Live from Hoboken

THE greatest soft drink known to man. Plain and simple.

Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

 

Despite having a fanbase that has deified him for decades, Trent Reznor can never be accused of thinking that he's Jesus.  Though, it's hard to defend that statement when Reznor comes like a thief in the night and releases a new Nine Inch Nails studio album with no fanfare but the fans' buzz.  It gets even harder to defend when he gives it to the people for free, no small miracle in the music industry.  And it becomes virtually impossible when you take into account that the album is far from table scraps, as their February instrumental release Ghosts I-IV was accused of being.  Entitled The Slip (Halo 27, for those of you still counting), this offering is some of the meatiest NIN we've received in years.

 

Reznor, who turns (*gulp*) 43 next week, is really something impressive.  At a time when he should be reaching irrelevance - he's too old, too successful and too beloved for us to not be a little cynical about his desire to rage against the machine - he's as vital as he ever was, in both the artistic and business senses.  I wrote when NIN's With Teeth was released: "with all the unimaginative, assembly-line music infecting the airwaves, [Reznor] can take the same equipment and create (not synthesize) something unmistakably human."  This being the case, he doesn't reinvent so much as remix himself to stay fresh.  So far, it works well.

 

To sum up The Slip, I will quote my friend Mike: "It's like Broken... on HGH."  It's a reconciliation of 20th and 21st Century NIN.  At 43 minutes, it's their shortest full-length album and, much like post-rehab Reznor himself, lean and mean.  Structurally, The Slip seems to be a nod to his idol and occasional collaborator, David Bowie. It's built very similarly to Bowie's 1977 gem Low; both albums have a first half of songs with lyrics, an instrumental second half designed to mope to, and a grand closer.  Also like Low, it's easy to want to listen to it on repeat.  In my estimation, The Slip is Nine Inch Nails' tightest, most accessible album since The Downward Spiral.

 

The Slip recalls much of the NIN catalogue.  "1,000,000" completes a trilogy of songs begun with Wish (from the Broken EP) and continued with Survivalism (off last year's Year Zero); it's also the best of those three.  "Letting You" brings to mind the jungle-like sound of "The Perfect Drug" and makes one wonder if Reznor will ever do that electronica album he occasionally flirts with.  "Discipline" is the album's easy single, along the lines of "The Hand That Feeds" from With Teeth.  And "Lights in the Sky" is a sadder, less angry permutation of "Something I Can Never Have" off NIN's debut, Pretty Hate Machine.  None of this is to say that he's repeating himself, as I'm sure some critics will claim; the truth is, we know Reznor has a signature sound and this is only the fine tuning of that sound. 

 

The truly miraculous thing about The Slip is its price.  It's free.  100% free.  As in no money exchanged whatsoever.  Reznor has gone above and beyond what Radiohead started with In Rainbows last October, gone past the $5 he charged for Saul Williams' brilliant NiggyTardust album last December and Ghosts I-IV this past February.  He has offered the world an album of quality material for free.  It's also 100% DRM-free, meaning we can remix it, add it to a movie, post it on our blogs, anything.  If that isn't a big fuck you to the music industry, I don't know what is.  I think with this, Metallica's assault on Shaun "Napster" Fanning has been karmically evened out.

 

Three years ago, I wondered what the future of Nine Inch Nails would be after With Teeth (which I must admit, I was a little hasty to suggest that it could end up being my favorite, though it is great).  Now that Trent Reznor has extended his musical promise to use technology against itself into the real world, I can see that we have no need to worry.  He is committed to fighting the good fight against the machines, much like Neo in The Matrix.

 

Neo... who is very obviously a Jesus figure.

 

Trent, you just don't make it easy, do you?

Grand Theft Auto IV: Days 4-6 - A Weekend in the City

Unfortunately, I didn't try the online multiplayer features as I promised I would.  Things came up.  However, I stuck to the missions and made some progress (though not as much as I hoped), made a couple of discoveries and triumphed in such a way that will likely slow my progress down.

 

 

FRIDAY

 

Didn't get to play until 12:30am as I met up with friends after work to get some Mexican food in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, which I am aware is today... but who wants to suck down burritos and tequila shots on a Monday night when you have work the next day?  We also saw Iron Man, which more or less delivered on the surprisingly enticing trailer.  Though I have to say that 90% of the enjoyment factor came directly from Robert Downey Jr.'s performance.  My secret shame is that I'm not a big comic geek (though my wife is relieved at that) and so I knew very little about the story going into it.  But it's got a smart enough script, one that gets political without getting heavy-handed, and even if it doesn't raise the bar, it's a worthy addition to the live-action comic book/cartoon genre.  I enjoyed it more than the first Spider-Man and about as much as the first X-Men, though not as much as Batman Begins.  As is the case with those films, I anticipate that the sequel will be even better. 

 

But getting onto GTA, not much happened Friday night.  A couple of missions for Little Jacob, including one where I was ambushed under a bridge in the park.  After that, I just went to bed.

 

 

SATURDAY

 

Played some during the day, netflix at night.  Unfortunately, the time would have been better spent playing.  The first movie was The Golden Compass.  Great effects, interesting story, but felt chopped up.  If it was given another 45 minutes, it might have made a passable film, though nothing as legendary as Lord of the Rings.  I'll never watch the movie again but I think I'll finally read those books.

 

The second movie was Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.  A misfire on all levels.  Sidney Lumet directed one of my favorite films of all time, Network, and pretty much made every classic film of the 1970s that Coppola, Scorsese, and Spielberg didn't.  30 years later, it's safe to say he's lost his touch.  This felt like a film by an old man who was desperate to try and stay relevant to the kids.  Sadly, he picked a script that revels in its cleverness.  It's essentially Reservoir Dogs as written by a David Mamet impostor, structured to be the next level beyond Memento and Pulp Fiction, and filled with leftover emotional insincerity from Crash.  It all looks like it works but it really doesn't.  Really doesn't.

 

I finally got internet access... in the game.  The cleverly, but unusually, named tw@ is the home for my internet geeking.  While surfing around, I found a phone number to call that gives you the name of the song playing on the radio.  It's probably less convenient than just picking up the stupid book and reading through the credits but still, at least I feel like I'm cheating the game somehow; since I'm playing it straight this time through, I can't do much else.  

 

I also discovered that you're supposed to keep your friendships up, a la The Sims.  This is proving to be more difficult than I expected.  I tanked a couple of drop-offs for Little Jacob and my idiot cousin Roman (who needs to be played by Jimmy Kimmel should there be a live-action adaptation) feels neglected.  On the bright side, I'm at 100% with Michelle, though I'm starting to suspect that she's related to Faustin... Faustin, the coke-addled mobster whom I killed on...

 

 

SUNDAY

 

Yes, indeed.  Faustin now sleeps with the fishes.  But before that, I had to transport a truck full of explosives from Broker to Bohan (the fake Bronx).  I was sweating like Roy Scheider during that one.  So in honor of that, I'll be adding Tangerine Dream's "Betrayal (Sorcerer Theme)" to the playlist at the right.  After that, I ran down Faustin's daughter's biker gang boyfriend and wasted him; Faustin's final orders for me were to protect his baby girl.  And I was betrayed by that sonofabitch Dimitri, left to shoot my way out of a warehouse with Little Jacob.  Well, I failed that mission after trying it a few times, so I'm going to have to wait until tonight to try that one again.  Now, though, I'm convinced that Michelle is related to Bulgarin, one of the two bastards who left Niko to die in that warehouse.

 

In reality, however, the big thing was that I got my wife to start playing as well.  On one hand, she now understands why I've spent hours this week sitting in front of the TV instead of, you know, talking to her and stuff.  But on the other hand, I now have to fight her for playing time.  In the end, I guess this has brought us closer together, as I give her driving directions to best outrun the cops. 

 

You know what they say: the family that skirts the law together stays together.