Until recently, Nine Inch
Nails founder Trent Reznor wasn't known for being prolific. But in the three
years since 2005's With Teeth, he's doubled his output of the '90s, with Year
Zero in
2007, a four-part instrumental collection called Ghosts I-IV earlier this year, and The
Slip,
originally available digitally in May for free at nin.com, but out now on CD.
Just as Year Zero received less attention
for music than its guerilla marketing—the concept album's elaborate story
could be pieced together and elaborated upon using clues from various
media—The Slip has gotten more attention for its flagrant flouting of
music-industry standards. Reznor made it at breakneck speed for an artist of
his stature: It was written over the course of a month, recorded in three weeks
in his home studio, mixed and sequenced in an astounding single day, mastered
the next day, given artwork the next, and released before the week was out.
Unsurprisingly, The
Slip
lacks polish. Reznor's vocal flub at the beginning of "Discipline" remains, but
the songs don't sound underproduced, either. The hard-hitting early tracks "1,000,000,"
"Letting You," and "Discipline" are particularly good, though typical; Reznor
keeps farming the same fertile ground that yielded The Slip's predecessors. Also
typical is "Lights In The Sky," which follows the brooding, minimalist
tradition Reznor established with "Hurt" in 1994. An ominous fog hangs over it
and "Corona Radiata," a seven-and-a-half-minute song that splits its time
between ambient coda to "Lights," and a gradual introduction to the similarly
instrumental "The Four Of Us Are Dying."
Roughly 15 and a half
subdued, mostly instrumental minutes pass between the lively "Echoplex" and the
intense album closer "Demon Seed," more than ample time for listeners' interest
to wane. But in Reznor's digital age, fans can remix the songs at nin.com, or
simply leave the boring ones off their iPods. He wouldn't have it any other
way.