Pemberton Festival: Interpol & Nine Inch Nails

July 26th, 2008

The thing about Interpol is that if you’ve seen them once, you’ve seen them a thousand times (I’ve never really understood that expression but it seems most logical in this particular case). The sassy and stylish New Yorkers ushered in the final performance of the night by Nine Inch Nails. They played the usual roster of hits (which admittedly are difficult to tell apart when you hear twenty of them in a row): Pioneer To The Falls, Evil, Slow Hands, PDA, Obstacle 1, The Heinrich Maneuver, Untitled and many others.

Oh, and because Interpol’s third album, Our Love To Admire, has added keyboards to its instrument roster, the band has recruited touring keyboardist Frederic Blasco, whose fashion fit right in with the rest of the band’s stylish esthetic. He looked kinda bored though.

Carlos D. was his usual ‘cooler than thou’ self, never cracking a smile and looking (acting?) like he owned the place. I guess he just really gets into the zone while he plays…he doesn’t have time for crowd interaction.

Next up, Nine Inch Nails

I’ve never seen Nine Inch Nails live before and let me tell you, it was a sight to behold. Thousands of campers emerged from their lairs and descended upon the Mount Currie stage to catch the final performance of the night. Trent had a huge interactive light wall set up behind the stage that he occasionally approached and fiddled with. The non-stop light show that accompanied the set was fierce. Trent was absolutely on fire with passion and gusto throughout the set – he mentioned that it was NIN’s first show of a massive thirty-something city tour so clearly the band was hungry for the high of a live performance. I noticed that Trent’s bass player looked strangely familiar – I could have sworn he was also Beck’s touring bass player. When I got home I had to do some epic wiki-ing to uncover the connection – lo and behold, Justin Meldal-Johnson has been Beck’s music director and touring bassist for nearly a decade, and now he’s joined Trent’s crew for this tour.

It was a smashing set of hits that included all the usual suspects – when they played Closer you could almost feel the sexual awakening of every single person in the crowd. They ended their 90-minute set with an epic performance of Head Like A Hole. Anyone remember the whole setlist?

ETA: Setlist courtesy of Baldwin! Thanks!

Setlist

999 999
1 000 000
Letting You
Discipline
March of the Pigs
Head Down
The Frail
Piggy
Closer
Gave Up
Corona Radiata
The Warning
The Great Destroyer
Echoplex
Wish
Terrible Lie
Survivalism
31 Ghosts IV
The Big Comedown
Only
God Given
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole