Let me suggest some alternate names for the Nine Inch Nails tour, currently saddled with the moniker Lights in the Sky Over North America: Strobetastic? Seizuriffic? Holy Cats Has Trent Reznor Released a Lot of Material Over the Past Year?
Okay, so none of those will probably make it onto a NIN T-shirt (if they do: Trent, I want a cut!), but they've each got at least a modicum of truth at the center. There were strobes; there very well might have been seizures; and yeah, the setlist emphasized how very, very prolific Reznor's been in the past year, freed from major label constraints (his loathing of the label system is well-known). This year alone, he's released "Ghosts I-IV," a double instrumental album, and the unexpected "The Slip," available as a free download or as a physical product in CD and vinyl form. This doesn't count last year's "Year Zero," which also saw a remix release.
The 2007-2008 albums informed the majority of his set Sunday night at the Rose Garden, where NIN opened with a muscular aggressiveness -- I can only imagine what drummer Josh Freese's arms feel like right now -- that showed Reznor's sobriety and status as a 40-something haven't chilled him out. (Though NIN is touring as a band, in the studio it's basically Reznor's project.) That established, they took a step back into some instrumentals and some quieter songs; less in-your-face rage so much as quietly tortured angst. Talk about emotional range!
But it's that kind of alienation and agony that's given the band such a fanatical following. In the 90s, Reznor turned personal agony into an outward spectacle, seemingly turning himself inside out in song. For his fans, there was some voyeurism, but there was also a hope that their insides weren't the only ones that were maybe a little broken. If Reznor's channeled that angst into presumably healthier outlets than the alcoholism and heroin addiction that once enveloped him, well, there's plenty of darkness left in the world (read any good Russian literature lately?). And he can still dredge it up and hurl it out into the world, curl it into a fist that shakes when it tries to hold steady.
The Portland stop was near the tour's end, and some of the weariness showed at the edges. Reznor's voice occasionally sounded strained. "Hurt," the next-to-last song of a five-song encore, sounded wrenching and beautiful, but "In This Twilight," immediately after, didn't have quite the same ease.
A note on lighting design: If there is a Grammy for this (and there is for everything else), whoever, put this lighting package together should absolutely win. I was initially underwhelmed. Strobes, blinky lights, sheets of colored whatever... Eh. But later on a screen descended and the design from there got pretty fantastic. The band alternately played in front of and behind the screen, and the use of static and light and color to obscure and reveal the band by turns, to show and to distort images of Reznor, to create and then melt landscapes... Well played, anonymous light crew. Well played.
Opener the Bug had played in Portland quite recently -- Sept. 30, headlining at Rotture, where the British dubstep producer brought along vocalist Warrior Queen, who was also in Portland tonight. Their set at Rotture killed; their set at the Rose Garden... should have killed. Alas, the crowd didn't quite seem to get them. Reznor's got a history of picking interesting opening acts (TV on the Radio, for example), but I'm not sure his audience is always necessarily on the same page. From where I sat, it looked like few people on the floor were dancing to the Bug's deep, dubby, dark music. Yikes! Not the right venue? Not the right crowd? Whatever. His new album, "London Zoo," is still amazing.
-- Luciana Lopez; lucianalopez@news.oregonian.com
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