You've Got A Date With A Man in A Cape!
Reacting to Reznor & Ross's return to the spotlight, plus Fives on Friday
Happy Friday! You may notice that this week’s newsletter looks a little different. No more utilitarian headline, no more italicized boiler plate introduction, and no more GET REC’D. Allow me to explain.
As I’ve mentioned in a few recent letters I’m clearing up space on my robust “Reading List” on Google Chrome by starting at the bottom. My theory being that a lot of the old links that I stowed away probably aren’t relevant anymore and can be tossed back into the ether. That theory has born some fruit, but I’ve also dredged a few pieces that remain disconcertingly relevant to the present moment. Take for example this post by the Severance Time called “Towards A Theory of The Creator” from 2022. The goal of the piece is to differentiate the modern Content Creator from older forms of writers and artists that haven’t yet caught up with the norms of the internet. It’s a well written piece and I think its observations hold true two years later. However, when I came across this particular point my hackles went straight through the roof:
4. Creators are generally better at persuasively aggregating other peoples’ work, herding pieces of information like cattle, than producing insights of their own. One of the skills of the creator is the ability to strategically curate influences. This is a fitting engagement with the form of the post, which comes to be because of the ever-increasing technical automation of culture, an ongoing universal tendency whereby machines do more and people do less. The transition from the song to the snippet echoes the previous transition from the live performance to the studio recording.
Oof. Guilty as charged. As much as I’d like to think of myself as a Musician, a Writer, and an Artist damnit!, I still engage in the Content Creation on a weekly basis. So, in an effort to give you something a little more substantive every week I’ve decided to replace my survey of interesting links with a mini-essay. I might not get one out every week, but the effort itself is worthwhile to me. I think the previous format was a little too safe. It kept me from investing too much of myself into the newsletter, instead deferring to the words of others to speak for me. No longer! I’m going to start putting more of my skin in the game and I believe that I, you, and this newsletter1 will be better off for it.
It helps that this week the universe threw me one hell of a prompt. No, I’m not referring to the eclipse. I’m talking about Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the cover of GQ.
I had two near instant reactions to seeing this cover. The second reaction was to muse to myself that since Pitchfork is now part of GQ this cover and its attendant interview are probably the most positive coverage Pitchfork has ever given Reznor. This “not-even-worthy-of-a-tweet” snark was utterly drowned out by my first and far stronger reaction. My first reaction to seeing Reznor & Ross, the film score duo and core members of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, on the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly was to squeal with glee.
My third reaction, and the one I’d like to explore for the rest of this mini-essay, was to wonder why at this point in my life I still get teenager-giddy about two guys I’ve never met appearing on the cover of a magazine that I don’t subscribe to2. The endorphin rush I got at the chance to pour over a lengthy interview with Reznor & Ross reminded me of the time I crashed an Oscars party in 2011 just so I could hoot and holler in a Nine Inch Nails shirt on the off chance that The Social Network won best score. As it so happened The Social Network did win best score and I did hoot (and holler!) enough to annoy everyone else at the party. I had a sports reaction to an arts event. In the parlance of our time, I was exhibiting Stan behavior.3 I didn’t do anything quite so obnoxious this time around but the underlying urge to treat Reznor & Ross’s victory as my own remained. Why do I identify so strongly with these two that I felt like their GQ cover was a personal victory?
Luckily I had a whole interview to dig into for answers. The occasion for this feature, beyond making dorks like me generate ad revenue for Condé Nast, is to announce Reznor & Ross’s new company With Teeth. Named after the first NIN album of the 21st century (and first since Reznor got sober), With Teeth is to my understanding a multi-media production company that the duo plan to use to launch a record label, music festival, fashion line, and more. Its the kind of nebulous business model that normally would strike me as a destined-to-fail coke dream vanity project, except Reznor & Ross have enough clout in music, movie, and tech circles to actually pull at least some of these ideas off. The piece lauds the duo’s achievements and presents their friendship and collaboration in a sympathetic light. Still, it can’t help but marvel with an arched eyebrow at how the guy that said that he wanted to fuck you like an animal in the 90s now has kids and a basketball hoop in his driveway. For all his rock star eccentricities (cape, rings, whatever occult ritual he’s doing to keep his hair that black at his age) Reznor comes off like a mostly normal guy. He works too much. He has a hard time celebrating his wins. He gets wistful listening to old records that remind him of his teen years. I’m certain you know at least a couple people like that.
This impression explains two intertwined reasons for my on-going interest in Reznor. First, he’s allowed himself to grow up as a person and an artist. I got into NIN during the long break between The Fragile and With Teeth, by which point Reznor had already moved on from being a malcontent in torn fishnets to looking like the owner of the HealthGoth Gym. I’ve only ever known Reznor as a guy determined to not make the same mistakes as his younger self. What’s impressive is that as he’s aged he’s remained musically curious. Long before he settled into being a Hollywood approved synth-wizard in a Dolce & Gabbana cape, I’d seen him steadily adapt to the times. He tried out ARG storytelling with Year Zero in 2007. When he made a full album with Saul Williams the two tried out the “pay what you want” model years before Bandcamp caught on. He was one of the first famous musicians to mix it up on the early days of Twitter, and one of the first to bounce from the platform long before Elon Musk was a household name. I could start listing musical examples too but that would be too much fun and would make this letter too long.
I get the sense that this curiosity and adaptability stems from the second reason for my Reznormania. Deep down, underneath the snarling distortion and self-lacerating lyrics Reznor always been a pop girlie. Nine Inch Nails is music for the dance floor as often as the mosh pit. The sweetness of Reznor’s melodies across all of his incarnations has been the crucial counterbalance to the sour sounds that he’s known for. It’s INXS that he gets sentimental over, not Throbbing Gristle. With Nine Inch Nails having a bad time doesn’t mean you’re not also having a good time.
This is why despite his prickly tendencies it’s always made perfect sense to me that Reznor’s worked with soft-edged brands like Apple and Pixar. Both of those companies have threaded the needle of making challenging new technology accessible to lay-people. No surprise Reznor would want to soak up some of that expertise. I think those collaborations also suggest that Reznor still believes that bad time music that challenges its audience has a place in popular culture. That’s a notion that I find admirable. Having firmly established why Reznor embodies the unspoken Lamniformes operating principles of “always swimming, always eating”, I’ll wrap this one up here. I’d like to get into Reznor’s time at Apple and his comments on streaming, but I’ll save that for a piece where I can focus on just the streaming conversation. For the rest of this letter, let’s focus on the music.
# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #
On April 23rd I’m playing drums with Bellows as we open for Steve Mason of The Beta Band at Le Poisson Rouge. Frank Meadows has returned from his first leg of touring for the year, so he’ll be joining us on keys for this show. This is the biggest venue Bellows has played in a minute. I’m stoked!
On April 29th I’m playing drums with Laughing Stock at Berlin Avenue A. We’re sharing the bill with Sugar Milk, Jesse & The Spirits, and Cursed Images. We’ve been staying busy lately with writing and recording. I think we’ll have some new heat ready for this gig.
“In Case you Missed It” is the name of a song from the newest Lamniformes album The Lonely Atom, which ICYMI is available now on my Bandcamp page as well as your streaming platform of choice. If you read that whole spiel about Nine Inch Nails there’s a decent chance you might like some of these songs. If you like these songs a lot, cassettes are available either from Furious Hooves (for USA) or People | Places Records (for Canada).
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a Spotify playlist with all of this year’s tracks here.
“Vestygian” by Infant Island (Obsidian Wreath, 2024)
Infant Island sound like they were conceived backstage at the Deafheaven/Envy tour back in 2015 and spent the next nine years growing strong on a steady diet of gravel and concrete. Impossible to tell where the black metal ends and the screamo begins. That mega-crunchy drum sound makes the long-delayed arrival of blast beats halfway through this track sound like an earthquake.
“Sky Ghosts” by The Depreciation Guild (In Her Gentle Jaws, 2007)
Shouts out to subscriber Basharat for recommending this record to me back in January. Frankly I’m surprised I didn’t hear about this in high school considering how close I was to the orbit of Starscream (aka Infinity Shred), Anamanaguchi, Maxo and other artists experimenting with mixing chiptune with rock music. What a pleasant surprise when I looked at the album’s credits and discovered that this is Kurt Feldman’s band. Feldman wrote the music for the Insert Credit podcast and used to play drums for Pains of Being Pure At Heart. I love Insert Credit!
“Let Us Go Into The House of the Lord” by Pharoah Sanders (Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Unmyun), 1970)
Early in the year I got into the habit of starting every day with a Pharoah Sanders album. Highly recommended. There was a recent post on Aquarium Drunkard about modern jazz entering an ambient phase, drifting closer to electronic music, new age, etc. I’d imagine that the popularity of the Pharoah Sanders & Floating Points album back in 2021 has something to do with that. Real talk though, any Pharoah Sanders album is an ambient album if you vibe with it the right way.
“I Keep Changing” by h. pruz (No Glory, 2024)
Congratulations to Hannah from GUNK and Sisters on the new solo album! No Glory dropped on the same day as The Lonely Atom. I spent that whole day in a state of nervous nausea, so it took me a while to catch up on what everyone else released. This rocker is definitely my fav of the new tunes. I love that insistent two-note pattern in the right channel and the creepy high pitched piano that comes in for the coda on the left channel.
“Tuas Pegadas” by Sonhos Tomam Conta (Corpos de Água, 2024)
I’d never heard of this project until this latest release got featured in the weekly RateYourMusic newsletter. This is a crude comparison, but this is like if Have A Nice Life grew up in Brazil instead of Connecticut (tenha uma ótima vida?). By which I mean that it’s a homemade shoegaze record a la Deathconsciousness except all of the cold, grim gothic despair is replaced by gentle acoustic guitar and soft vocals that wouldn’t be out of place on an MPB record. Actually now that I mention it, a less crude comparison would be MBV going MPB. Let’s go with that. I probably would have been way more into this a decade ago, but it’s a striking combination of genres.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews of albums from my high school and college CD collection. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Anthems to the Welkins at Dusk by Emperor (1997) - Black Metal
Recorded after two members of Emperor got locked up (one for church burning, one for murder, neither of which are condoned by this newsletter). This and their debut are generally considered to be the essential Emperor records. Add those factors up and this record was a must have for me as I went through my teenage black metal fascination. You know, what really keeps me from enjoying this nowadays isn’t the lo-fi production or sketchy vibes. It’s the sloppy and overzealous drumming. Nothing ever feels locked in. There are so many cool riffs and melodies here, love the synths too, but the drumming just batters the life out of this thing. A shame.
Monotheist by Celtic Frost (2006) - Metal
Maybe the best “old guy’s still got it” album in metal history. Doesn’t retread their 80s sound but updates the spirit of it with 21st century technology. I remember the clerk at the record store giving me a serious nod of approval when I picked this up [Editor’s Note: Shout out to Jason at Music Matters, now under new ownership as Psychic Records]. Good god these guitars sound awesome. Could probably cut one or two weaker tracks but the good stuff is EASILY my favorite Celtic Frost material.
Dimensional Bleedthrough by Krallice (2009) - Black Metal
This was the soundtrack to a particularly cold Chicago winter in when I was in college. Krallice’s debut had been a big deal in the Brooklyn scene, metal and non-metal alike, at least from what I could tell at a distance. That they were able to follow it up so quickly with an album just as good if not better is mind boggling. The best thing about Krallice is, unlike a lot of black metal, you can clearly hear everything they’re doing. This allows them to pull off some high flying three way counterpoint with devolving into a total mess. Following along as the guitars and bass spiral out in different directions and then unexpectedly reconvene makes my brain tingle. Terrific stuff.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco (2002) - Indie Rock
I bought this in freshmen year of high school after seeing it compared to Ok Computer. To my teenage ears it did not deserve the reputation, but I tried my best to warm up to it. Taken on its own merits, I get why people like this. The production is a work of art, lots of ear candy everything is balanced just-so. But the songs underneath just don’t grab me, a few neat turns of phrase but overall I am left cold. I am professionally obligated to say that “Heavy Metal Drummer” is a good tune, however.
Load by Metallica (1996) - Hard Rock
The first of two records where Metallica abandoned metal entirely and started making hard rock for grill masters. You know, car commercial stuff. They also cut their hair which pissed off the highly image conscious metal scene. Ok look, I don’t love this era of the band, but I’ll at least try to criticize it on its own merits. It’s too long, the songs individually and the track list as a whole could use some serious edits. I think these records are really where Lars Ulrich holds Metallica back. The grooves on this album sound like dancing in led shoes. Imagine, I don’t know, Vinnie Appice or Cindy Blackman playing drums on this instead. Still, nowhere near as bad as stuck up forum creeps will lead you to believe.
My motives aren’t for this change aren’t purely motivated by an aesthetic preference for long, thoughtful writing, I’ll admit. I’ve noticed a not insignificant drop in the open rates of my last few letters. I suspect the mechanical titles and format of these Friday letters has made it easier for spam filters and readers to determine that these emails aren’t worth opening. That means it is time to try something else.
FWIW I do subscribe to GQ’s newsletter on the off chance that they have features like this about people I’m interested in and to keep my finger partially on the pulse of mainstream men’s fashion. This has led me to read more headlines about watches than I thought I would in my lifetime.
Quick aside, I try as hard as possible to not use the word Stan because fan, which is short for FANATIC, conveys the exact same meaning.