Next year, the record generally judged to be Nine Inch Nails’s best, The Downward Spiral, will turn 20. That boggles my fucking mind – I’ll be 27 when that happens, but I got into that album when I was 14, around seven years after its release. So, NIN doesn’t feel like a legacy act to me. Trent Reznor’s brainchild is 24 now, predating certain bands that have taken on the legacy role, like Pearl Jam. But, now having heard the latest NIN album, Hesitation Marks, approximately two dozen times, I can safely say that there’s no repetitive resting-on-laurels shit about it, beyond the melodic sensibilities, and general dark atmosphere that Reznor can’t – and shouldn’t – shake.
I was worried that Hesitation Marks might epitomize the “shut-up-and-play-the-hits” mentality. If it had, it would’ve undoubtedly featured the trademark NIN sound and aesthetic. Recent releases – like With Teeth (2005), the instrumental collection Ghosts (2008) and The Slip (2008) – all did, but despite being good, decent and very good albums, respectively, they showed warning signs of self-repetition, particularly Teeth. Year Zero (2007), the only other post-Reznor-sobriety NIN album, is the only outlier – an apocalyptic, abrasive concept album with no definable sound but its own. I hoped for another one with a similarly unique vision, but honestly didn’t expect it.
What Marks does so effectively is combine echoes of the old NIN – which are most evident on lead single “Came Back Haunted” – with musical and lyrical directions that are unprecedented but quite welcome. The only song besides “Haunted” that could’ve come from an earlier album is the breathtakingly sad-but-hopeful electronic ballad “Find My Way,” and both those tracks still have a freshness to them. The former allows Reznor to metaphorically sum up the history of NIN. The latter takes the form of a prayer (literally – he sings “Oh dear Lord, hear my prayer”) for old demons to remain, finally, in the past. For the first time, he is acknowledging the existence of his pain and fears, but not conceding to them. He’s also pushing them away with maturity and perspective, not rage. At 48, he’s come too far for these feelings to truly keep him down.
This might not seem immediately apparent. On “Copy of A,” Reznor sings, “I am just a finger on a trigger on a finger, doing everything I’m told to do.” That sounds, on the surface, like a man defeated. You could say the same of “Disappointed,” which features the lyric “Think by now, you’d figured out, that nothing’s gonna change – and I am part of the reason.” But, considering Reznor’s tone in interviews he’s given promoting the album and the marked lack of lyrical/vocal fury on it – there’s no screaming, and only one song, “All Time Low,” has any profanity – I don’t think defeated is how he feels. I like to believe that he’s saying, these dark things are there, and they may always be there, but they don’t have to own me – or you. This is also the first album of his to contain what seems like a love song – “I Would For You” – since “We’re In This Together” (from 1999’s The Fragile). Considering that he’s now a happily married father of two, that makes a lot of sense.
The newly nuanced lyrical perspective of Reznor’s is not nearly as surprising as the new directions taken by the majority of the music on Hesitation Marks. “All Time Low” is…funky? That’s not quite the right word, but Adrian Belew’s guitar work on it takes cues from Prince, and the beat is ideal for a more adventurous club, much like “Me, I’m Not” or “Closer.”
In fact, much of Marks simultaneously shows how in tune Reznor is with contemporary electronic sounds – this is, by far, not one of NIN’s “rock” records – and how much of what we now call EDM wouldn’t exist without his work. “Copy of A” would kill if dropped into the middle of a risk-taking DJ set, as would “Satellite.” “Disappointed” mines the same classic house sounds that artists, like Disclosure and DJ Rashad are now adopting to great critical acclaim, but with the unique Reznor spin that many directly or indirectly imitate but none can match. The beats on “Running” and “In Two” and the beginning of “I Would For You” sound practically like goddamn modern trap/dubstep. But, Reznor isn’t ripping off Flosstradamus/Skrillex/Bassnectar/Dillon Francis/etc. to court younger listeners – he helped build the framework for those sounds.
Skrillex owes Reznor royalties for a lot more than a haircut from 1989, and my other favorite album of 2013 – Kanye West’s Yeezus – is extremely NIN/industrial-influenced. (Kanye and Reznor are confirmed fans of each others’ music.) Hesitation Marks also bears the influence of considerably more out-there electronic stuff, like Oneohtrix Point Never and The Knife, on songs like “While I’m Still Here” and the coda of “All Time Low.” As with the other examples I mentioned, this is done to reaffirm Reznor’s past bona fides and present musical adventurousness.
Like I said, rock sounds aren’t much in evidence here, despite the guitar work credited to Reznor, Adrian Belew and Lindsey Buckingham (yep, that one) on most of the songs. The only songs where rock is predominant are “Haunted” and the polarizing “Everything,” the latter of which sounds kinda like The Cure on steroids – and I fucking love it.
Hesitation Marks is an album that will be heard with puzzled curiosity or whiny rage by many rockists (check the YouTube comments for a bunch of these songs) and probably unheard by many EDM fans who might – operative word “might” – like a lot of it if they tried it. But no matter what, no one is making music quite like this in either of those genres. No artist or band out there right now has Reznor’s way with melody (his voice remains pitch-perfect) and no one has his auteurist command of the sounds he loves – buzzing, lurking, occasionally menacing synths/electronics, minor-key piano, rich bass, forceful, danceable beats and distorted guitar. No artist that makes dark, emotionally raw music (aside from Savages, The National, CHVRCHES and Kanye) is capable of taking on the themes Reznor tackles on this record with such resonance, earnestness and power. On what is definitively one of the best albums of Nine Inch Nails’s long career, Trent Reznor – to paraphrase one of his titles – is not remotely adrift and is approaching something close to being at peace.
Liam Green can be reached at lgreen@thoughtpollution.com.