If Interscope execs chose to sticker new pressings of the platinum-selling With Teeth with a claim that the album spawned three #1 singles, they wouldn't be lying. Of course, Trent turned that trifecta on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, where hits are gauged by radio play-- not sales to the record-buying public. Perhaps surprisingly, then, Every Day Is Exactly the Same is the first stateside EP lifted from With Teeth. To compensate, the folks at Interscope and Nothing did the right thing and compiled remixes previously available only on import releases and 12" singles. If you've already been buying on import, only the "Every Day" remix is new to this EP, and it's the track that most disappoints.
The first radio release from With Teeth, "The Hand That Feeds", is given two treatments. The DFA do what they do best, starting with some Pac-Man burbles before their requisite 4/4 disco pulse infiltrates the song's angst-ridden heart, replacing the pro-forma NIN ruckus and plumping the track up to nine minutes. They also slow down Reznor's vocals just enough to put them in step with this new, slinkier beat. It's disorienting at first if you're familiar with the original, and it accentuates the lesser qualities of Reznor's lyrical bent, but the treatment works beautifully. By contrast, Photek's "Straight Mix" of "Hand" is as advertised. He does nothing more to the tune than pad it with starch-- some drum machine, some coming-up synths, and an extended strobe-light outro. Despite the additions, the song emerges relatively unchanged.
There are also two additional versions of the album's second single, "Only", with remixers El-P and Richard X approaching the track very differently. El-P's version is claustrophobic; he takes Reznor's speak/sung narrative and uses the downtrodden backing to accentuate the paranoia inherent within the babbling. Lonely horn blasts and what sounds like a warbling robot turkey splatter the turgid soundscape, turning a seemingly flighty, self-castigating jaunt into a harrowing (and somewhat cloying) experience. Richard X turns that psychosis upside-down. Ignoring any possible subtext within the lyric, Richard treats the song the way he does tracks by Annie and the Sugababes-- speed the tempo up, add some glitter and percussion, and get people dancing. Both these remixes work, but Trent's cathartic hair-pulling sounds much more comfortable in Richard X's hands.
The new remix is cold and ordinary, with Interpol rhythm section Sam Fogarino and Carlos D. doing for "Every Day" what U2's Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. did for the "Mission Impossible" theme a few years back: they "remix" it. Out are most of the vocals, excepting some shouts, some cooing, and the chorus. You know, in case you forget what song you're listening to. Lots of traditional remix flourishes flaunt over the course of the track's five-minute length, none doing much of anything to enhance or treat the song-- and then it's over. It's a disappointing way for a record to end. Just click back a few tracks and forget it ever happened.
