Trent Reznor's career is in a nosedive. After the critical failings of With Teeth and Year Zero, the musician is attempting to fight off irrelevancy, perhaps acknowledging that his career doesn't extend much outside of a target audience of angst filled teens who want to "bring down the system." I'm sure that was all fine when Reznor was but in his twenties and riding the success of Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral, but now that he's well into his forties, I reckon he'd like his life to have a little bit more meaning behind it than encouraging people to fuck like animals. The truth of it is, people just don't really care.
Year Zero was marketed by making a huge deal about its political content, which in retrospect was probably a bad idea. Sure, that's a great way to add some meaning to your artistic body of work, but what can really be said about the current state of the US political system/world at large that hasn't already been said already by pundits and millions of bloggers? When James Maynard Keenan ventured into music-turned-politics, people quickly decided to forget about A Perfect Circle and this even spread into Tool's latest release, which I think was the first one on record which was more beloved by mainstream outlets than it was the underground. I can't imagine he went home happy with that knowledge. We could go on -- Godspeed You! Black Emperor's inane ranting didn't fall on deaf ears, and Rage Against the Machine certainly made sure everyone knew how upset they were all the time. Point being: perhaps instigating change is best left to hopeful politicans like Barack Obama, and musicians should stick to what they know best -- in this case, namely creating derivative music.
What baffles me the most is that bands who make a huge deal about creating change in the world are often some of the most banal, uninteresting musicians alive. I recently saw a movie and caught a pre-show advertisement where Three Doors Down sang about how awesome it is to kill innocent civilians in Iraq, and at least that correlation I could believe; Three Doors Down is a horrible band, so obviously they support horrible causes. The cold, hard truth about Ghosts is that this is a awful collection of music. Every other person on MySpace has a bedroom musical project that creates music more interesting and engaging than that found on Ghosts. If we're really going out on a limb and trying to save the world, I'm sure a good portion of the time making this record could have been used to do some community service or help build a much needed house in New Orleans. Does the world need four CDs of mindless dribble? I think not.
Reznor would be best sticking to his day job, accepting the path his carer has now led him do, and if he's really concerned about the state of the world, using some of that money he's been making to do some good and/or volunteering to actually make some change. When it comes down to it, musicians often talk a lot of talk, but I rarely see any of them going out there and doing the leg work to make things different. Instead, that is bestowed upon the nameless millions who are trying to make our world a better place, without seeking a pat on the back for "getting the word out." However, considering that he has recently rejected the record industry in true Radiohead style, I'm thinking this might be the beginning of the end for Mr. Reznor. Fear not, though, they actually make more money by self-releasing albums, so our protagonist will undoubtedly prosper nonetheless. I would have thought that if he's going to bother to get an OiNK account he would have at least known enough about the booming world of instrumental music to realize how lifeless Ghosts is. I suppose I'm still naive about a lot of things myself.
-Lee Whitefield