A long, long time ago, I mentioned to my boss, a huge Nine Inch Nail fan, that we should make a work event of the upcoming Nine Inch Nails concert. You see, Nine Inch Nails have a special meaning for my boss and me. My very first day as an intern in the summer of 2006 involved Nine Inch Nails. I sat in her office, eager for my first day, and she told me that she spent the previous night rocking out at the Nine Inch Nails concert. I was jealous. Then she mentioned she was surprised that Nine Inch Nails played "Hurt, you know, that Johnny Cash song."

Huh? She must mean "Hurt, the Nine Inch Nails song that Johnny Cash covered, not the other way around." She was doubtful, so I insisted she ask Google and see what it said. Lo and behold, Google told her Hurt was indeed a NIN song. So, my working relationship with my boss started with Nine Inch Nails. Granted, she was rocking out to Nine Inch Nails before I knew they existed, and before I had finished Junior High, actually.

I mentioned to her that we should make a work event out of this summer's NIN show because both of us are fans, and the other lawyer in my department and our managing partner are also fans. She said it sounded like a good idea. And we went back to work and completely forgot about it.

Fast forward to this summer. Last month, I get an email with the following subject: "FW: Thank You for your purchase of four Nine Inch Nails tickets for Dallas, TX." The managing partner got us four seats.

The show was last Monday. It was awesome. Besides playing a great set of both old and new songs, the light show was fantastic. It was the best light show I've seen at any rock concert. Better than Muse and better than Massive Attack. This light show was something else. I can't even describe it because I don't really know what they did, but all I can say is they had three gigantic LCD screens, a translucent light screen, and hanging light sticks that hung down to stage level blinking in rhythm.

As for the music, I am not crazy about the new stuff, but the old stuff was great, of course. What I've noticed about the new stuff is that the music is more 'open.' That is, there seems to be less going on musically. It's been stripped down. There is more open air in the drum tracks, providing more space for other instruments and 'thicker' vocals. Or sometimes, the new open space is left open, so the tracks sound less busy, which I think is a good thing.

A lot of the older NIN songs sounded very busy - lots going on, and not much empty air to build with. I think learning to use open space effectively is something that comes to a songwriter with experience. Trent is probably at the point where he wants to leave the songs with more open space. I think it's a good dynamic. I still crave the crazy, seething energy of the older songs, but the new songs do break up the set. Instead of noise-fest after noise-fest, the new songs demonstrate a very different style of songwriting and give the listener some time to process all of the music. Not to say all older songs lacked open space entirely - Piggy, Hurt, and Closer all make use of open space - but the new songs are much more stripped-down. I just hope he doesn't lose that edge. It's hard to maintain the same high energy level in songwriting when you're not young and angry anymore, and you don't have as much to prove. The music has to change, but hopefully it doesn't lose its impact.