The world's slowest music countdown continues with another pair of songs. These two bands aren't particularly similar, but I thought I would combine them into one post both for the sake of efficiency, and because these songs do have an interesting contrast.
#18: We're in This Together - Nine Inch Nails
#17: Machine Gun - Portishead
One of the most important attributes that a great band has is its unique sound. This may change between albums, eras, or producers, but there is still an identifier in the music that lets the listener quickly determine that a song is from that artist. Nine Inch Nails and Portishead happen to have two of the most distinct sounds of any of the bands on my list. While there are some similarities between the electronic and industrial sounds used in their music, Portishead typically opts for the more mellow side of things while Trent Reznor (who effectively is NIN) perfers to flagellate himself through the loudness and anger in his music.
Of course, if you've listened to these songs you're probably thinking that the previous paragraph doesn't describe them well at all. "Machine Gun" is as jarring of a piece of music as you'll hear, and the main riff doesn't relent for the length of the song. "We're in This Together," on the other hand, has a positively uplifting chorus that is much gentler than your typical NIN offering. Sure, the guitar riff in the verses is as abrasive as other NIN works, but more than anything is serves to illustrate the bleakness of the world without the "you" that Reznor sings about.
This points to the contrast that I mentioned at the beginning of the post. To make a song about isolation from others, Portishead creates one of their harshest pieces. On the other end of the spectrum, Reznor pens lyrics that are downright optimistic in accordance with one of his most melodic works. This points to the obvious yet critical aspect of creating music that everything in a work must work together to acheive the desired purpose. If you sing about something like sadness but your voice sounds inauthentic or the arrangement is too upbeat, then the song is unlikely to work. The counterexample is that is quite possible to be able to play off of expectations of thematic consistency and create a work where different aspects of a song don't match on purpose (one such example off the top of my head is "Glory Days"). Still, most of the best pieces of music are able to acheive this thematic resonance by paying close attention to all aspects of the song, even if it forces them slightly out of their musical "comfort zones." Portishead and Nine Inch Nails were able to do exactly that with these songs, and that is why they end up on my countdown.
Runners-up:
For me, no song from NIN's catalog comes close to the expansive awesomeness of "We're in This Together", though I am partial to "Ruiner" off of The Downward Spiral. "Hurt" is also a great song.*
*Please don't make the argument that Johnny Cash now "owns" the song now because his version was better. Both versions are awesome, and in spite of sharing mostly the same lyrics, they mean very different things in the context of the music arrangement and the context of the artist/album.
On the other hand, I could have probably picked several other Portishead songs to place on this list and been pretty happy. "Glory Box" is much more than just my at-bat music (should I ever make the major leagues), while "Numb", "Small", and "Silence" are all great in their own rights, and offer slightly different looks at the trip-hop universe.
