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 Pretty
Political
By
David King
Nine Inch Nails
Year
Zero (interscope)
Trent Reznor is bullshitting you. If you’ve read any of Reznor’s
recent interviews about his latest album, Year Zero,
you probably have read the story about how he usually has
to fight his record label on how to market his latest album,
and how with Year Zero he expected “an epic battle.”
The truth is, almost every track on Year Zero could
easily be a single. There are two that couldn’t, and that’s
because they don’t have vocals.
Yes, the album is full of scary politics. On “Capital G,”
Reznor takes up the voice of a politician one can only assume
is George Bush, and declares, “Don’t try to tell me that some
power can corrupt a person/You haven’t had enough to know
what it’s like/You’re only angry cause you wish you were in
my position/Now nod your head cause you know that I’m right,
alright!” But really, how edgy is Bush-bashing nowadays?
P.S.: Reznor barely ever even drops the F-bomb on this album.
So Year Zero is not the raging death machine you’ve
been lead to believe it is. Instead, it is the shiniest piece
of ear candy Reznor has ever produced. The beats per minute
on Year Zero barely ever rev past a steady plod. The
guitar riffs are fleeting but effective, sneaking into the
steady war march of the electronic drums, like some fuzzed-out
insurgency, caught up in the machine-gun fire of Reznor’s
stuttering electronics. Tracks like the “The Great Destroyer”
come to epic conclusions, not thanks to the traditional NIN
guitar fit but instead with drum loops percolating, exploding,
tripping each other as if Reznor somehow has given his drum
machines a conscience and forced them to fight each other
to the death.
There aren’t many songs on Year Zero that make it past
the four-minute mark. The self-indulgence found on albums
like The Fragile has been replaced by tight pop songcraft.
“The Good Solider,” “The Beginning of the End” and “Vessel”
deliver some of the catchiest hooks Reznor has ever served
up. Like a fleeting lover in a wet dream, the songs on Year
Zero tease and tantalize, providing moments of pop ecstasy
before devolving back into simple digital beats. The plain
truth about Year Zero is that Reznor no longer needs
shock and awe. He just writes interesting songs.
David
Bromberg
Try
Me One More Time (Appleseed)
Back in the days before selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,
depression was known as the blues, and a popular course of
treatment was to write and perform a song about it, preferably
opening with a plangent picture of the singer waking up one
morning in an empty bed.
Robert Johnson’s “Kind-Hearted Woman” is just such a plaint,
but it’s distinguished by a more sophisticated ambiguity than
many such songs: “I got a kindhearted woman, do anything in
the world for me/But these evilhearted women, boy, they will
not let me be.” As played and sung by David Bromberg on his
new CD, it features the same deft melding of voice and guitar
as in the best of the many other versions (Muddy Waters, Eric
Clapton, Johnny Winter, among others).
Bromberg’s playing—he accompanies himself throughout on a
Martin M-42 made especially for him—isn’t flashy, but it’s
thorough. His virtuosity lies in crafting a line that sounds
right, deftly supporting his voice and creating an infectious
groove.
“Kind-Hearted
Woman” has the additional enhancement of Bromberg’s own verse:
“I was out in California, there was a great big rumbling on
the ground/I was out in California, people, whoa, the earth
was tremblin’ all around/Those people thought it was a big
earthquake comin’ to get ’em: Lord, wasn’t nothing but those
evil-hearted women trying to run me down.”
It’s a great image, one that Bromberg has spun throughout
his long and unique career. In many of his original songs
he’s alternately pursuing the uncatchable (as in “Sharon”
and “Testify”), or fighting them off (“I’ll Take You Back,”
“Try Me One More Time”), although this persona relaxes into
the background on this CD, his first studio recording in 17
years.
Two songs salute a Bromberg mentor, Rev. Gary Davis: “I Belong
to the Band” and “Trying to Get Home,” and in both it’s easy
to forget that the band consists of but one guitar. Bob Dylan
played harmonica on Bromberg’s eponymous debut album in 1971
(the cover art of the new release harkens back to that); Dylan
is saluted here with Bromberg’s performance of “It Takes a
Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”
Two instrumentals—“Buck Dancer’s Choice” and “Hey Bub” (a
Big Bill Broonzy number) display Bromberg’s picking talent,
and two a cappella numbers make the most of his voice. “Moonshiner”
has an Irish lilt, while “Lonesome Roving Wolves,” a Mormon
song of travel travail, is a nod to Rosalie Sorrels and finished
this brief (48-minute) dense album on a charmingly wistful
note.
Though I always enjoy hearing the horns and drums of the Bromberg
Band, this is a wonderfully intimate look at one of our most
talented, uncategorizable musicians.
—B.A.
Nilsson
The Microscopic Septet
History
of the Micros Volume 1, History of the Micros Volume
2 (Cuneiform)
Spread across four discs, this volume is not only a history
of the Microscopic Septet, but also of various strains of
American jazz and popular music that chugged across the 20th
century. The septet were active from 1980 to 1992 in the then-emerging
downtown scene. They were key players in the nascent community
(including John Zorn, Curlew, Fred Frith and Bill Frisell
among many others). While the Lounge Lizards worked the public-relation
and hip-quotient terrain perhaps more effectively, the Micros
pursued what is, in hindsight, a more circuitous road, full
of surprises. They plumbed the depths of the music they loved,
fearlessly ignoring boundaries like a crazed pack of free-range
chickens.
Founded by Phillip Johnston, the band embraced Jelly Roll
Morton, Ellington, and Monk, on up through Captain Beefheart.
The latter’s non-jazz credentials not withstanding, what they
drew from him was the urge to take a form, disassemble it
and see what the parts looked like all laid out on the table
(or the dance floor). What’s contained on this pair of two-disc
sets is all four of their original albums, along with nearly
a dozen additional tracks. It should also be noted that millions
of people listen to the Microscopic Septet every day: Pianist
Joel Forrester’s composition is the theme song to National
Public Radio’s Fresh Air. You’ll find it impossible
to hear this one-minute tune without saying at its conclusion,
“First, the news.”
—David
Greenberger
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