4 posts tagged “nine inch nails”

Top Artists this Week (see more)

23 Mar 2008 – 30 Mar 2008

4	1		Nine Inch Nails	151
1	2		The Black Crowes	100
1	3		Eric Clapton	86
	4		The Raconteurs	38
1	5		The Beatles	33
3	6		David Bowie	12
2	7		Eddie Vedder	11
	7		Dead Meadow	11
12	7		Iron Maiden	11
10	7		Radiohead	11

It's been too long since I had time to put my weekly chart up, or indeed, felt it was interesting enough to do so.  It's been a bit samey for a while.  I really enjoyed my music this week, so here's how it played out.

This week sees the atmospheric, creepy, totally instrumental 'Ghosts I-IV' from Nine Inch Nails grab the top spot, with a bit of 'Year Zero' thrown in the mix. 'Ghosts' is the new album that Reznor has released totally online without a record company.  Building on the Radiohead model, he lets you download 'Ghosts I' for free (about 9 tracks) or the whole 36 tracks for $5.  You get a PDF booklet plus plenty of wallpapers too.  That's a good deal.  I paid $5.  I don't regret it, and I have a warm fuzzy for not downloading it illegally.

Black Crowes.  Seeing them live this week.  Love the new 'Warpaint' album, and have been throwing on the old ones too in preparation.  They simply are one of my favourite bands of all time.  They're cool, their influences are cool, they do what they want and they in turn do things to me.  Never seen them live before, they haven't been to our shores since the early 90s I believe, so it's gonna be one spiritual evening (thanks Axeman).

Clapton.  Those 86 plays are entirely due to '461 Ocean Boulevard'.  Had it on vinyl for ages, but my vinyl lives out in the garage due to too many children vs not enough rooms in the house, so I don't play them much.  Got a digital copy of this one, and I simply can't get enough.  It surely must be second only to his Derek & The Dominos album in amazingness, although, that's a big call I know.  And I love the song title 'Willie & The Hand Jive' ;-)

New Raconteurs seems good, loving Bowie's 'Aladdin Sane' all over again, Beatles have got a running mainly with 'Rubber Soul' and the White Album. 

Good week, good tunes.

Okely dokely, time for the all important 'best albums of 2007' list. As per last year, this'll cover the albums that did things to me during 2007, not just albums that were released in 2007. I'll also post my favourite track from each to share the goodness.

Poptones	1. Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box These top few albums have all been listened to excessively, and it's hard to put one above the other, but for taking me to new places, the top spot has to go to PiL. I was obsessed with remaining outside my comfort zone while I let this one wash over and through me. I've yet to find anyone who will listen to it with me though... Read my original post
Those Thieving Birds (Part 1) / Strange Behaviour _ Those Thieving Birds (Part 2)	2. Silverchair - Young Modern So extremely impressed with this album at first, I even credited the 'Chair with heralding a new artistic movement (see my outrageous claims at the link below). This album was such a bold and cutting-edge artistic statement from a band that sell millions of albums and have their songs heavily featured on commercial radio. The thing is, the songs from Young Modern were still featured on commercial radio whilst being artistic masterpieces at the same time. That's no small feat and will be difficult to repeat. Read my original post
15 Step	3. Radiohead - In Rainbows So consistently amazing, and so challenging at the same time, will they ever disappoint? Last.fm tells me I've listened to tracks off 'In Rainbows' more than any other album, and even though I've only been scrobbling since June, I'm guessing it would still stand for the whole of 2007. And fuck, the discbox is really nice... PS, I tried about 8 times to upload any track off this album and get the artwork to appear, but no luck.  Vox has fully shat me trying to upload all these tracks, I tried 2-3 times for at least 4 of these files :-|
We Are Nowhere And It's Now	4. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning Obsessed, impressed and thoroughly absorbed with both 'I'm Wide Awake...' and 'Cassadaga', I overplayed both of them to the point that I didn't want to listen to either of them for months. I've put them back on a few times in the last couple of weeks, and though all that initial buzz is gone, I really love them again. Probably my lyrical highlight of 2007 with amazing lines like "If you swear that there's no truth and who cares / why do you say it like you're right?" and the gorgeous "You were born inside a raindrop / I watched you falling to your death". Read my original post
Holidays In The Sun	5. Sex pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks I surprised myself with how much I've embraced this album. I always assumed it would be shit for the sake of being shit, musically inept and just arrogant and annoying. The songs are really deserving of all the praise they're given, it turns out, quite apart from all the attention they got for their attitude and bass player. Thanks to Lester Bangs for changing my mind.
War Weary World	6. The Call - The Walls Came Down Never heard of 'em before a guy at work put me onto them. I thought I might be politely listening to and returning his CD, but it turned into a new favourite. And helped me conquer my fear of 80s music at the same time. Mainly, though, I'm just a sucker for those political question-the-establishment type lyrics. Read my original post
Chocolates and Cigarettes	7. Angus & Julia Stone - Chocolates & Cigarettes So serene, so laid back and paints such amazing mental pictures, this one has kinda crept along and remained a constant favourite for far longer than I thought it would. Sparse to the point of being desolate, mellow to the point of being boring but instead becoming just the opposite (huh?), this EP (and all their other stuff) really speaks to me. My wife digs it too, so it's kinda our thing.
Australian Gigolo	8. The Fauves - Nervous Flashlights Hard to pick which album gets the gong, because this obsession was about all their albums being listened to on shuffle for months. They are so clever, so insightful, so funny, so lazy and so Australian. Who else could write a song called 'Australian Gigolo' with lines like "The Joy of Sex is a valuable text / hey baby baby put that down I don't want you to know what's coming next." I just love Andy Cox's brain, but could never get all sycophantic and tell him, because as he sings on this album, "When you see me on the street / you know I am not approachable / if I'm someone you'd like to meet / I don't want to talk to you ... / I am not approachable / you know I think I'm better than you" Read my original post and listen to the other tracks I've uploaded
The Warning	9. NIN - Year Zero Impressed with the cool political concept behind the album from reading reviews and interviews, I took it upon myself to get into the album. Never a fan of the industrial sound before, it took a bit of doing, but now I'm into a bunch of their albums and their (his) stuff is right up my alley. I hear they're gonna make a movie out of this album, kinda like 'The Wall'. I have a feeng it will be a masterpiece. Read my original post
Heaven And Hell	10. Black Sabbath - Heaven & Hell I'd never given the Dio years the time of day before because I'm such a massive fan of the Ozzy stuff that I thought it was near blasphemous. All the hype around the 'Heaven & Hell' reunion (aka a Dio-fronted Black Sabbath unable to use that name thanks to Sharon Osbourne) made me want to give it a go though. What I found were a bunch of albums that stood on their own and could wear the Sabbath moniker with pride, especially their first one that gave them their new officially sanctioned band name, 'Heaven & Hell'.
Fourth Floor	11. The Waifs - Up All Night My obsession with the Waifs was actually spawned from an mp3eme this year. I was struggling for a song that had great harmonica playing in it, remembered one of the couple of Waifs songs that I knew and loved, and then subsequently went mental over their 'Up All Night' album. Their new one, 'Sun, Dirt, Water', was released this year, and it's fantastic too. Read my original post
Starry Picking Night 2 comments	12. Clare Bowditch - What Was Left I was completely taken by the beauty of this album back at the start of the year, with songs that take you through a range of emotions, and leave you affected in some way after it's all over, sometimes feeling a bit uneasy or slightly down. It's good to get an emotional response to music, it's what it's all about. Read my original post
Split Needles	13. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away This album was one of the first that I loved in 2007, and was the subject of one of my earliest posts. It's become my favourite Shins album, and it also posesses some of the best cover art of the year. A real progression for them and challenging/rewarding for the listener too. Read my original post
You Were But A Ghost In My Arms	14. Agalloch - The Mantle A friend who still keeps a finger on my waning \metal/ pulse recommended this album to me because he thought I'd dig the atmospheric, epic nature of the songs. I've fully embraced it, and love to put it on and get taken away to another world, a world painted by changing guitar melodies and tempos and great use of the Zeppelin patented 'light and shade'.

15. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - BRMC
16. I Heart Hiroshima - Tuff Teef (Read my original post)
17. Liam Finn - I'll Be Lightning (Read my original post)
18. Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
19. Ramones - Rocket To Russia
20. The Cult - Electric (Read my original post)
21. Richie & The Creeps (Read my original post)
22. Kings Of Leon - Because The Times (Read my original post)
23. Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Blank Generation
24. Sarah Blasko - What the Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have (Read my original post)
25. Beasts Of Bourbon - Little Animals

This got a fair bit of coverage in the Australian media over the past day:

Trent Reznor has impressed me before.  Back in about 2000 after 'The Fragile' had come out and not sold anywhere near as well as 'The Downward Spiral', Revolver Magazine did a fantastic co-interview with Reznor and Roger Waters.  I was really impressed with his honest sentiment, his thoughts on the industry, his views on what music should be, and the fact that he had so many similarities with Roger Waters (one of my heroes). 

However, I never actually bothered to get into his music (although I downloaded 'The Fragile' but never really gave it much attention), as the industrial sound was never really my thing. 

But hearing the background story of the new album ('Year Zero') over the past couple of months has changed all that.  Firstly, I was impressed with the cool underground marketing campaign Reznor undertook to get the word out there.  He left USB sticks with new songs in toilets at concerts for fans to find, and set up websites with bizarre content relating to the theme of the album (but not mentioning NIN anywhere). Here's a clip from the Year Zero Wikipedia article:

Then there's the concept of the album that I just love.  It's set 15 years in the future when a right-wing neo-conservative government in America has taken current trends to the extreme.  The water is spiked with a drug that people are told protects them from biological terror attacks, but in fact just dulls their minds to what's going on.  They also hallucinate and see a giant hand coming out of the sky -- some god-like figure.  In the words of Reznor:

What's it about? Well, it takes place about fifteen years in the future. Things are not good. If you imagine a world where greed and power continue to run their likely course, you'll have an idea of the backdrop. The world has reached the breaking point - politically, spiritually and ecologically. Written from various perspectives of people in this world, "year zero" examines various viewpoints set against an impending moment of truth.

The album cover is one of my favourites for a while - fantastic image, colour, composition, general eerie vibe.  Suits the album perfectly.

So basically my interest in Trent Reznor's musical and ideological views has made me a new Nine Inch Nails fan.  And the press over the past day has only strengthened my feelings. 

Here's a track from 'Year Zero'.  The album works best when listened to as a whole (as with most concept albums) but they do stand on their own musically.

Meet Your Master

Nine Inch Nails