The Review's most wanted: Dixie Chicks and NIN

Dixie Chicks
Fly
Number of stars: ****

Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Marty Seidel, the three women who call themselves the Dixie Chicks, possess an undeniable appeal. Their debut album, Wide Open Spaces, has sold over 6 million copies to date, while their sophomore album, Fly, after its release just three weeks ago, flew straight to the number one spot on the Country Music Billboard charts. On top of which, they have already amassed enough awards to be considered veterans, including Grammy Awards for Best Country Album and Best Country Vocal Performance by a Group, both for the debut album. With their trendy good looks and their unique, rockin' country sound, The Dixie Chicks - named after a song by the blues-rock band Little Feat, called "Dixie Chicken"- leave some critics charmed, and others utterly perplexed.

What makes this trio so intriguing? Flipping through television channels sometime after The Dixie Chicks took the country and pop music worlds by storm with Wide Open Spaces. I came across their video for "There's Your Trouble." It was catchy, and despite my resistance, I couldn't get the song out of my head. Pretty soon, the Dixie Chicks grew on me and I bought the CD. It is sort of a guilty pleasure. As much as I do not want to like them, I cannot help myself. Too many recent country artists fill their albums with tales of heartbreak, loneliness or pointless stories that insult one's intelligence. The Dixie Chicks' sound is a refreshing deviation from this norm.

Their style is eclectic, combining Celtic, bluegrass, folk and old-time country, all strained through the Chicks' style. Sisters Seidel (fiddle, mandolin, vocals) and Robison (dobro, banjo, guitar, vocals) work with lead vocalist Maines to create beautiful harmonies and a distinctive, energetic sound.

Despite their obvious talent and recent popularity, the Dixie Chicks somehow manage not to take themselves, or their music, too seriously. On both albums, it is clear that the Chicks are having a blast; their high spirits are refreshing. This sense of fun extends even to the packaging of their albums. The back of Fly's album cover pictures the women making hideous faces in bad makeup and unkempt hair.

Fly as a whole, doesn't deviate too much from the style of Wide Open Spaces. However, Fly has moments of boldness that the debut album lacks. Such is the case with the songs "Goodbye Earl" and "Sin Wagon." The former is the story of two friends who plot and kill Earl, one of the friends' abusive ex-husband. Maine's voice strains as she sings delightedly of poisoning the man and then dumping him into a lake. "Sin Wagon" tells the story of a newly-divorced women who is ready to have a little fun, including "a little mattress dancin." Despite its questionable lyrics, "Sin Wagon" is one of the strongest songs on the album, thanks to Maine's biting vocals and an energetic country/Western beat.

The album's first single, "Ready to Run," included on the soundtrack for the film Runaway Bride, is light and catchy, possessing a sweet Celtic beat. But the best songs, with their sincere lyrics and enchanting vocals, are "Cowboy Take Me Away" and a cover of Patty Griffin's "Let Him Fly."

Toward the end of Fly's liner notes, the Dixie Chicks write, "We're chicks, chicks have wings, chicks learn to fly." And that's exactly what these Chicks have done on their second album, and will continue to do, no matter what critics might contend. Unlike other pop and country singers of the moment, these beautiful blondes have spunk, and enough talent to keep them flying high, at least till another "next big thing" comes along.

-Elizabeth Weinstein

Nine Inch Nails
The Fragile
Number of stars: ***1/2

Ten years after Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor brought industrial music to the masses with his astonishing debut album, Pretty Hate Machine, he has resurfaced with The Fragile, his first full-length release since 1994's Downward Spiral. During his five year absence from the spotlight, he produced the soundtracks to David Lynch's Lost Highway and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, co-produced Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar and compiled Closure, a Nine Inch Nails video collection and tour diary. He isolated himself from the media at Nothing Studios in New Orleans to overcome a severe case of writer's block and an increasing dissatisfaction with the record industry. Out of this lengthy isolation comes Fragile, a 23-song, two-disc set that is clearly his most daring project to date.

While the resulting album lacks some of the vitality and vision that rendered Machine, Spiral and 1992's Broken as instant classics, Fragile remains a powerful tour-de-force in its own right, boasting more than a few tracks that fit nicely into Reznor's catalog of self-mutilating anthems. It also lacks the coherence of his past releases, as many of its tracks evolve from, and disintegrate into, ambient noise. But when all is said and done, it remains a pleasure from start to finish.

The first disc, dubbed "Left," picks up right where Spiral left off. The opening cut, "Somewhat Damaged," sets the tone for the album with its disjointed sound and its bleak lyrics ("Broken bruised forgotten sore/Too fucked up to care anymore/Poisoned to my rotten core"). But it is not until the rousing second track, "The Day the World Went Away," that Fragile really takes off. With its crashing, distorted power chords mixed over a beautiful melody, "Day" is a strangely seductive piece, recalling the intense, quieter moments of Downward Spiral. It is also a more fitting introduction to the album than "Damaged," quickly reminding listeners that Reznor remains one of the most gifted musicians on the planet.

"We're in This Together," the first single to be released from the album, is a throwback to the catchy brand of industrial rock Reznor produced on Pretty Hate Machine. Although its lyrics are more reminiscent of Slippery When Wet-era Bon Jovi than anything Nine Inch Nails has ever released, its pounding guitars and pleading vocals elevate it into one of the more powerful tracks on the album.

"The Great Below," a somber meditation on the final hours of a wasted, loveless life, brings the first disc to its predictably melancholy conclusion. The song sounds familiar, though, and perhaps it should; with its despondent lyrics ("I descend from grace/In arms of undertow/I will take my place/In the great below") and its haunting orchestral arrangements, "Below" is a worthy follow-up to "Hurt," the epic ode to self-loathing on Downward Spiral.

The second disc, dubbed "Right," is more of a mixed bag. "Please" is a worthy, albeit derivative, rehash of Spiral's "Heresy," while "Starfuckers, Inc." is an oddly placed diatribe directed at Reznor's one-time friend and protégé Marilyn Manson. The song suffers on account of its juvenile lyrics ("I am every fucking thing and just a little more/I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore"), but it works as a catchy, overblown anthem in the tradition of "Head Like a Hole." Finally, "The Big Come Down" adds a welcome dose of angry, big-beat funk to "Right," which proves a much less focused effort than its superior companion piece.

Some critics have already likened The Fragile to The Wall, another epic ode to disillusionment and despair released by one of Reznor's earliest influences, Pink Floyd. The comparison is a good one. After all, Fragile is not so much a collection of independent songs as a group of interwoven, interrelated pieces that document one man's descent into near madness. (One track on the first disc, "Pilgrimage," is eerily reminiscent of Floyd's "Tear Down the Wall," with its frustrated lyrics and its marching-band-from-Hell sound.) It is telling that most of the songs on this latest release seem to be drowning in effects and distortion, the kind that might have made even Roger Waters blush. To be sure, Reznor has a tendency to overload his album with sonic noise, but he is clearly trying to wring fresh, new sounds out of his music.

Yet for all his lofty ambitions, The Fragile is still something of a disappointment, a step down from boldly innovative projects like Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral. That's not to say that Reznor has reached the twilight of his career, or that his new album marks the beginning of the end for Nine Inch Nails; on the contrary, the passion, vision and ingenuity that spawned hits like "Terrible Lie" and "Closer" are present on this latest release, even if they are somewhat more obscured than ever before. But try as he might, Reznor cannot compensate for a discernible lack of quality - or is it inspiration? - with quantity, and too many tracks on Fragile seem like retreads of past glories. The raw aggression that once fueled songs like "March of the Pigs" and "Happiness in Slavery" is there, as is the desperation that inspired classics like "Sanctified" and "Something I Can Never Have." But some intangible quality is missing from this new collection, even on its best cuts. We feel as if we've been down these roads before and the scenery is becoming all too familiar.

Perhaps Reznor has finally managed to raise the bar just an inch too high, to such an unreachable height that nothing could possibly meet the expectations of fans who waited impatiently for a true follow-up to Spiral. (Re-mixed releases like Further Down the Spiral and singles like "The Perfect Drug" simply did not do the trick.) Whatever the case, his latest release is consistently good and sometimes even better than that. Unfortunately, its only drawback is that it fails to live up to the impossibly high standards set by Reznor himself.

-Rossiter Drake