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Friday Full-Length: Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile

Nine Inch Nails The Fragile

The Fragile came out on Sept. 21, 1999, as the third Nine Inch Nails album. I’ve owned it since that day and just not listening to it to write this piece I managed to hear a detail of light atonal guitar strumming at 2:47 into “The Day the World Went Away” that I’ve never heard before. Following the gripping pop-industrial-metal of 1994’s The Downward Spiral, which produced hits “Closer,” “March of the Pigs” and its subdued atmospheric finale “Hurt,” was no easy task and auteur/frontman Trent Reznor managed to change the entire scale and framework through which the band functioned. The Fragile is as cinematic as it is aggressive, petulant in its emotionalism at times but ferocious in its delivery — Reznor‘s line about being “Too fucked up to care anymore” in opener “Somewhat Damaged” echoes “Nothing can stop me down ‘cuz I don’t care anymore” from the prior album’s “Piggy” — and its scope was like nothing the band had done, topping an hour and 43 minutes and comprising two individual discs, ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, and 23 songs in its original incarnation. It is the kind of record that, 21 years after the fact, one might just put it on and hear something new even after listening to it enough times that it seems to run through the body at the same speed as one’s own blood.

Like most double-albums, it has material that could be easily cut for time. Some of The Fragile‘s instrumentals and experiments — beginning with “The Frail,” “Just Like You Imagined,” “La Mer” and the militaristic “Pilgrimage” on ‘Left’ and including “The Mark Has Been Made,” “Complication” and closer “Ripe [With Decay]” on ‘Right’ — might feel superfluous to a cruel editorial process, but they nonetheless serve a function in enhancing the atmosphere and underscoring the absolute all-in nature of the album itself. The rhythmic chains in “The Fragile,” the electronic zapping noises set to the rhythm of “Into the Void,” the drone that backs “I’m Looking Forward to Joining You Finally,” and the way the twisting melody of what might otherwise be a guitar solo in “Even Deeper” so perfectly suits the jazzy beat behind it; with all of these and so, so, so many more, The Fragile becomes an album of richness and detail unmatched by anything Nine Inch Nails did before or has done since. Reznor‘s work since has developed an ambient side and continued the style of hooks one finds manifest in The Fragile cuts like “The Wretched,” “We’re in This Together Now,” “The Fragile,” “Even Deeper,” “Into the Void,” “Where is Everybody,” “Please,” “Starfuckers Inc.” and “The Big Come Down” as much as those songs continued a thread from The Downward Spiral and the prior 1992 EP, Broken, and 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine. But The Fragile represents an intersection between perfectionism of craft and unmitigated mania of self-indulgence. The prior album was certainly the commercial breakthrough, but it’s The Fragile where Reznor demonstrates the truest reach of his project. Every tone, every sound, every second of it is considered.

That extends even to The Fragile‘s most cringe-worthy inclusion, which is unquestionably “Starfuckers Inc.,” which seems to be Reznor doing his best impression of then protege Marilyn Manson — who as I recall appeared in the video — and even with the would-be sexually transgressive lines, “And when I suck you off not a drop will go to waste/It really isn’t so bad once you get past the taste,” doesn’t say nearly as much as the phallus-as-weapon comment on masculinity in the prior album’s “Big Man with a Gun,” but being over-the-top with teen-angst-esque lashing out against the commercial ecosystem in which the album would inevitably reside is the point. The fact that “Starfuckers Inc.,” with its signature weighted-buzzsaw guitar chug and driving chorus, is one of The Fragile‘s catchiest songs — and that’s saying something — is not happenstance either. Like everything else around it, there’s a point being made, even if it’s more rudimentary-feeling than the spaces cast forth in “The Great Below” or “The Day the World Went Away” or some of the many transitional drones and elements that bring one song into the next throughout.

Neither is “Starfuckers Inc.” the only point of immediacy on The Fragile. “No, You Don’t” picks up from its atmospheric introduction to a straight-ahead riff and quick-arriving verse, and though it’s more mellow in its impact, “Even Deeper” is as effective as it is in no small part for its willingness to return to the chorus, likewise “We’re in This Together” and “The Fragile.” Between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, the former proves the more structured and the latter more abstract at least in the general listening experience — true enough to “left-brained” and “right-brained” — but while The Fragile essentially reads are two distinct entireties, each with its purposeful beginning, middle and end, the time it spends flitting between different sounds and styles throws open the bounds of expectation, and Reznor and producer Alan Moulder execute and bring the material to bear with such a feeling of control that, in combination with the high grade songwriting on display — the fact that many of these tracks are still pop songs — the album remains accessible even to the moderately adventurous listener.

I’ll happily argue for The Fragile as the peak-era of Nine Inch Nails. It would be 2005 before the band returned with the strikingly toothless With Teeth, and proceeded into atmospheres and craft that, while interesting for someone operating at the level of attention Reznor invariably would receive, were largely void of innovation. Nothing lasts forever. And in that regard, it’s all the more fortunate that The Fragile is as long and as comprehensive as it is — an expanded edition showed up some years ago as well — since this glut of material represents a deep place of personal expression to which even Reznor has said he’s not willing to return. Fair enough. More than two decades on, The Fragile stands out not only from its era — to wit, it came out the same day as Type O Negative‘s World Coming Down — but from what would follow in its wake. It was the end of one century and the beginning of another, and The Fragile didn’t so much paint a vision of the future as it did reconcile the present with what was about to be.

I love this record. I hope you enjoy it too.

Blueberry picking in Manalapan? In the back of the car, The Pecan calling out the names of different trucks, mostly accurately, and narrating the drive. “Going this way. In the grey car. Cement mixer round and round!” He’ll be three in October. There was a time we were worried about his speech. That is less the case now.

So anyway, we’re on our way to Manalapan. To pick blueberries. I don’t eat them — too much sugar — but The Patient Mrs. and The Pecan will enjoy. We found fresh strawberries last Friday after going to Space Farms, so this feels like an appropriate follow-up. Elsewhere, and not that far away, people are dying. People are marching for long-overdue freedom. We are going to pick blueberries. It is important to remember the context in which one’s actions take place.

This week was hard. Not as hard as it would be if I had COVID-19. And not as hard as it would be if I was marching for long-overdue freedom. But hard. Living in my head with Bad Voice hard.

The Patient Mrs. and I discussed this week when we might go places together again. New Jersey is starting indoor dining next week, which seems absurd and dangerous to me. I said another two weeks at least to see how things shake out before, say, she goes to a grocery store. It’s been since March, so if she’s antsy to do a thing — anything — I get it. She leaves the house plenty but doesn’t see a ton of people, and she’s much more of an extrovert than I am. The Pecan being back in part-time daycare the last two weeks (they’re off this coming week) has eased the general tension level some, but I remain an impatient, miserable shit, so I expect basically to continue ruining whatever positivity might surround me at any given point, including that emanating from my beautiful wife and child.

A contaminant, then.

New Gimme Radio show today — they’ve started calling it Gimme Metal instead of Gimme Radio, presumably because they’re branching out — Gimme Country, etc. — and I guess that makes sense. But if Gimme Radio is the umbrella under which Gimme Metal resides, the show’s still on Gimme Radio. The Obelisk Show isn’t especially metal, most of the time. I don’t know. Maybe I need to listen to more metal.

Anyway, 5PM Eastern if you’re up for it. If you’re not, that’s fine too but don’t tell them I said that. Playlist is here. Listen here: http://gimmeradio.com

Nos habitant stultitia.

Great and safe weekend. Be careful. Be well. FRM.

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One Response to “Friday Full-Length: Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile

  1. J. says:

    I can relate. Hang in there, JJ.

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