guitar; of joining mechanical music to the human vocal; of a connection between the digital and the analogue in the pursuit of music – this album succeeded in sparking creativity in its listeners to not only understand the means of its creation (Greenbergian modernism at its core) but also to pick up an instrument and create for themselves.

The Unforgettable Fire - U2

The Unforgettable Fire – U2

"You hunger for a time, a time to heal, desire time,
And your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape,
Oh, on borderlands we run." (A Sort of Homecoming)

In 1984, U2 made a significant shift in their music away from the externally engaged and highly social music of their first three albums, to a musical vision that combined a more sweeping panoramic view of the natural world with an introspective emotional focus. The thematic arc of the Boy/October/War set of albums served not only to establish the band’s style and critical mass, but also defined a stage in their artistic development and the early stages of “alternative music” at large. The excesses of 80s popular music were abandoned for a new union of punk rebellion and youthful idealism, all combined under a musical style that embraced potently distilled, almost hermetically sealed, individualized sound. In its first fledgling steps, U2 succeeded in harnessing the unique guitar approach of The Edge, and Bono’s passionate vocal idealism to create songs that embodied the youthful struggle between a childlike innocence and harsh external world. But with the release of The Unforgettable Fire, there was a departure from this first chapter of their work to a new thematic approach, as well as new direction musically and technically in their approach to songwriting, instrumentation and recording.

The change in their music is evident from the opening of the first track The preceding albums opened with a manifesto, both sonically and thematically: Boy – “I Will Follow”; October – “Gloria”; War “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. Where those tracks summon the listener to attention with their distinctive ringing guitar riffs, “A Sort of Homecoming” slowly swells into its sound with a subtle tom-tom rhythm and a guitar that sighs into the mix like a slow swelling wind. Similarly the vocal opening of the album differs from the impassioned overtures of the previous songs that directly tackle the individual’s struggle in an overtly social world, “A Sort of Homecoming” begins the song speaking of a withdrawal to introspection and the natural world:

"And you know it’s time to go, through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that’s in the distance… "

This is a very different U2 than the album that opens with “I can’t believe the news today…”. And it is a very different music, which we hear evolving over the course of the next nine tracks.

The only song that has a direct relationship to the socially engaged, up tempo, martial beat compositions of their past is the second track “Pride (In the Name of Love)”. But this song also represents an important departure in terms of the social anthem. Where previously U2, and other socially engaged alternative music, used the anthem as an expression of outrage focused on specific events (Sunday Bloody Sunday, etc.), “Pride” uses specific historical figures and the events of their lives (Ghandi, Jesus, and most prominently Martin Luther King Jr.) not as a rally point for protest, but as a symbol for personal inspiration. However as impactful and relevant as these individuals are to current social issues, the song never uses them to champion specific social issues, but instead turns the listener inward and uses these exemplars as a meditation on the personal value of love as the motivator behind these great men. As an anthem, “Pride” went on to become a flag waving “arena moment” for social activism, but at its core the song is something very different.

Thematically, the album continues in this vein. Where the songs confront the external world, they turn to introspection. Where they engage the city, they retreat to the natural world. Combined with the opening track, “Wire”, “Indian Summer Sky” and “The Unforgettable Fire” form the centerpiece of the albums conceptual arc. When the lyric confronts the real world of relationships and hardship, it turns immediately to introspective evaluation of the personal spiritual values; and any reference of the physical world is quick to juxtapose the man made world of cities to the natural world of rivers, mountains, wind and sky. It is as if, through the preceding three albums the songs exhausted themselves in the endless wrestling of trying to find a place for the individual in the world, and now stretched to more universal themes trying to make sense of personal feelings in the sprawling sweep of life; not just for the individual, but for everyone. As the songs make this leap from the personal to the universal, Bono again and again returns to natural metaphors. Throughout the album he sings of the wind, the sky and the sea as metaphors for the soul and the heart hovering above and surrounding the heavy landscape of social interaction. In his voice and in his words we can hear his longing to abandon himself to these sweeping natural forces, and find resonance for the passion that drives him (and all of us) in the un-ending driving forces of nature.

The new lyrical direction of the album would fall flat however, were it not for the introduction of new producer and engineer in the recording of the album. Sharing credit for both tasks, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois came aboard for the recording to support and promote the growth of the sweeping sonic aspirations that always lurked beneath the surface of U2’s sound. The sound that developed proved to be essential to realize the goal of the album. Renowned for their talents in ambient and atmospheric music Eno and Lanois, cultivated and encouraged The Edge’s already prominent use of echo, delay and reverb effects to new heights. Where U2’s major songs previously relied on distinct guitar driven riffs, the major tracks on The Unforgettable Fire begin with the guitar creating vast sweeping swells of sound more as atmosphere, than as riff. And in songs where the guitar is featured as the dominant element (“Pride”, “Wire”, “Bad,” “Indian Summer Sky”) it provides as much texture and atmosphere through its rhythmic delay effects and simple arpeggiated chords, as it does melody or “hook”. With the guitar lifted into the upper most portions of the mix, this allowed the bass and drum space to combine even more tightly than previously heard in U2’s music, both driving the songs forward with intensity and providing the brooding melodic foundations for the Bono’s vocal that soars with a passion in these songs that was never reached in their previous recordings. Ultimately the sonic approach captured in this album creates the perfect correlate to the imagery of the lyrics, The Edge’s guitar becomes the wind, the rain and the shimmering sky, while the bass and drums become the rolling hills, mountains and rivers of the landscape the songs move through.

But no discussion of this landmark album could be complete without tackling the epic centerpiece of the album - “Bad”. On the surface, the song is an elegy to drug addiction and the havoc it brings to relationships; but this song is much more. The slow restrained opening with its simple rhythm guitar creates a gentle, almost quiet, space in which the lyric reaches out to bridge the implied sorrow of alienation. As the song progresses it slowly layers in more instrumentation, from the subtle but tightly wound drums, to the lilting melodic base line, and to even further layers of echoing guitar. Throughout the building storm of sound the vocal moves from its gesture of reconciliation, through recognition of its helplessness in facing the alienation and dislocation between people. The lyric here functions both literally as a description of the helplessness of a friend to reach through the power of drug addiction, but also can be interpreted more abstractly as the confrontation of unbridgeable gap between souls in any relationship (again the theme of the album returns here in the transformation of the specific to the universal). But what’s remarkable in this composition is that while the confusion, complexity and alienation builds and swirls around this meditation on relationships, and as Bono’s voice is driven to higher and higher soaring notes that seem to push the limit of his range, there remains the positive underpinning of hope; the belief that escaping the cycles of alienation and separation between people is actually possible. The lyric pushes on through the swelling tide of sound “to let it go, and so to find away” through the confusion. Even at the song’s apex of confusion where Bono only sings a litany of relationship demons, “this desperation, dislocation, separation, condemnation, revelation, in temptation, isolation, desolation”, the chorus of the song makes its triumphant return “let it go”.

It’s this spirit of release that pervades not only the song, but the album overall – the drive to move past the demons that haunt our day to day lives, and “let it go”. Towards this end, the final lyrics of "Bad" seem to suggest the enlightenment philosophy behind the song – “I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping”. In many ways The Unforgettable Fire is an album of transition and transformation – it is music of awakening, or enlightenment. As it releases the music from wrestling with the reality tackled by their previous albums, it turns to universal themes in a more spiritual journey. it proposes a new enlightened state, a new landscape across which the music will travel. Leading the listener along new paths of self-discovery, and new bridges to cross what divides us from each other.

Switched On - Stereolab

Stereolab released two records almost simultaneously in 1992 - their “proper debut” Peng!, and a compilation of early singles they titled Switched On. While Peng! serves as a sprawling and almost languid introduction to the strange animal that is Stereolab, it’s Switched On that serves as a landmark record with it’s anthemic guitar driven songs that forged a manifesto for the group’s early ambitions and for post-rock in general.

It was the early nineties. Grunge ruled the airways, and the alternative underground rode waves of the ‘Shoegazers’ and the birth of ambient techno. Into this world stepped the ill fitting Stereolab. While their sound had the trappings of sonic indulgence like their contemporaries, Stereolab was clearly on a different journey. Armed with fuzzed out distorted guitars and droning analogue synthesizers, Stereolab drew inspiration from “krautrock” bands such as Faust, Neu!, and Can. But instead of adventuring deeper into the obscure and awkward depths of artrock and jazz odessies championed by these bands, Stereolab coupled their sonic experimentalism with more traditional songwriting, and created a hybrid.

There are two hallmarks of Stereolab’s early sound: the abstract flourishes of burbling outmoded analogue synthesizer technology; and the tight, deceptively simplistic lock groove created by the rhythm guitar chord structure that built the framework of the song. These two main compositional elements have to be seen in contrast to the musical genres both in the popular arena as well as the main currents of “alternative” music. The reductive “lock groove” of the guitar seemingly stood in contrast to the return to melodic pop songwriting that in the “grunge” movement took metal music to the masses. Similarly the stiff almost mechanical rhythm Stereolab exploited in their arrangements fought against the ethereal gauze-like guitar work of the “sheogazers”, where guitars transformed themselves into abstract washes of texture and sound. And even as Dr. Alex Patterson was starting our love affair with digital music, sampling, and the myriad possibilities of sequencers, the songs on Switched On seem to revel in their use of synthesizers picked from the trash heaps and pawn shops of the music industry.

But the Stereolab aesthetic was more than just a rebellious rejection of contemporary trends. From a formalist perspective, the lock-groove rhythm of each song creates a structured framework for the lilting vocal melodies and intertwined harmonies and counter melodies. Similarly this framework grounds the rich polyphonic synthesizer elements that layer themselves between the harmonic overtones of the ringing guitar chords, and provide a natural organic springboard for the vocals. The lock-groove approach serves a compositional purpose as well, where the guitar and droning synth washes create a backdrop that is both rich in texture but almost minimalist in its single chord, or same key, stretches of sound. The group uses these passages to slowly build intensity and subtle additions of texture while the vocals carry the simple melody of the song. But most remarkable in these songs are the points where Stereolab actually changes the chord, or the key. As the listener becomes accustomed to the locked repetitive sound and becomes more and more sensitized to the layers of sound and texture within that single key, the most simple chord or key change becomes a much more dramatic sensation for the listener, and compositionally propels the song.

To view these early Stereolab compositions as “minimalist,” is tempting; but too reductive. If anything, the borrowing of droning minimalist techniques and simplistic song structures is a strategic contrast to their championing of analogue sound and recordings. While the pro-analogue fervor of the late nineties was a bit of a retro-reactionary fad, it still held an important ontological or philosophical lesson for modern music. Even the champions of new digital music returned to this lesson as they learned to incorporate analogue samples and “real” instruments into music based on digital sequencers. The richness of analogue sound is singular and unique in texture as it is locked purely in the moment, in the NOW of the irreproducible chaos of human interaction with a sound making device. The just as the crackle and hiss of a needle riding a vinyl groove is dependant on the unique physical history of that specific record and that specific player, so too is the sound of a hollow body Gibson specific to the ambience of the room, the million variables of how it is strummed, and the proximity of the player to the amplifier and other feedback sources. Of course this is all a bit heady for describing some simple three chord pop songs, but the songs are built to showcase this concept. By foregrounding their choice of outmoded instruments, and employing fuzzy analogue distortion over modern slick recording techniques, they introduce to the listener an aesthetic of savoring every bump, scratch and hiss of the sound, drawing the listener deeper into a sonic textural experience than could ever be described as minimalist.

On this sonic backdrop, Stereolab creates a lyrical approach to modern music that is revolutionary as well. Like any “alternative” or “indie” band, their lyrics embody a rejection of sorts of the dominant strains of culture and a championing of an alternate way of life. In Stereolab’s case many critics have noted previously, that this rejection takes the form of an almost pseudo-marxist critique of modern capitalism. For example the classic line “Everything remains to be done to devastate the ideals of family, state and religion” (Au Grand Jour). However in the same song, their lyrical content also contains a post-structural critique of western logic and philosophy with proclamations such as “We need a shake and therefore demand more than the cold conclusions of reason / The only impossible thing is to limit the possible”. Throughout Switched On, the lyrics return again and again to the idea that the foundations of the real, whether social, economic, or psychological are insufficient. The refrain of Super Electric repeats over and over: “Some never see the bones at all / Some never see the flesh at all…” almost as if the answer to the human condition is neither the forest, nor the trees; but something else entirely. But while the lyrics offer us catchy mantras to chant our dissatisfaction with the real, Stereolab never offers us a solution, or maps a way into some great beyond. Instead they suggest that the answer lies only in revolution as a beginning: “Confrontations clearing the way / Will be opening / Not as end in itself / But as a beginning” (The Way Will Be Opening).

It’s tempting to leave my analysis here, and I wonder if Stereolab would do it that way themselves. Instead of spelling out conclusions, shake foundations as the first step in a larger undefined, and unscripted adventure. And truly the concept of shaking foundations is a fitting metaphor for this, their early sound. I think clearly of the locked groove distorted rhythm guitar grinding out a rhythm to the vocal that lilts over the storm chanting a simple rejection of the real, and can picture Tim Gane’s head rocking back and forth to his own internal time clock as if the rhythm of his guitar were a correlate to beating his head against the walls of reality, methodically pushing to break through to some other side.

In a poetically suggestive way, the lyrical content and the formalism of the music come together here to provide a real foundation for Stereolab’s ouerve, and for post-rock in general. This is a pretty big leap for me to make, and I’m certain that the artists would object to my reducing their lofty idealism to a pigeon holed musical genre. But like post-modernism, post-rock is still ill defined and raising itself from the ashes, so it bears talking through. If we continue the parallel between post-modernism and post-rock we accept the stylistic description that it is an art form that borrows elements from previous genres, but combines them in pursuit of a completely new aesthetic. I think this description applies to Switched On. With a foot in many different musical camps, Stereolab set out on this record towards uncharted waters. They wore their influences on their sleeves, they wallowed in the sonic indulgences of the past; but somehow the combination of elements pushed their music, and the listener on to something different. “Not as an end in itself / But as a beginning.”