Nine Inch Nails
The Add Violence physical components are here and lordy lord lord...
While there might not be an ARG this time around on the scale of what happened ten years ago, there's definitely something deep going on here...
Check out the videos for "Less Than" and "This Isn't The Place", and then these pictures of the AV physical component and, just...shit, man...extrapolate.
It is, once again, a very exciting time to be a Nine Inch Nails fan.
But. I must mention Sandbag. How to frame this...okay, you know, I'll just try and be succinct.
Back in December, NIN announced a new EP and a bunch of vinyl reissues. All that shit was supposed to be handled by a merch store called Firebrand. After they just absolutely fucked everything up, in June Reznor made an announcement they things were being taken care of and an apology. Cut to- Sandbag. They were now handling things, including NEW merch as well as the shit people ordered back in December. They were gracious and said things like: "if you want a refund, just click here and we'll get that taken care of" and they offered a 20% off your next order thing and all that, but we are Nine Inch Nails fans. We don't want apologies or refunds, we want the music Trent Reznor makes in the format which Trent Reznor chooses to make it. So a lot of people just decided to wait...
I'll skip the gory details but after the time it takes to gestate a human being, I finally received my order, placed in December of last year. And it was damaged.
Long story less long- Reznor is about to switch to yet another online retailer and actually reached out to fans on the unofficially official NIN forums to get their good online merch experiences in order to inform his next move.
Ugh.
What a diarrhea expo.
Anyway, the 90 minute, 2-disc score for Ken Burns' The Vietnam War is dropping in about two weeks and I'll be reviewing it. Word is there are several tracks from the Dragon Tattoo score that have been reworked for this, so we'll see exactly how much "new" music there actually is.
Beck
It's official! The ecstatic summer jam record of 2015 is finally coming! October 13th, 2017! WOOOO! SUMMER IN OCTOBER!!!!!
The biggest issue with Colors isn't going to be its 40+ minute run time, or the fact that its first single came out over two years ago, or even the fact that, by the time it's finally released, we're really only getting 60% of a new Beck album*...it's all these things laid out next to the fact that this fucking thing was supposed to be out OVER TWO YEARS AGO. While I completely understand that time does not exist for Beck as it does for every other person on this planet, he exists (at least sometimes) in our world and must, occasionally, follow its rules. While the wait was not as bad as with Cake's Showroom of Compassion, because Colors only took three and a half years and because Morning Phase was absolutely amazing, this kind of fuckery has got to stop. This could have been completely avoided if they'd not continually announced release windows and just let us wait in meaty, sullen silence.
In anticipation of the new album, a crazy shitton of pre-order stuff has been posted on the Beck site**, along with a pretty fantastic lyric video for "Dear Life". While the video is fantastic, the song is merely good, only becoming awesome in the last twenty seconds wherein Beck gets all choral wit hisself. Here's hoping for more of that.
When it comes out****, I'll review it.
And then get grumpy.
St. Vincent
The video for "New York" is out and it's just absolutely beautiful. Man. Just watch it.
No album news yet, but I still feel like it's coming soon...even though I said that, like, two months ago.
Next month, that new Reznor/Ross review as well as reviews of those two Twin Peaks records: music from the Bang Bang Bar and the new score.
* "Dreams" - released 6/15/15
"WOW" - released 6/2/16
"Up All Night" - "released" 9/2016
"Dear Life" - released 8/24/17
** Including a bundle which comes with two copies of the album on vinyl (regular, boring, bullshit, plebeian, black vinyl, and awesome-rad-cocaine-on-your-cock-and-asshole colored vinyl!!!), the CD, a shirt, a pin, a prism (eyes rolling), and a fucking kaleidoscope (eyes gone). Look, dude, no one wants these things***, just release more albums more often.
*** YES I PRE-ORDERED THE FUCKING KALEIDOSCOPE BUNDLE FUCK YOU
**** If it comes out...
