Trent Reznor wasn’t quite finished pulverizing the crowd at FYF Festival during the weekend’s final headline slot Sunday night (July 23) when he decided to finally address everyone. It was time for him to balance out his assault upon us and upon society at large with something far gentler.
“Thanks for sticking around,” he began, alluding to the band’s career itself, which next year celebrates its 30th anniversary. “This is the first real show for three years or so. We’ve been busy. We’ve been in the studio hiding out, watching the world go crazy.”
Nine Inch Nails‘ latest five-song EP and commentary on the status quo — Add Violence — came out Friday (July 21). They played just two of its tracks Sunday — “The Lovers” and “Less Than,” both of which sat noisily alongside a set of career-spanning favorites, including the hyperactively received “The Hand That Feeds” and “March of the Pigs.”
“Since we’ve been gone, I’ve lost a few people that meant a lot to me personally,” he continued. “One of which meant a lot to you: my friend David Bowie.”
Reznor revealed that when Bowie passed away last year, NIN asked permission to rework one of the tracks off his final album, Blackstar. “It helped us heal,” Reznor shared. “I’d like to take the opportunity to play that for you.”
It was the quietest moment of the evening. Piano keys sounded like raindrops falling from Bowie’s own realm up in the sky. Gently, Reznor held the notes of “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” singing in a voice so tender it almost aped Bowie’s own: “I can’t give everything away/ Seeing more and feeling less/ Saying no but meaning yes.”
Reznor stood in his usual stance, battling with the microphone, looking like an even more muscle-bound version of Rodin’s The Thinker. The track eventually transitioned into “The Lovers,” which cried “Take me into the arms of a lover.”
For all of Reznor’s doom, dystopia and despair, there’s forever a pain for connection. Even though he believes in nothingness, even though his worldview is steeped in pessimism, even though in 2006 he released Year Zero (an album imagining a future society even worse than the one we live in), he craves human warmth.
Before he walked onstage in aviator shades, resembling the ultimate rebel, a group in the crowd began to sing Bill Withers’ “Lean On Me” with its famed lyrics, “Lean on me, when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on…”
The sentiment of that song is one that Reznor has bastardized throughout his career. “You make this all go away,” he sang on “Something I Can Never Have” while holding the mic like he was strangling it, sucking the life out of an instrument that’s so necessary to his existence. It’s a mirror for how he documents his treatment of his human relationships. The disclaimer for Reznor has always been that if you lean on him, he will pour wrath upon you.
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During their one-song encore of “Hurt” — NIN’s most heart-in-mouth number, once covered by Johnny Cash — Reznor offered the crowd a moment so sensitive and hushed you could almost hear him inhale. “My sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end,” he sang. “And you could have it all, my empire of dirt/I will let you down, I will make you hurt.” The words echoed around the park as fans sang in unison. A woman close to me sighed “ugh!” so loudly others laughed. The exhalation was one of satisfaction at witnessing one of alternative rock’s undisputed greatest.
As quickly as the heart-rendering moment arrived, it left, the stage coming to an almighty crunch for one last time, reminding that Reznor will always make a beautiful mess of a sublime moment. He’s poised to annihilate.
Earlier on “Closer,” he invited a giant singalong of the line “I wanna f–k you like an animal.” He still plays the God of his own perverted church. On “The Frail” and “The Wretched” from 1999’s& The Fragile LP, he created a sonic hell on piano, screaming about how everything will inevitably turn out for the worse. It’s because he has no hope for the world that he’s free to cause such disruption.
There’s as much reason for Reznor to be furious in 2017 as there was in NIN’s earlier days. He shook a tambourine on new track “Less Than,” which contains the same criticisms for America’s self-servitude as his classics. When he played “Head Like a Hole” and the entirety of Exposition Park appeared to head-bang, shriek and lose their minds, it was hard to think of anyone else who could conjure such a purgative anthem for now.
NIN still sound like the band your elders don’t want you to listen to. The physicality of being pelted by stacks of strobe lighting and decibels of crushed machines established an environment that allowed people to freak out about the current state of affairs safely in the knowledge they were surrounded by like-minded souls. “I’d rather die than give you control,” Reznor screamed, joined by many in the audience. “Bow down before the one you serve/ You’re going to get what you deserve.”
Reznor’s self-deprecation is what keeps him relatable, yet it’s so misplaced. On “Copy Of A,” a song that originally featured Lindsey Buckingham from the full-length album Hesitation Marks, he sang, “I am just a copy of a copy of a copy/ Everything I say has come before.”
Like every headliner who appeared at FYF this year — from Bjork to Missy Elliott to Frank Ocean — Trent Reznor is not an echo of the past: He’s the leader of an incredibly dark present.
SETLIST
“Branches/Bones”
“Wish”
“Less Than”
“March Of The Pigs”
“Something I Can Never Have”
“The Frail”
“The Wretched”
“Closer”
“Copy Of A”
“Gave Up”
“I Can’t Give Everything Away”
“The Lovers”
“Reptile”
“The Great Destroyer”
“Burning Bright (Field On Fire)”
“The Hand That Feeds”
“Head Like a Hole”
[Encore] “Hurt”