Nin Plays To Sparse But Responsive Group
Nine Inch Nails, with A Perfect Circle Monday, June 12, at the Arena
The genius behind Trent Reznor’s music is deceptively simple.
It’s in the quiet places, the whispered lyrics, the hushed electronic noises that pulsate and simmer under his songs.
Reznor, the one-man tidal wave behind Nine Inch Nails, is a master at manipulating sound. And in front of a sparse Spokane Arena audience on Monday, he was most riveting at his most restrained.
Forty minutes after opening act A Perfect Circle finished, Nine Inch Nails sent out its guitar bursts from behind a black curtain. Reznor and his four musicians started the show with the seething “Terrible Lie.”
A mesmerizing electric undercurrent burbled under Reznor’s voice as he whispered, “Your kiss, your fist” from “Sin.” The eeriness became a blanket on Reznor’s instrumental tunes, with just the plinking of his keyboard and some guitars echoing through the arena.
“Piggy” from 1994’s “Downward Spiral” seemed even more fitting today as Reznor screamed, “Nothing can stop me now/I just don’t care.”
He has lashed out in the media against the current state of popular music, saying art has been lost while record companies count their fortunes.
“Musicians try to make art, but it’s not art anymore,” Reznor told the Las Vegas Weekly. “It’s a program on a piece of plastic that makes the sound of money.”
After spending years on 1999’s release, “The Fragile,” Reznor has seen it met with critical raves and dismal sales. Monday night’s tiny showing of 4,000 in the 12,000-seat Arena bore that out.
But Reznor made the small audience seem intimate, not lacking. He spent much of the show on one knee, staring into fans’ eyes. He crowd-surfed and sang from the mosh pit. He showered the group with bottled water. All this from a man who engaged in none of the usual rock-star stage patter, except to thank us for showing up.
For a band known for its heavily produced, electronic sound, Reznor and the musicians did an admirable job reproducing the songs on stage.
The choreographed lights and images on three tall video panels meshed perfectly with the industrial music, creating an allencompassing sensory experience.
Like each of Reznor’s carefully crafted songs, the show built up energy as it neared its end. Audience members hopped like popcorn kernels as the band gritted out favorites like “Closer,” “Head Like a Hole” and “Star(expletive), Inc.” off the new CD.
A Perfect Circle, fronted by Tool singer Maynard James Keenan, opened the show with some inventive hard-rock tunes. Moody guitars and Keenan’s chanted vocals worked well on songs like “Magdalena” and “Judith.”
Whether it was because of the small audience or just Keenan’s style, the singer spent the bulk of the set with his back to the crowd. That got a bit tiresome.
But A Perfect Circle’s trance-like, atmospheric tone fit well with what was to follow.
Too bad more folks didn’t make it to the Arena. Quiet like that doesn’t come around very often.