Nine Inch Nails - "Head Down" (mp3)

When I raved about Ghosts I-IV a few months ago, I had no idea, like anyone else, that Trent Reznor would be releasing another album, one with vocals, just a month later. At the time, it was easy to overrate a lengthy collection of instrumental sketches, since I preferred it in almost every way to the album that preceded it, last year's sonically flat and conceptually overloaded Year Zero. I knew even then that Ghosts was most likely a warmup for a more traditional NIN album, but was pleasantly surprised by how soon it came, and just how much better it is than Zero.

The drive to rush out the album so quickly, to both prove and take advantage of the immediacy of an unannounced digital release, may have contributed to The Slip being the shortest LP the band's ever released, with only 7 out of 10 songs featuring lyrics, but it's fully to the album's benefit. It travels a clear enough arc from beginning to end in short enough time that my attention span is never tested even in the way it is on the still awesome Downward Spiral. "Discipline" (my favorite NIN single since "We're In This Together Now") and "Head Down" have these surprisingly slinky, bass-driven grooves and tight live drums that, I'm realizing more and more, Reznor's been sorely neglecting since Pretty Hate Machine, and "Lights In The Sky" is the kind of quavering ballad that he never should've stopped putting on every album. I'll probably still be listening to this album when he drops another one out of nowhere, oh, any day now.

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