Hesitation Marks in Bloomington, MN

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
and 2005's
With Teeth
-- is that
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
Mariqueen Maandig
. Echoes of these two projects can be heard within the disciplined, detailed
but much of the album's measured mood derives from the great settling within
'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
and working in other capacities reinvigorated him, leading to the masterful
, where he cannily evokes the past within the cloak of the future while focusing on the present. Certainly,
brings to mind some of the earliest
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
, feeling expansive even when it's punctuated with jarring, jagged bursts of electric noise and bursts of clustered beats.
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
has ever sounded -- was excised,
would qualify as the most hopeful
album ever. Pain still punctuates the lyrics,
still slides into moody black pools of sound, but there is no wallowing here, no fetishization of darkness. There is shade and light within
's immaculate constructions, there is the ebb and flow of life, there is joy within the sheer sheets of sound.
makes it quite clear that
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. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine