And All That Could Have Been

This live album, recorded on Nine Inch Nails’ tour in support of the 1999 album The Fragile, does not capture the band at a creative peak. The Fragile was a quieter, softer, more melancholy album than its predecessor, The Downward Spiral, and while Trent Reznor and company were still a strong live draw (the Fragility tour took place in arenas), the new material didn’t sit that well alongside the older stuff. Furthermore, hearing such intensely first-person lyrics about pain and despair as arena singalongs is a weird experience. That said, the band reshapes the songs for the stage, and achieves some real thrills in the process. “Gave Up” is a bigger highlight than most of the “hits,” and “Suck,” a song Reznor originally recorded with weirdo industrial-noise-improv all-star project Pigface, is a surprising deep cut.