Retirement never suited
Trent Reznor. A workaholic who tempers his obsessive nature with a healthy streak of perfectionism,
Reznor has put
Nine Inch Nails in hibernation before, but the difference between the five years separating 2013's
Hesitation Marks and 2008's
The Slip and his previous extended gaps -- the half-decade between 1994's
The Downward Spiral and
The Fragile, the six years between
The Fragile and 2005's
With Teeth -- is that
Reznor didn't go into seclusion, he merely stepped away from
NIN.
David Fincher drafted him to score The Social Network in 2010 --
Trent received an Academy Award for his trouble -- and that same year he formed
How to Destroy Angels with longtime collaborator
Atticus Ross and Mariqueen Maandig. Echoes of these two projects can be heard within the disciplined, detailed
Hesitation Marks but much of the album's measured mood derives from the great settling within
Reznor's personal life. He married Maandig in 2009 and subsequently had two children, so he's a decidedly different musician in 2013 than he was in 1993: he's not the tortured, angry young rebel struggling with addictions and angst, he's a sober family man. Sobriety centered
Reznor and working in other capacities reinvigorated him, leading to the masterful
Hesitation Marks, where he cannily evokes the past within the cloak of the future while focusing on the present. Certainly,
Hesitation Marks brings to mind some of the earliest
Nine Inch Nails records, particularly in how it's built upon actual danceable rhythms, but the sonic palette is brighter and broader than either
Pretty Hate Machine or
The Downward Spiral, feeling expansive even when it's punctuated with jarring, jagged bursts of electric noise and bursts of clustered beats.
Reznor enlisted a bunch of art rock vets to help achieve this coiled, cloistered sound --
King Crimson guitarist
Adrian Belew and bassist
Pino Palladino play often,
Lindsey Buckingham throws in some guitar; on the deluxe edition,
Todd Rundgren Utopia-fies "All Time Low" with layers of harmonies -- and the additional musicians help keep the album open. Even if "Everything" -- a surprising power pop rush that's easily the most exuberant
Nine Inch Nails has ever sounded -- was excised,
Hesitation Marks would qualify as the most hopeful
NIN album ever. Pain still punctuates the lyrics,
Reznor still slides into moody black pools of sound, but there is no wallowing here, no fetishization of darkness. There is shade and light within
Reznor's immaculate constructions, there is the ebb and flow of life, there is joy within the sheer sheets of sound.
Hesitation Marks makes it quite clear that
Trent Reznor is no longer an angry young man but rather a restless, inventive artist who is at peace with himself, and the result is a record that provides real, lasting nourishment. [A two-LP/one-CD version was also released.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine