THE SLIP

The Slip finds Trent Reznor in an uncharacteristically bad mood - and why shouldn't it? Having finally untangled himself from the contract tangle he'd been caught up in ever since the Pretty Hate Machine era, and having won critical acclaimed and proved that he could do without a record company altogether with the superb Ghosts I-IV release, things were looking pretty bright at this point for him.

The Slip, I think, is meant to be an expression of that. The title is clearly meant to refer to how he gave the record companies "the slip" and escaped their clutches; on top of that, this is some of the most outright happy music Trent's ever put out. Sure, there's still his breathy, angsty vocals, but those beats don't lie: this is a bouncy NIN party album.

Apparently it was originally meant to be an EP but Reznor found himself on a creative roll and ended up making it a full-length; to be honest, I'd say that whilst it's a fun industrial dance album it's no Pretty Hate Machine, so perhaps a bit of editing back down to EP length might have been called for. To be honest, at this point I think it was pretty clear that Reznor's creativity was far more in tune with the ambient soundscapes of Ghosts than the pop-industrial of his past - and his critically acclaimed soundtrack work in collaboration with Atticus Ross since then for The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo rather bears that out. At the same time, I can't hold The Slip against Reznor too much, since he did at least release this as a free download.