So Godspeed opened - and played 45 minutes of entirely new material. The new material was definitely up to par with everything they've done so far. In a way it continues the direction they were going with Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, but in a way is unlike anything they've ever done. There are still drone sections that are built in a similar fashion as were done on this last record, but the 2 new longer pieces that they played are slower and groovier than anything they've done before. And both of these two pieces echoed each other...I don't want to give too much away - but there's at least an album's worth of amazing new material from arguably the greatest post-rock band ever - needless to say, I'm still geeking out about it.
Visually, Nine Inch Nails was the most impressive show I have ever seen. It was a really sick set - and definitely made me see many more similarities between Trent Reznor and David Byrne. Apparently some of the shows on this tour were set up in a way where it builds in a way that is inspired by "Stop Making Sense". They played 9 of the tunes off their new record, Hesitation Marks, which is definitely one of my favorite releases of the year, in addition to being my favorite thing that Trent Reznor has released since 1999's "The Fragile". It's an extremely diverse, groovy, and reflective record that is more subdued than his other releases (with the exception of 2008's "Ghosts"). It's a very psychedelic record, and at times even meditative - such as the song "Find My Way". For some of his older tunes he played in the set last night - he reimagined parts of them in the style of this most recent release, and often the band had a much more soulful sound than I expected . I think the best example of this was the song "The Day the Whole World Went Away" - which when they played it, the sludgy wall of sound that builds in the recording off "The Fragile"was replaced with meditative/psychedelic jam section - you can see what it looked like during this tune last night below:
My only complaint is for some tunes I felt like the band wasn't as tight as they were on others, such as on "All Time Low" - and at times it felt like something was missing without the production that is present on the recordings...but even when this was occasionally the case - the lights/visuals were so impressive that it basically made up for it. It's amazing to me to see an artist like Reznor, who has been releasing music since I've been alive, continue to change and grow as an artist and push the boundaries of pop music.
NIN Setlist:
-Copy of A
-1,000,000
-Terrible Lie
-March of the Pigs
-Reptile (Tour debut)
-All Time Low
-Disappointed
-Came Back Haunted
-Find My Way
-The Frail
-The Wretched
-In Two (Live Premiere)
-Survivalism
-Running
-A Warm Place
-Somewhat Damaged
-Wish
-Burn
-The Hand That Feeds
-Head Like a Hole
Encore:
-The Day the World Went Away
-Even Deeper
-While I'm Still Here
-Black Noise
-Hurt
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