 "and in that encroaching darkness, we listened. " A second-hand record shop off Greenwich Market on a bright spring day in 2005. I was 18, and my eyeliner was inch-thick, my jeans low-slung and baggy enough that I could hide small children in each leg, were I so inclined. It had become something of a routine, this; combing through the boxes of CDs in search of treasure. Not looking for anything in particular, because the magic was in the browsing, in the discovery. Picking something up, examining the jewel case (remember those?). Perusing the track listing. Taking a punt, because it might be trash, but it might be something wonderful. “Look at this,” said I, plucking something unusual from the box. A grey cloth case, pleasantly chunky, neatly emblazoned with the austere black ‘NIN’ logo; this, I would later discover, was the deluxe edition. I was not new to Nine Inch Nails. I had discovered them a couple of years earlier, deep in the mire of my disaffected teenage years – I laugh now, but disaffected I was, deeply so, having emerged not-remotely-unscathed from a secondary school tenure marred by the kind of bullying that scars you to the bone. Naturally, I gravitated to Reznor. And it was not the anger which drew me in, although that did appeal; that raw-throated fuck you vibe, that cynical aggression which I had always envisioned I might wear like armour, in lieu of feeling, which I had had rather enough of. What set Nine Inch Nails apart for me was the vulnerability. “Look at this,” said I, and handed it over to my then-boyfriend, who would go on to become my husband. We pored the track listing together. A double album: And All That Could Have Been, a live album showcasing Nine Inch Nails in their formidable prime, which my esteemed colleague Kit Power talked about in the previous edition of this retrospective. The second album was simply titled Still. Nine tracks, some familiar, some not. Of course, I bought it; I had a sense that I’d found something rare and wonderful (and perhaps it was not as rare as I had thought then, but – deluxe edition! What a find!). When I say that it is the vulnerability of Nine Inch Nails which made them such an important part of my life, I am referring to those quiet moments of introspection which pop up on each release, as intrinsic to the NIN experience as the raw anger of March of the Pigs, the whispered threat that is Piggy. Pretty Hate Machine set a precedent with Something I Can Never Have, which, perhaps not coincidentally, is the opening track on Still. And I had always been drawn to those moments: the soothing ambience of A Warm Place like a gentle aural bath between the aggressive cynicism of Big Man With A Gun and the abstract rage of Eraser. Perhaps it is gauche of me to admit that I had never heard a song so painfully relatable as Hurt; a song that caught me by the throat and stared me unblinking in the eye, so unflinching in its honesty. Still is an album comprised entirely of these moments. In the hands of a lesser band, it might feel repetitive, one-note. But the magic of Nine Inch Nails is that even when painting with a limited palette, they can run the full emotional gamut. Still’s version of Something I Can Never Have is stripped-down, pared back. It is devoid of the strange ambience of the original track. It is just Reznor, and a piano, and the occasional low rumble of a guitar in the very background. There is something spectral about it, something positively gothic; for all my fond memories of the original version, it feels as though this was the way it was supposed to be heard. All the frills and fripperies of production discarded. The raw vulnerability of Reznor’s voice, and the gentle swell of a piano. To follow with the lilting ambience of Adrift and at Peace is quite brilliant. Too much angst piled high becomes the stuff of parody; the answer is to separate it, portion it out, let the listener breathe. Much like A Warm Place, this is like a pleasant brain massage, an audio landscape of plucked strings and piano motifs. They like to do this, Nine Inch Nails; they like to remind you that they can bring you down to rock bottom and in the very next breath lift you right back up, bring you back to some infinitely more tranquil place. The Fragile, then, is a perfect follow-on. That same warm tranquillity, placing distance between the insistent percussion and thrumming bass of its original incarnation; Reznor’s voice almost a whisper, building slowly until he is insistent, urgent, but never melancholy, not truly. Stripping away the low end in favour of tinkling piano and sparse bass creates something altogether more hopeful – if not quite optimistic. And now for something completely different. The Becoming, retaining its repetitive, thudding drum loops but with a low-key bassline in place of the noisy, fractious sampling of the original; a little less piss and vinegar, a little more heart and soul. That seems to be the theme of Still; a more nuanced take on songs which were written and performed in a particular frame of mind, as though Reznor is looking back on his older works with a degree of objectivity, viewing them now as pieces of art as opposed to audio blood-letting. Gone, Still seems at first to back to that same place of tranquillity as Adrift and at Peace, but with a faint sense of threat running beneath; perhaps it’s the slow, persistent bass or the hum rising and falling in the background, but this is not entirely the same serene space, and NIN are not ones to repeat themselves where a variation on a theme would work far better. Into The Day The World Went Away, then, which to my ears is a far superior version than the original, and which utilises the warm, ebbing tones of the piano to perfect effect, less an abrasive aural assault and more reflective, thoughtful, Reznor’s vocals floating in for a brief spell before we return to piano. The outro is a beautiful piece of music, a slow and gentle crescendo which peaks low, but does exactly what it needs to do, and nothing more. In this, Still is something of a masterpiece; this is an album which has whittled its songs down to their most vital form, never outstaying their welcome and delivering their message to perfection. (And maybe, some might argue, this is missing the point of NIN – an excess of emotion and spiky, lingering soundscapes are precisely what this band is founded upon.) And All That Could Have Been is apparently an outtake from The Fragile, and it certainly sounds as though it belongs there. The layers on this track reward multiple listens; come for the soulful lament, stay for the voyage of discovery. We return to the purely instrumental with The Persistence of Loss, which takes the wispy ambience of A Warm Place and turns it into a song in its own right; a distinctly filmic quality with its gentle strings and slightly askew harmonics. Leaving Hope, though. In the pantheon of my favourite NIN tracks, Leaving Hope is absolutely one of the top-tier gods. Reminiscent of Sigur Ros, melancholic yet oddly optimistic, the sound of a setting sun with the promise that it will someday rise again. If you think that’s wanky, give it a listen. You may well write your own narrative, because this is a song which has a story at its core, somewhere, among the piano and synthesizer (which contains samples of Reznor’s voice – you can hear him wailing in the far distance towards the end of the song). This is the perfect track with which to sign off the era of The Fragile, a line in the sand between this and the very different With Teeth. This is where Reznor’s open wounds begin to heal. It’s the kind of album that makes you feel, upon listening, as though you are listening to someone whispering their secrets – not angry, or sad, just there, in the ether. “Look at this,” said I, much later on, when it was dark, and we sat in the still warmth of the spring night, talking about this and that. I put the album on – we still had CD players back then, perish the thought – and in that encroaching darkness, we listened.  Most writers will tell you they’ve been writing since they were small, and I’m no exception. I started out writing poems, which graduated into awful teenage angst poems (with the requisite soujourn into Sprawling Epic Fantasy Novel territory). I started writing short stories in 2011 but never took it seriously until 2012, when my first short story was published in ‘Shadows and Tall Trees’. Since then, I’ve been what you might call a ‘serious’ writer, although I’m yet to give up my day job (it’s part of The Dream, along with the apartment in Osaka and the functioning knee joints…) I’m also a sometime pro wrestling journalist; my article on the Golden Lovers received a Kevin Kelly shout-out during NJPW’s G1 tournament, which I haven’t stopped talking about. In 2018, my short story “Looking for Laika” won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. I haven’t stopped talking about that, either. I was born and raised in south east London and currently live in Essex under extreme duress. When I’m not making things up I enjoy reading, travelling, watching wrestling, playing video games, collecting tattoos, dyeing my hair strange colours and making up nicknames for my cats. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/l.n.Mauro Twitter: https://twitter.com/LauraNMauro Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/lauranmauro/ Sing Your Sadness Deep by Laura Mauro British Fantasy Award-winning author, and Shirley Jackson Award finalist Laura Mauro, a leading voice in contemporary dark fiction, delivers a remarkable debut collection of startling short fiction. Human and humane tales of beauty, strangeness, and transformation told in prose as precise and sparing as a surgeon’s knife. A major new talent! Featuring "Looking for Laika," winner of the British Fantasy Award, and "Sun Dogs," a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Laura Mauro started writing short fiction in 2012 and hasn't stopped since. Born in London, England, her stories have appeared in Black Static, Interzone, Shadows & Tall Trees, The Dark, and a variety of anthologies. Her debut novella Naming the Bones was published in 2017. Her short story “Sun Dogs” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and “Looking for Laika” won the 2018 British Fantasy Award in Short Fiction. She loves Finnish folklore, Japanese wrestling and Russian space-dogs. She tweets at @lauranmauro. Advance Praise for Sing Your Sadness Deep “Laura Mauro’s SING YOUR SADNESS DEEP is a beautiful foray into the strange and uncanny. She digs deep into the psyche of her characters, revelling in the mysteries that propel them through their confrontations with the liminal and the bizarre. A sublime and haunting debut.” — Simon Strantzas, author of NOTHING IS EVERYTHING “Laura Mauro does indeed sing her sadness deep, with assured melodies, strange resonances and beautiful harmonies. This is just her first collection—I can't wait to see what she will do next.” — Priya Sharma, author of ALL THE FABULOUS BEASTS   Comments are closed.
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