A few songs into the Nine Inch Nails’ set at the John Paul Jones Arena last Wednesday, I found myself utterly unable to summon any authentic anger to match the brutality that frontman Trent Reznor and company dished out. C’mon, Trent: Obama just won the presidency, putting an eight-year nightmare to rest and making history in the process. How can I take part in NIN’s vitriol-industrial complex when faced with the best news of the last decade? The key is to fake it until you feel it—and that was exactly the trick that Nine Inch Nails pulled throughout their superb performance.
Although Nine Inch Nails were among the most sonically subversive bands of the ’90s, Reznor’s lyrics often read as morbid juvenilia; now that Reznor’s well into middle age, the whole NIN act reeks of showbiz. But that impulse to entertain served the band well during its two hour set.
The show was oftentimes a display of sheer athleticism. Reznor, in all his anabolic glory, chucked microphone stands and synthesizers, leapt like Chuck Berry’s hellspawn, pawed at light displays, and gyrated wildly. The angst was obviously calculated, but Reznor’s high theatricality made for a compelling stage presence.
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Anger management: Trent Reznor raged onstage during Nine Inch Nails’ set at John Paul Jones Arena. |
A series of three video displays added to the spectacle. These screens moved around the stage, immersing the band in images of TV static, swampy landscapes, shattering glass, Reznor’s creepy mouth, surveillance footage, and the annihilation of a city’s skyline. It was a meathead Cirque du Soleil performance but, instead of feeling condescended to, I enjoyed and respected the technical ingenuity and sheer stamina on display.
The songs sounded great even if they didn’t provide any major revelations: The band played, with pummeling efficiency, faithful renditions of NIN’s greatest hits and recent tunes. The setlist began with chugging metal (“1,000,000,” “Letting You”), moved briskly through dance-infused rock (“Discipline,” “Closer”), slow-burning funk (“Me, I’m Not,” “Vessel”), cinematic soundscapes (selections from the all-instrumental Ghosts I-IV album), and balladeering (“Hurt”). Though the lyrical torment was rote, the genre exercises were clever and the heaps of digital noise punished and thrilled the audience.
Health, NIN’s opening act, were a compelling contrast to Reznor’s perfectionism. Fidgety and restless, Health’s noisy indie rock alternated between droning sections, abrupt stops and starts, disco rhythms, and pounding drum workouts. During their set, the band played unreleased songs that were longer and more conventionally structured than the abrasive fragments of their self-titled debut; at times, the music could be alienating or perplexing. But the crowd’s applause moved from tepid to genuinely appreciative over the course of the set as the band members bopped, head-banged, knob-twiddled, and slid around the stage, with equal parts antagonism and glee.
