Nine Inch Noize

If you search for discourse about Gen X, you mostly find stuff about how there isn’t a lot of discourse about Gen X (also some stuff about how we’re far and away the most lead-poisoned generation).

With that in mind, I’ve been thinking some lately about who might qualify as the voice of my undiscussed generation. And I’ve been surprised by some of the things I’ve realized. Like that it’s probably more Chuck D than Kurt Cobain. Or more Ethan Hawke than Johnny Depp¹ (relatedly: R.I.P. River Phoenix). And one other name that I’ve been surprised that I keep coming back to is Trent Reznor. For one thing, “God is dead, and no one cares,” may well be the most Gen X-coded lyric ever written. And I mean, what other generation would’ve made a 269 b.p.m. track that’s mostly in 29/8 time a top 60 mainstream hit?²

Nine Inch Noize is a collaborative project that teams up Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails with the industrial house DJ Boys Noize, and their self-titled album is easily my favorite music that’s come out this year. Its 12 tracks kind of simultaneously deconstruct the live album, remix album, and greatest hits album ideas all at once. And for me (and for a lot of people my age, I think), it’s like a bunch of the most formative music from my teen years just came back out, 30 years later, sounding like brand new music all over again.

Whatever generation you’re a part of, this whole album is perfect for dancing and/or exercising. My only complaint is that, at 47 minutes, it’s not long enough.

¹ Chuck D and Johnny Depp are actually both Baby Boomers. I haven’t figured out if I think that’s disqualifying or not.

² We’re also the ones who found a perfect Top 40 single^a lingering in amongst a song with a nearly 3½-minute essentially instrumental outro.

^a Almost! It peaked at No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100.

West End Girl by Lily Allen

Lily Allen’s concept album, West End Girl, basically unpacks the breakdown of her marriage to David Harbour and explores toxic masculinity as a thing. Allen does not pull a single punch on this album, which is very much intended to be listened to as an album. Don’t just go to Spotify and look at the top songs and listen to them. You’ll miss important context, as the interplay between the songs is fabulous. So if you like narrative albums, angry women, and autotune, this one’s for you.

Dia Beacon

The Dia Beacon in Beacon, New York, on the Hudson River, is a very cool art museum that’s filled with not just paintings and stuff but with installation pieces that are very, very provocative. There’s a whole floor of Richard Serra sculptures. Go walk through them and in them and around them, and feel the claustrophobia, the space closing in and collapsing around you.

Black Hole by Charles Burns

Jane Schoenbrun, who directed We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, is reportedly in pre-production as the co-creator on a TV adaptation of Charles Burns’ 1990s comic book series/graphic novel, Black Hole. The series is very difficult to describe, but it’s sort of like a comic book’s comic book, which makes it an amazing thing to think about how you would even do it in another medium. But if anybody’s equipped for the task, it might be Jane Schoenbrun. And in any case, Black Hole would be somewhere in my top five pieces of (any kind of) media ever, believe it or not.

With a Song in my Heart by John Pizzarelli

John Pizzarelli is a guitarist who then discovered that he’s also a pretty terrific vocalist. And this album, With a Song in My Heart, is a mix of Rodgers and Hart stuff and Rodgers and Hammerstein stuff. There’s something very accessible and friendly about Pizzarelli. He doesn’t sound like a 1940s classicist of some kind. He makes it fun and enjoyable. And for me, his version of “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” is maybe the most powerful one that I’ve heard. It’s just this very softly sung song with two chords almost droning over a moving bass line in the background. And you really get the very powerful message that Hammerstein is sending about racism and prejudice.