Song Exploder - Nine Inch Nails - The Lovers

Episode Date: December 6, 2017

Trent Reznor started Nine Inch Nails in 1988. He released eight albums, sold over 20 million records, won two Grammys and was nominated for 11 more. Then, in 2010, Trent Reznor and his longtime collaborator Atticus Ross scored the film The Social Network, and they won an Oscar for it. A few years later, in 2016, Atticus Ross joined Nine Inch Nails as an official member. The duo’s most recent release is Add Violence, an EP, and in this episode, Trent and Atticus break down a song from it called “The Lovers.” songexploder.net/nine-inch-nails

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hurway. Trent Rezner started Nine Inch Nails in 1988. He released eight albums, sold over 20 million records, won two Grammys and was nominated for 11 more. In 2010, Trent Rezner and his longtime collaborator, Atticus Ross, scored the film The Social Network, and they won an Oscar for it. A few years later, in 2016, Atticus Ross joined Nineage Nails as an official member.

Now, as a duo, their most recent release is Ad Violence, an EP. And in this episode, Trent Naticus break down a song from it called The Lovers. I'm Trent Rezner. A year and a half ago, we've decided that the next major Nine Inch Nails of Work, rather than one kind of lengthy album, we'd split it up into EPs, and the plan is three, the first of which was not the actual events, very kind of aggressive return to guitars and confrontational type of music. And it was fun, it was exciting.

The current EP add violence, which the Lovers is from. When we started that out, it was less defined what it was going to be. It wasn't going to be another punch in the face. We wanted it to kind of feel like it started at that point, but went in a more potentially experimental direction. The way the Lovers began is I had written a kind of poem, I guess, and what it was about was the inevitability. of addiction or seduction

where one could try to resist, but you're going to wind up succumbing. And the setting was a visual one of New Orleans, a place I lived for many years, hot summer, nighttime, gas lamp burning, 100 degrees at 2 in the morning, humid, earthy. And I know that feeling well. I also know the feeling of being a,

full-fledged addict living in New Orleans in the summer at night, you know, not wanting to do something, but unable to stop myself. So that was where the lyrics took place and that would end up being the verses. I slipped out of time again, leaving all of you behind, and I'm from the place where I already am, and I've always been if I just really looked and allowed myself to see. I had these words for the verse, which was the denial phase, and the chorus was going to be the release and succumbing to whatever it is. I had a blueprint of the shape of the song, but I had no idea what it was going to sound like. I'm Atticus Ross.

Where we originally started was bringing to life a score for this thing that's come out of Trent's head. We know each other really well, and we're close friends, which is the foundation of our musical relationship. With that kind of familiarity, I can say, hey, here's these words that might be terrible, and I think it's about this. I can share that with him

with the medium amount of skin on fire feeling that I couldn't do with somebody I didn't know that well. I had the lyric sheet, which I would look at and study, and then we start to piece together what might be the best toolkit

to bring this to life. We actually talk about it. Hey, here's a little bit. Here's the setting of this song, sometimes a literal place or a visual or a vibe that we could both have our own versions of what that is visually in our heads. And it helps us choose arrangement, choose what type of instruments, how can we achieve that? How can we score that scene? How can we create the vocabulary of sound that would be right for that? Because what we've learned a long time ago was too many options lead to paralysis.

So it needed that setting, and I know what that feeling is, of being sucked into something in that environment. Then we instinctually kind of reach for things that we may not have reached at if we hadn't talked about it. In this case, he was saying, let's try the luminous garden and set that up. There's a manufacturing in folk tech that makes these weird little boxes that do a variety of things, but one that we liked a lot is the illuminist garden. It's like a cigar box with a metal plate on the top with some thick guitar strings kind of sticking out. Just to clarify, if you couldn't tell from their description,

the Luminous Garden is not a traditional musical instrument. I saw it in the Nine-Echnale studio before we started recording the interview, and I didn't really know what I was looking at. There aren't any notes to be played on it. It's more of a conceptual sound manipulator. I'll put a link on the Song Exploder website so you can see what it looks like. Essentially what happens is by tapping on that metal, top, like it's picked up by a mic which feeds through a delay and a reverb circuit, and that

can create a loop. We kind of thought, let's make it sound like fingers tapping on a table, nervous, something that adds an anxiety, like I'm in the throes of addiction. So we were doing things like dropping keys and pencils and hitting it with a hammer, banging the table real hard that it's sitting on. Just seeing what comes out and trying to make. it kind of accidental, capturing these little bits. We'll be recording the output of that in Pro Tools.

What Atticus will do then is cut together two or three loops. I'll usually leave for the 20 minutes it takes for that process to happen, go outside and get some fresh air and come in. And suddenly there's a weird tone happening. That drone, that's a snippet of the Illuminous Garden, where the reverb got engaged. And that informed the key of the song. He's then cut together

this cool polyrhythmic drum lip. The rhythm generated by hitting that thing. And arranged in a way that is much better than it was when I walked out of the room. The different mindsets or different hats one has to wear in this environment.

One of them is the kind of subconscious follow the muse, eyes closed. Another one that's radically different is the editorial. What sucked? What was good? What's the piece that fits with that? I love having him do that part because I can stay in the other mode of not trying to analyze exactly what's going on and still stay subconscious in a way. It keeps this momentum going that neither of us are bogged down too much.

And our skill sets complement each other. So it's him arranging stuff. I just kind of bang into things. The next thing that happened was tuning a kick drum to now sit with that, just to anchor it. That was what got us saying, all right, that's the foundation of one part of the track. We knew that was kind of the verse. So let's see where that leads us.

So the rhythmic loop led to the tuned kick drum, which felt like a bass. How about an imprecise, unsure guitar that feels a little exploratory and a little apprehensive? I just kind of did this circular, ascending, descending line of guitars around it that was meant to be kind of serpentine, like, I'm just going to play and purposely kind of not have it be a four-bar or eight-bar thing. That was played single line a number of times. I was trying to remember what I'd done the time before, but not intensely. Did I stay on that note for three hits or two?

And me not explaining to him, Atticus, my intention, just to see what happened. And when I came back in the room after he'd arranged it, he just left him sit on top of each other. So they got off because I wasn't playing it the same way. But it sounded cool, the right kind of dreamlike hallucinatory feel, like someone slowly spun me around

and I'm not sure where I am. It didn't sound overly dissonant, I wanted the whole song to feel seductive, but uneasily seductive. I'd love to take credit for that, but that was just his arrangement to pull that off. There is a tactile kind of the humanity has been left in, and I feel that it is an exploration of humanity in one way or another. I think some people think we're real meticulous in a studio. We're not really.

When inspiration hits and you get that thing that feels exciting, let's as fast as we can see where it leads. until it goes away. There's plenty of time to bring out the It sucks hammer. Let's not overthink things at the beginning of a creative flow. Did you have a different process

back before you two started working together? Was it different when you were on your own? We've been doing this so long now that this feels like it always has been this way, but with a pretty hate machine, there was a lack of understanding how to make a record,

and that came with its own set of inexperience and intimidation. And broken was kind of the same way. Downward Spiral, there was a lot of fear involved because, well, I made a record that people liked. And will I ever be able to do that again? Being in the studio and creating was torturous, high pressure, self-imposed.

I'm going to work my hardest, but I don't enjoy the act of doing it. A few years later, the fragile, now I'm in the throes of addiction and my brain is not working that is best and I'm scared so that record took forever that was two and a half years working on that album

because of fear I wasn't embracing the process of creating I was trying to get through it the pivot for me took place when getting clean which was when I met Atticus then I was scared if I could do it sober

you know because I didn't know and you told yourself enough enough. You'd validated terrible behavior by, well, I need it. I'm an artist, you know, and that's what these guys did in the kind of bullshit. But, you know, to my amazement, that's when I feel like I kind of came into my own and I could embrace the process of doing because I was present. And we ended up having fun in the studio. So back to this track of lovers. The trick we use quite a bit is having monophonic sequencers that don't loop in time. So if it's in 4-4, rather than having a 16-step sequencer,

have it 10 steps. It's the same pattern, but it's starting at a different spot, which makes it sound completely different as it sits over that drum loop. It adds complexity that still feels musical. And also, I like the way it rhythmically anchored that drum loop into something that just felt like a good foundation that it could sustain for a while, let the vocal breathe.

With these lyrics, it was me allowing myself permission to examine period of my life that I'd consciously chose not to think about very much and immersed myself in it kind of, what if the path I'm currently on wasn't really the right one and I just went hard left the other way?

What if my true nature is being denied? It feels kind of dangerous to think about that. But I dared to allow myself to kind of deep dive, into what that might be like. To return to the place where I already am, and I've always been if I just really looked and allowed myself to see... The difficult part of the song was trying to place the verse focal. What's the right approach?

We recorded it a couple times, trying to find the right process. And a lot of that was to do with delivery as well, where the emphasis was purred. Let me hit record, I'm gonna just talk what feels kind of natural. Drop it in and see how it sits over the music. it. Part of it is considering what the role of the verse vocal is in terms of the narrative of the story. It was written in a cut-up style that wasn't necessarily a linear, so it wasn't a story you had to listen to every bit. What if we kind of made it overheard? If you want to listen to it, it's there, but it's not in the way.

And if you don't want to, you can ignore it like it's a TV set left on while you're doing something else. And in verse 2, you might notice there's talking and laughing and whatnot, actually from a TV. The whole song's structure was meant to be a rhythmic jigsaw puzzle in the verse that leads to the feeling of release when you got to the chorus. When choosing sounds or instrumentation or what timbers we want to use, we are thinking about if there's something that feels electronic or unfamiliar, to juxtapose something that feels acoustic and sonically familiar, to avoid everything sounding like science fiction.

And then that led to an acoustic piano would anchor it and would have the kind of firmness, the kind of foundation that could hold the chorus together. It feels like, oh, okay, I can exhale for a second. It doesn't sound triumphant because you've given up the fight. You know, I've been resisting, resisting, resisting, Okay, I'm going to dive in. I'm going to say, if this is what I am, then this is where I am.

To me, when I listen to it, I feel connected emotionally to this story, and a huge part of it is how he's delivered the chorus. I sang it twice and the second time was the best one. And then we didn't go back in and say, okay, let me microtune that. No, leave it the way it is. That was him saying this primarily. Trent might feel a little insecure, but this chorus is excellent,

and not to be discarded because the voice cracked or whatever. A lot of what I get from music is the humanity, is the imperfections, is the soul, if you like. As much as I enjoyed flirting around with self-destruction and depression and staring into the abyss and caught up with me and it took me to a place where it wasn't sexy

and it wasn't romantic. It was just death. I really didn't want that and I would do anything to get away from that and needed to make serious life changes and kind of redefine who I am and why I'm here. And I feel good about my life right now. I would be happy not ever thinking about that stuff again.

Just making a song like this, allow you to feel like you don't have to think about it anymore? I think I'd be just as happy not having opened that can of worms and thought about it because I find myself, I dream about it now once in a while, because it's a fresh thing now. I think we made something artistically I'm very proud of, but I'm not feeling like, man, I'm glad I processed that and was able to work that out of my system. I kind of welcomed it back into my system. I've re-experienced something that

even though, you know, I didn't physically go out and do anything. I have lived it in a way that it's part of me again. Here's The Lovers by Nine Inch Nails in its entirety. On Nine Inch Nails, visit SongExploder.net. You'll find a link to buy the EP on vinyl and a link to learn more about that box, The Luminist Garden, by Folk Tech. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th.

It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full ink. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinrobe.

I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Kleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. and then I'll play with my band.

The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks.

Next time on Song Exploder, R-E-M breakdown, Try Not to Breathe, from their classic album, Automatic for the People. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons, with help from internal Olivia Wood. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts, made possible by listeners like you. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm.

You can find every episode of Song Exploder at SongExploder.net, or wherever you download podcasts. You can find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Let me know what you think of this episode. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.