Music for Goth Girls to Lose Their Virginity to; The Coachmen’s Free Rock; Rage Against the Machine; Teenage Fanclub

I’ll talk
about Nine Inch Nails first, because if I don’t, Trent Reznor might get
offended and contract writer’s block for the next five years. Don’t
worry, Trent. You put out a good, solid record. Things Falling Apart
is mostly a bunch of remixes, but that’s all right because it’s what
you do best. As those of us who were duped into buying The Fragile know,
a full CD of Nine Inch Nails is a dubious proposition. The more songs you listen
to, the more you realize (1) Trent Reznor is not a very interesting vocalist;
(2) he doesn’t write very good songs; and (3) he uses the word "decay"
too much. Forget albums–in the past few years even a decent single has
eluded this band (1997’s "The Perfect Drug" was the last).

But that’s
all for the bad stuff. What Nine Inch Nails does do, to great effect, is make
music for goth girls to lose their virginity to. I bet Trent Reznor was shrieking
at a good 5000 deflowerings since Pretty Hate Machine came out in 1989.
This is the guy who made a hit single that went, "I want to fuck
you like an animal," with a simple, slow, glorious beat that made you want
to do just that. And the best Nine Inch Nails record, known to depressingly
few, remains Closer to God, the nine-track ’94 release containing
six different versions of the "Closer" single. Each version is more
sexual and terrifying than the last–there are tracks that have "I
want to fuck you, fuck you, fuck you" looped over and over, with animal
noises and a preacher’s rants in the background. It’s wild.

Things Falling
Apart hails from this section of the Nine Inch Nails catalog, though it
falls far short of Closer to God. What Trent did was take five songs
from The Fragile and rework them with Alan Moudler, Keith Hillebrandt,
Charlie Clouser and others. Added to the final product are two Fragile
outtakes and one terrific Gary Numan cover (no, not "Cars").

The first three
tracks are best. "Slipping Away" pulls the "Tried to save myself
but myself keeps slipping away" hook from "Into the Void" and
repeats it like any good techno song, getting it so stuck in your head you’ll
have trouble sleeping. "The Great Collapse" features a jugga-jugga
beat and guitars straight out of the Smashing Pumpkins’ "Hummer."
And "The Wretched" is the highlight of Things Falling Apart,
with a digitally raped acoustic guitar backing "Now you know/This is what
it feels like."

The album concentrates
too much on "Starfuckers Inc.," which is remixed three times with
no discernible gain. The Gary Numan cover is "Metal," and it shows
how good Trent Reznor would be if he honed his song- and lyric-writing skills.
Numan ends up with some of the best lines on the record: "I’d love
to pull the wires from the wall," "I could crawl around the floor
just like I’m real."

Things Falling
Apart showcases Trent Reznor’s talents as a producer, manipulator and
all-out audio nut. It also shows how copied he is, especially by his protege
Marilyn Manson, the red herring target of "Starfuckers, Inc." (really
about Courtney Love, of course). It’s $10 less expensive than The Fragile;
it makes up for lackluster singing with sick vocal effects, and it completely
avoids the word "decay." Go buy it and find yourself a goth girl.

As for South
Park Mexican’s Time Is Money, what can I say? It’s not just
rap; it’s bad, cheap rap. Many people don’t realize how little rap
costs to make: all you need are beats, which you buy from a company that makes
them professionally. Then you bring the talent, have him rhyme over the beats,
and add backing vocals on key words ("Uuuuh").

Given that,
there’s no excuse for Time Is Money to sound like a setting on my
cellphone ringer. Whoever produced this could’ve spent a bit more to make
South Park Mexican’s one fun song, "Twice Last Night," sound
like it wasn’t done on a Casio tone bank. This album has lyrics like "You
didn’t know the new Benz I just bought you/Could be tracked by satellite
and that’s how I caught you." I’m in a band called The New Mexikans
and our demo sounds a lot better than this.

I didn’t
hear a lot of any of these folks’ influences in the music, however. Neil
at his noisiest, yes–but the notes hold up "Powderfinger" as
a model. There’s the final track, "Room Tone," which is four
minutes and 33 seconds (get it?) of just that. There’s a brief section
of Mingus’ "Meditations on a Pair of Wire Cutters" that sounds
like the band’s actually cutting wire. Maybe that’s the Mingus they’re
thinking of.

This isn’t
necessarily a bad thing. Nobody has to be Cecil Taylor to make a good record.
The setup is guitar, bass, drums and Farfisa, and there are certainly interesting
sounds here. Buzzing bass, space-static guitar, authoritative banging of drums.
Sometimes heavy reverb, reminiscent of surf guitar, other times meditative long
tones. Zither-like sounds, squeaks and squeals, car horns in traffic, echoes
in a laundry room. It’s fun to let the record wash over you–you have
to, since there’s essentially nothing to grab on to, no beats, almost no
melody. Basically, to my mind, a record of noise.

But "noise,"
like "free" or "jazz" or "trippy," is a word that
means different things to different people. This is not the dense sledgehammer
of Japanoise, nor is it the all-out assault of Borbetomagus. Closer to the mighty
Swiss duo Voicecrack, but not as discernibly structured. Highly differentiated
noise, since Ten Compositions is beautifully mixed so you can hear each
individual instrument, and much of the time be impressed by what King or Wain
or Quick or Boyd is doing. The problem is that the connections between what
the various band members are doing remain, to me, obscure. Okay, they’ve
detuned their instruments, but does that account for it?

Clearly I’m
a retrograde, not ready for the paradigm shift this record represents. My favorite
track was the one that departed from the others, "A Psychedelic Swirly
(modal variations on a I, IV, V progression for garage quartet)." It sounds
pretty much like the title implies it will, and I think it sounds pretty good.
But then I’m the type of person who more often than not stops my Velvet
Underground and Nico tape when it gets to "The Black Angel’s Death
Song." If you’re not, you might really dig Ten Compostions.

It’s a
perfect swan-song for the band. Even those who accuse Rage of being major-label
sellouts banking on empty leftist propaganda can’t deny that the band has
earned itself a place in the canon of political protest pop music. And in addition
to being able to pay homage to former band movements like the MC5’s White
Panther Party with their cover of "Kick Out the Jams," Minor Threat’s
straight-edge movement with "In My Eyes" and Afrika Bambaataa’s
Zulu Nation with "Renegades of Funk," with Renegades the band
at the same time sidesteps any possibility of being accused of one-dimensional
sloganeering: someone else has already made the fuck-you’s contained in
these songs part of America’s rock ’n’ toll tapestry.

Most of it
works beautifully. The band moves from the Stooges to Cypress Hill to Devo without
ever sounding the least bit out of place. Much like the way they morphed Bruce
Springsteen’s ethereal character in "Ghost of Tom Joad" (a new,
even more spirited version of which is included here) into a pissed off, tear-gas-eating
protester, Rage takes Dylan’s "Maggie’s Farm" and swaps
his folksy twang with seething, 21st-century-style pro-worker intensity. Especially
creative is their techno-esque reworking of the Stones’ "Street Fighting
Man." Without the help of electronics, they manage to add spacey sound
effects and paranoid sirens to fashion a funky, almost Big Beat song out of
the original. The only real misstep is their flat, one-dimensional version of
"In My Eyes." The sludgy power of Rage’s funkier rap-metal style
is mitigated when they crank up to mind-scrambling punk speed. And Zack screeching,
"What the fuck have you done," doesn’t quite indict with the
same ferocity as Ian MacKaye’s desperate bark did.

Should Rage
actually break up after Zack’s departure (rumors are flying that the three
remaining band members may continue on with B-Real or Chuck D. taking over vocal
duties, though the band won’t discuss any replacement possibilities at
this point), this record will serve as an apt final testament to what spectacular
musicians they are. While the Limp Bizkits of the world have mimicked their
rap-rock hybrid and soft-verse/explosive-chorus dynamic, even having some success
with creating record loop-sounding effects using live, nonsampled instruments,
no one in that band or any other rap-rock band can hold Rage guitarist Tom Morello’s
jock when it comes to inventive guitar-playing. The band says in the liner notes
that they used samples to help create "Pistol Grip Pump" and "Renegades
of Funk," though it’s nearly impossible to distinguish them from the
sonic wizardry the band pulls off using guitar, bass and drums. The bomb-squad-like
sirens and steady, repetitive groove sustained on "Renegades of Funk,"
the sudden change of tempo, mood and sound mid-song on Cypress Hill’s "How
I Could Just Kill a Man" designed to replicate the part of the original
song when the DJ switches to a new record, and the cello-sounding bass feedback
shading "Beautiful World" are all done with a quaint, good old-fashioned
guitar band setup.

I don’t
know if that live record is ever actually going to come out, but even if it
doesn’t, Renegades has already given us one last reason to miss
these guys now that it’s all over.

Howdy!
is, like the little-noticed Songs from Northern Britain before it (’97),
the sound of a rock band totally at peace. Dry harmonies float around clear
guitar chords as brilliant as sunshine–no more distortion for these grunge
survivors. Tempos are easy, everybody’s sitting down, it’s late at
night, you’re talking with your best friends about what worries you most
in life. A song you love wafts quietly through the door to the next room.

On the album,
which has been released in the UK only, Teenage Fanclub seems to be down to
three principal members: Gerard Love, Raymond McGinley and Norman Blake, who
have each developed wonderfully as songwriters over the last several years.
The words actually matter now. And each of them sings very graceful songs about
spiritual confusion, comforting themselves with beautiful music through painful
questions like, How will I know what to do with my life? And, Have I been living
my life wrong all this time? These are basic questions of anybody’s second
adolescence, which can happen anytime, and the clarity and honesty of the lyrics
are as inspiring as Who’s Next, the only point in Pete Townshend’s
career in which he wasn’t spewing bullshit about things like sex-determination
experiments or cosmic communion with the universe through pinball. (As any Who
nerd can tell you, this is only because the mega-concept Lifehouse was
ditched and its thematic scraps became the relatively straightforward Who’s
Next, which was recorded as a demo.)

Again and again
on Howdy!, the theme of directionless drifting turns up, of dormant potential
that needs to find expression: "Don’t know what I want to do/My laziness
will see me through," McGinley sings on "Happiness." "My
life feels so worthwhile/And I’ll go where you send me." Blake nails
it with "I need direction/To take me to you," which has spiritual,
musical and career connotations. As with Townshend, the most inspiring thing
about it is that the answer to all the longing, confusion and aimlessness is
the equated love of music and love of a woman. Townshend’s sharpest insights
were not the ambiguous agitprop of "Won’t Get Fooled Again" or
"Baba O’Riley," but the scaled-down introspection of "Behind
Blue Eyes," "Getting in Tune" and "Bargain," in which
the singer finds meaning and direction simply in the song he sings. If you’re
in tune with your instrument, you’re in tune with yourself and with the
one you love. And if you give up everything for love, it’s a bargain.

Teenage Fanclub
picks up the theme admirably. "Take me back to what I know/’Cause
I don’t know where to go/And I’m finding it’s so hard to stay
in tune," Blake sings in "Dumb Dumb Dumb." Elsewhere the idea
expands into music as therapy and spiritual metaphor. On "My Uptight Life,"
McGinley sings, "I’ll stay in bed till I stabilize/I try to write
this song to move my life along," and on Love’s "The Town and
the City," the group chorus urges patience and devotion to music and love:
"If you can’t see it right away, don’t just walk away/You’ve
got to listen, you’ve got to listen/Don’t just walk away, listen for
what you’re missing."

It should be
bad news for the band that their musical epiphany comes almost a decade after
most of the world has dismissed them as a trendy footnote of the shoegazer/grunge
phenomenon, especially since it’s unavailable to American audiences. But
the important thing is that they got there. Doesn’t really matter how.