Say what you want about Trent Reznor’s unfortunate career-long attachment to adolescent angst—he’s forty-something, it’s ridiculous, fine, whatever—the fact is that Nine Inch Nails is still one of the only rock bands making records that sound innovative and distinctive. Add Reznor’s endless needling of his erstwhile label, Universal Music Group, on his website, and his frequent and vocal assertions that he’d rather fans steal his music than purchase it from a lawsuit-happy music conglomerate, and you have a prototype for the options successful bands have to distribute their work in the future.

Notorious for his four-year gaps between releases, Reznor seems to be making up for lost time: following last year’s acclaimed dystopian fantasy Year Zero—his last for Universal Music Group, or any other label—Reznor has in the past few months released a 36-track instrumental album, Ghosts I-IV, through nin.com, as well as a ten-track freebie record, The Slip (offered with the adorable phrase “this one’s on me”). The effect on Reznor’s reputation has been unambiguously positive. He’s had it with major-label politicking, knows how to put his fans first, and apparently he hasn’t lost any ground when it comes to raking in cash—Ghosts’ deluxe limited edition, complete with fancy art books and audio DVDs, sold out in less than a month. It cost $300, which puts Radiohead’s $80 In Rainbows package to shame.

As an album, The Slip is pretty slapdash—poorly paced, too much filler, doesn’t “gel”—but, following the sterile, conceptually elegant Ghosts, it’s a fair assessment of Reznor’s skills as a pop songwriter. Two songs make the album utterly worthwhile—“Echoplex,” a moody, inventive exercise in Eno-isms, and “Lights In The Sky,” a stark, six-minute murder ballad performed with only piano and vocals. But most of the tracks suffer from either anemic songwriting or vapid overproduction, and overall the record straddles pop traditionalism and studio-enhanced grime so awkwardly that one almost anticipates a Reznor collaboration with Kelly Clarkson. I mean, there's a reason it's free.

In a way, it seems like the art of Nine Inch Nails has become less about the music and more about the new and creative ways in which it is being marketed and consumed. It’s important to note that The Slip was issued with a Creative Commons license, which allows consumers to freely distribute the album non-commercially without fear of reprisal. Reznor is smart enough to know that most intelligent people under 40 can acquire any of his albums without paying for it anyway, and he’s also wealthy enough to give away tunes for the rest of his life without suffering any lifestyle privation. As we saw with Radiohead earlier this year, financially comfortable bands are able to experiment with their careers in a way most other bands can’t afford, and what better way to tear up a paycheck than by dropping smoke bombs on the RIAA's picnic?

nin.com

The Slip download

Creative Commons

This is really the new NIN video.