Why the Long Face?

Illustration of Trent Reznor by Jillian Tamaki.

Every high school had at least one: the Byronic loner. You remember him, right? The guy whose whole esthetic was black — that’s how he felt, how he dressed, how he took his coffee. Looking vaguely vampiric, he seemed unwilling to speak and unable to meet anyone’s gaze. (It might have had something to do with the curtain of dank, stringy hair that shielded his eyes from the sun’s lethal rays.)

Nonetheless, girls found him strangely appealing — thanks in small part to the rumour (he would never volunteer this information) that he wrote poetry and/or music. Boys were less impressed. The jocks felt the urge to slam his stooped self into lockers, but abstained, figuring someone that ominous-looking might be able to channel supernatural spirits — possibly of a vengeful sort.

The most telling thing about this sad sack, however, was his slouch, the mark of an incurable case of weltschmerz and a generally defeatist attitude.

Risible though the image is, it’s an archetype that finds its way into pop music again and again; it wouldn’t keep recurring if it didn’t have some hold on the popular imagination. From ill-fated British folk crooner Nick Drake to Morrissey to Kurt Cobain to Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, the dejected loner has a rich heritage in pop.

Bright Eyes vocalist and guitarist Conor Oberst. (AP Photo/The Daily Nonpareil, Ben DeVries.)

What makes depressing music so fascinating? At the most basic level, it reflects our own fears — acquired during high school — of rejection, isolation and insecurity. Dwelling on them, knowing that you’re not alone, can sometimes be empowering. Sad bastard music is descended from the blues, a timeless genre dedicated to turning anguish into art. We’re drawn to it for the same reason we slow down when passing a car crash: morbid curiosity. Literate mopes like Drake or Morrissey turn the pain into poetry; others, like Cobain, reach for their guitar pedals and unleash an agonized torrent of noise.

The latter is pretty much the m.o. for Trent Reznor, the man behind Nine Inch Nails. With his slashing guitars, fierce beats and dyspeptic outlook, Trent Reznor emerged as one of the most compelling voices of the early-’90s alt-rock uprising. Compared to the bloodless pap on Top 40 radio at the time, Reznor’s aching vulnerability — sheathed in layers of dissonance and usually articulated with a savage bark — was bracing. Songs like Head Like a Hole, March of the Pigs and Closer were jagged, melodic and amazingly cathartic when played at high volumes. The single Hurt — which boasts one of the bleakest opening passages in the annals of pop (“I hurt myself today / to see if I still feel / I focus on the pain / the only thing that’s real”) — is a nihilist classic.

The recent release of With Teeth, Nine Inch Nails’ fourth full-length album, reveals that Reznor is still in a colossal funk. There’s something disconcerting — depressing, actually — about the fact that after 16 years of recorded music, Reznor has yet to find a whit of happiness. With Teeth is overrun with Reznor’s usual tortured analysis. On the album’s first track, All the Love in the World, he complains that we’ve somehow ignored his despair: “No one’s heard a single word I’ve said.” Actually, Trent, we’ve been listening all along, and frankly, we’ve had our fill.

He should look to another classic sulker, Robert Smith of the Cure, for guidance. After two decades of sorrow, Smith decided in the mid-’90s that he couldn’t keep up his frown face. Since 1996’s Wild Mood Swings, the Cure has gotten progressively cheerier.

What’s remarkable about Reznor’s career is that he’s been able to sustain his sadness for so long; most of his psychological forebears bowed out in their prime, gripped by such nameless dread that the simple act of living became intolerable. Nick Drake took his own life in 1974, at age 26; Joy Division’s Ian Curtis died in 1980, at age 23; Cobain shot himself in 1994, at age 27. The fact that at 40, Reznor is still among the living, is surprising. (Good, of course, but surprising all the same.)

More than anything, With Teeth reveals a common misconception about sad sacks. We assume that anybody who’s morose, like that black-clad mope in high school, is troubled by the state of the world. Reznor proves that theory wrong. When he sings, “I have to patch up the cracks and the holes that I have to hide,” he’s not talking about reaching détente with North Korea; he’s talking about the difficulty of being Trent Reznor. His so-called weltschmerz ain’t nothing but selbstschmerz. At a time of global tension over terrorism, energy shortages and the next virus outbreak, there’s something almost juvenile about a guy who still can’t get his head straight.

Now-sullen singer-songwriter, Rob Thomas. Courtesy Warner Music Canada.

The only thing more exasperating than the terminal sad sack is a newfangled one like Rob Thomas, whose recent solo album, ...Something to Be, is pure silliness. Though he spent eight years fronting post-grunge outfit Matchbox Twenty, Thomas is best known for the single Smooth, a Latin-themed one-off with guitarist Carlos Santana. (Currently on hiatus, Matchbox Twenty has managed the uncanny feat of selling more than 25 million records without writing a single memorable tune.)

The most compelling malcontents are the ones who sound like they might, at any moment, do something rash. The appeal of In Utero, Nirvana’s final studio album, lay as much in Cobain’s growing unease and paranoia as the music. Melancholy itself no longer offered any solace; in Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge, Cobain sings, “I miss the comfort in being sad.”

Thomas does his level best to portray himself as a genuine gloomy Gus — check the despondent cover photo and the leitmotif of misery in the song titles (This Is How a Heart Breaks, When the Heartache Ends, I Am an Illusion, Fallin’ To Pieces).

The trouble is, you’re either innately sad or you’re not; any attempt to adopt the posture is obvious and smacks of opportunism. Ian Curtis was an emotionally unstable narcissist who always sounded like he was singing from beyond the grave; Kurt Cobain came from a broken home, suffered from excruciating stomach pain and fought a drug addiction.

Rob Thomas, on the other hand, is married to a model (Marisol Maldonado) and, prior to going solo, got rich writing frat-rock. My advice to Thomas: dude, if you’re looking for depressing material, watch the evening news.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.