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26 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic, 22 Jun 2008
Having finally kicked the drugs, Trent Reznor is clearly making up for lost time. "The Slip", his second album in as many months (and his eighth full length recording in the past three years - four albums, a remix set, a concert set, and two album length recordings for other artists), is clearly the work of a man driven.
Perhaps it's the fact that he's finally seen the end of a carefully managed, famine-like major label contract that rewarded mass exploitation and touring instead of creativity, and managed to recast himself as a modern-day Prince : wresting control of his destiny as a self-sufficient entity.
Last month, he released "Ghosts" - a 36 track, two hour instrumental epic experiment : this month he's followed it with "The Slip", a succinct 44 minute album fired by the kind of creativity and prolificitivty that recalls the glory days of the Sixties, where a new record by either The Who or The Stones or The Beatles would come out every few weeks. Bluntly put, it's not too much from a man who used to release a record every five years if we were lucky.
And so, "The Slip" is the seventh Nine Inch Nails album (or the fourteenth, including reissues, remix, and concert sets). And what you want to know is... is it any good?
In a word - yes. It's perhaps not quite as good as previous Nine Inch Nails records, but with a bar set so high previously, few, if any could match it. What "The Slip" is the sound of a man reborn, shaming lesser artists with his work-rate and creativity.
Firstly, lets highlight a few key points. Unlike previous Nine Inch Nails albums, which saw Reznor as a one man dictator of the group and performing every instrument with a paranoid despotism, "The Slip" is the first work of a band lineup of Nine Inch Nails : albeit, one where every song is written by Reznor, but one where other musicians are credited as performers, not mere contributors. It's shorter in length than any Nine Inch Nails album previous, and in many ways scanter. Thematically, the record eschews the usual Nine Inch Nails concept to collect nothing less - and nothing more - than ten new songs. If anything, "The Slip" is reminiscent of Bowies classic Berlin trilogy ; six vocal songs book ended by four instrumentals that all evoke an emotional resonance., aided and abetted by a perfectly chosen selection of musicians, including the unrecognised genius that is Guns'N'Roses guitarist Robin Finck.
It's not just the release schedule that is evocative of a lost age : "The Slip" is constructed to easily remind the owner of a vinyl LP : there's a distinct break between track 5 and 6 stylistically that reminds me of getting up, flipping the disc over, and dropping the needle onto side two. And, as the record drifts to the traditional low point of the last quarter, the album evolves slowly to a series of barely whispered vocals in "Lights In The Sky", before unfolding with "Corona Radiata" to evaporate to the ether with a strong set of instrumental passages that fiercely rebuke the old-standing `side two' lag of a vinyl Lp where you could hear a hardworking but creatively constipated band squeezing out songs with an eye for a fast-approaching release date. This is not contractual obligation but the work of someone who wants to, not someone who has to.
The songs here are subtle evolutions from the longstanding Nine Inch Nails template : songs aren't thought-out to the gazillionth permutation but products of an organic spring of inspiration. There are drawbacks - notably, single "Discipline" features a vocal mistakenly introduced (and hastily silenced) a bar too early due to a rushed mix, and the tracks fade-out is spliced too early : an inevitable result of a quick workrate. Lyrically, the album is a sparser, less complex affair than any previous Nine Inch Nails record, relying on a lyrical repetition that reveals multiple interpretations, on short and relatively straightforward imagery, on vocal melodies that are tonally short and instantly memorable at the same time : in many ways, "The Slip" is the nearest Nine Inch Nails have yet come to evoking the spirit of The Ramones with a guerilla record-and-release ethic and songs that seem to have been born fully formed.
There are certainly some classic NIN moments here : the dense production and organic sounds match the maelstrom of anything in their previous body of work, most notably in instant classics "Discipline" and "Echoplex", and many high points. "The Slip" sounds like the work of a profilic man mining a deep seam of rich creativity and still coming up with the goods.
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not perfect, but cracking nonetheless, 29 Jul 2008
In one sentence, it's better than Ghosts but it's no Year Zero.
But then, very few records, EVER, are better than Year Zero. And as music fans, we can't expect every band to top their last album, as that is a sad impossibility. Still, The Slip is a worthy successor, in as much as it's very good really. It just doesn't have the depth or scope of Reznor's earlier work.
Stylistically it follows the logical path the last two albums set, with the stark, raw instrumentation of YZ and the eerie soundscaping of Ghosts. Some of the songs have shades of past work, most noticeably "1,000,000" and "Discipline", but for the most part there's enough new sound to make the album feel like a progression.
The DVD features the band during rehearsals, playing what are destined to become the five most memorable songs on the album. The performance is spot on, good enough to be released in itself as a studio work. The vibe of experimentation is prominent, with each band member tackling several different instruments and gizmos over the course of the 20-minute set. The packaging, an individually numbered digipak, is continuous with the high level of quality of all NIN releases. Oh, and it has STICKERS, too!
The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, With Teeth and Year Zero all had plenty of time in between to develop, for ideas and concepts to form. Silly as it sounds, in comparison with those records, The Slip is just... an album. Of new music. A compact disc with ten songs on it. The most positive thing to come from this is the realisation that at heart, Reznor is still a musician first and foremost, and he cannot be expected to just redefine business models and nothing more. Every now and then, we can expect something simple. Not an alternate-reality, multimedia masterpiece, or a two-disc instrumental experiment. Just an album. Some great rock music and nothing more. This realisation is both disappointing and hugely relieving at the same time.
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16 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Heresy - 85,601 / 250,000, 31 Jul 2008
Is the hand on Mr.Reznor's shoulder, on the front cover artwork of my
individually numbered CD/DVD set (and how lucky am I feeling about that?),
keeping him in the same place or preventing him from moving forward ?
The dilemma of continuity versus development stands at the still beating
heart of Nine Inch Nails' most recent offering 'The Slip'.
I have long been an admirer of Mr Reznor and his vision.
I emphasise admirer rather than devotee, many of whom would appear
to have made a happy home here on Planet Amazon.
Devotees are, by their very nature, absorbed by and committed to the
understanding and discussion of minutiae.
There is of course nothing inherently wrong with obsession but it
sometimes inhibits the sufferer's ability to stand back and see the
whole picture for want of examining each individual brushstroke.
Against a back catalogue including such peerless gems as 'The Downward Spiral',
'The Fragile', 'With Teeth' and the sublime 'Year Zero',
'The Slip' is a somewhat desultory affair.
Creative freedom is not a cast iron guarantee of quality control.
These ten tracks contribute little to the body of work that we have
come to know and love.
The electricity is still there intermittently...but only just.
Opening track, '999,999' made me sit upright with raw anticipation.
I held my breath too soon.
'1,000,000', 'Letting You' and 'Discipline' are then trundled out in
workmanlike fashion. Drums forward, voice mixed way back.
The heart of these musical ideas however is essentially recycled.
'Echoplex' is an undifferentiated mess.
'Head Down' and 'Demon Seed' almost approach past glories.
'The Four Of Us Are Dying' is a tired and banal instrumental interlude.
For my money (...and yes I did buy it) 'Lights In The Sky' and its'
umbral echo 'Corona Radiata' are technically and emotionally riveting.
The saying "if it ain't broke don't try to fix it" carries some
credence but I'm really beginning to feel that the NIN formula
is running out of steam.
There's nothing wrong with continuity of course.
Palindromic cohorts ABBA managed it within their own world for years.
A little development would none-the-less have been warmly welcomed.
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