Amph What Album Did You Just Hear?

TFA soundtrack.

I am really trying to love it but I can't. I think it is alright but I don't need it on my ipod or anything.

 

Sonic Highways - Foo Fighters (2014)

 

That's actually how I got to loving it, was just listening at work. It really has a lot to offer but you need to give it time to get the full effect.

 

Perhaps not, but when Cash is singing it, it feels like he's telling a story, and the video even more so. There's emotion poured out of ever note, in every word.

 

Sure; but are you implying Reznor isn't?

 

Cash's version to Reznor's is Cobain's take on The Man Who Sold the World to Bowie's original. That is, amazing cover which reinvented the song which is definitely worthy of acknowledgement, but not without some loss of the message in the translation. Bowie's is a lament while Cobain's almost, and not being rude, plays like a suicide note.

 

Not implying that at all, but as somebody who grew up in a household with Johnny Cash music (among other varieties of music), it seemed that in his version of 'Hurt' it was as if he was sensing he was nearing, or very near, the end of his life, and wanted to acknowledge that. I think both versions are very good, but Cash's version just evokes stronger and deeper feelings for me, personally, than Nine Inch Nails does, and that's not a knock on that. If Reznor and Nine Inch Nails' version is more enjoyable to you, then that's fine.

 

I'm not saying I don't like Cash's version, it just seemed like you were saying it only had emotion when Cash did it. Yes, he adds a pathos to it by way of singing about it as if it was his life, no doubt. The reason I prefer NIN is that Downward Spiral is just such a brilliant album and it's the protagonist just at the end of his spiral, his journey, saying goodbye and attempting suicide.

If you focus on the way Cash sings it, it's beautiful, but the emotion and the actual words dont' gel. At some points they do, such as "What have I become? My sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end." But the meaning is changed to be people get old and die, not the self fulfilling prophecy of the downward spiral itself. Here's what I mean. Bolded lines are the ones where Cash adds his own life experience. Note, Cash also changed the line from I wear this crown of **** to crown of thorns, because Jesus or something.

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of ****
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feeling disappears
You are someone else
I am still right here

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
Reznor explains the whole concept of the album as follows:

"Thematically I wanted to explore the idea of somebody who systematically throws or uncovers every layer of what he's surrounded with, comfort-wise, from personal relationships to religion to questioning the whole situation. Someone dissecting his own ability to relate to other people or to have anything to believe in..."

I guess because I lived with this album for years - I had NIN Broken on tape, but it wasn't Downward Spiral. Nothing was - I can't segregate its place and its meaning from how Cash interpreted it. That's not to say his isn't a moving version, but I just think it dilutes the meaning.

 

also fwiw I'm not suggesting you can't improve on a NIN track or that Cash's version is terrible. It's not; for me the issue is the ongoing familiarity with the NIN version and the whole album.

Case in point though:

Stella Soleil added vocals to a Warm Place (Illum Tangendo) and by stressing the wrong syllables made it a unique and memorable track (The sun is a star in someone else's sky)

 

I'm a huge fan of The Downward Spiral, but I prefer Cash's version of Hurt. I don't know; it honestly feels like kind of an underwhelming ending to The Downward Spiral. I mean, it's really good and maybe this is part of the point, but it just kind of makes the album coast to a stop rather than ending with a real strong punch. I think the bulk of Downward Spiral is better than Hurt, frankly, though I'm not calling it a bad song (obviously not) or a bad recording (because it isn't). But I definitely know what you're talking about as far as nothing ever sounding quite as right as the version you've lived with. I'm not a huge NIN guy, which is just to say that I haven't really prioritized getting into the discography, not that I haven't loved everything I've heard because I have. But this is one of the risks of taking one song off of a concept album, right? Cash is covering the song, not the album; it doesn't have the context of the rest of the album and that's fine. It's not diluting the meaning; it's divorcing itself completely from the album/concept meaning and finding its own meaning. That's the best way to do a cover, I think; much better than just aping the original. But this is an interesting discussion, but ultimately, of course, it's all moot. We don't have to choose. It's a great song and we get to have two great recordings of it. That's a win for everyone.

 

Agree with a lot of what you've said, and this is why I love geeking out on music. It's why I worked in a record store during my university days, and why the Hornby novel and later film Hi Fidelity resonated so well.

As to how it ends Spiral, you have to consider the preceding track to Hurt to really get that context. That track is The Downward Spiral, and this is what Reznor sings:

He couldn't believe how easy it was
He put the gun into his face
Bang!
(So much blood for such a tiny little hole)

Problems do have solutions, you know
A lifetime of ****ing things up fixed in one determined flash
Everything's blue
In this world
The deepest shade of mushroom blue
All fuzzy
Spilling out of my head


The song ends with a crash, white noise, and then Hurt starts. The music is languid, and the lyrics are contemplative. The protagonist is dying, fading out. There's no energy left - it was spent destroying his life before this moment. He's basically having his last thoughts spill out, defined by the self-loathing that got him there. The key to this interpretation is how he says "If I could start again / a million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way" - the guitars crash over the end of the last word, implying unfinished thoughts or sentiments.

I was going to ask though Rogue; have you heard NIN's Warm Place vs Bowie's Crystal Japan?

 

I love Aphex Twin's two "Selected Ambient Works" recordings. I own Vol 2 on CD; Vol 1 I had but have lost or loaned to someone who never returned it. Still, if you like what you hear, find "Rhubarb". It's beautiful.

 

I have not! But that's a really good analysis of the NIN version. I need to listen to The Downward Spiral again; it's been years since I've really listened to it, though I definitely remember a lot of it quite vividly. Probably NIN's masterpiece, right?

 

For me it is, yes, because it was just so unlike the synth-based Pretty Hate Machine or the metallic/industrial Broken EP. But Reznor's done some impressive stuff that's worth exploring. For example in 2008 he released Ghosts I - IV, a series of ambient musical vignettes that serve to bridge NIN's catalogue to the Reznor/Atticus Ross efforts in scoring Social Network etc - for which he of course won the Oscar.



1 Ghosts 2 - a personal favourite.

Year Zero and The Fragile are great records too - it's worth exploring the records and what was going on with Trent at any particular time in my view. He really messed himself up with Spiral, and keeps returning reinvented slightly.

EDIT: I should note that I checked around and I'm not alone in calling Downward Spiral the best NIN album.

 

MGK General Admission

 

The most underrated U2 album in my opinion.