Let's Dissect A Song!

5.4.10

4:22 pm

Okay.

This morning a track from the forthcoming self-titled Reznor, his wife, Atticus Ross side project, How To Destroy Angels, was put up on Pitchfork.

It's generated abut 30 pages of chatter on the official nin.com forums, obviously.

And why should I be left out of the judging-by-its-covertude?

I shan't, that's whyn't.

In a nutshell, some of it sounds like parts of a few NIN songs, namely "Me, I'm Not" and "Corona Radiata".

It also reminds me of a Rasputina song called "Zodiac".

The lyrics are...well, not great, and the only vocals are done by Mariqueen who does a husky, female whisper like you've heard before in everything with a husky, female whisper.

That said, it isn't bad.

It's good, and there's a lot of interesting layers there that float in and out of perception depending on how much attention you're paying to the song.

One such layer is an awesome deep, oceanic sounding guitar effect that nails the water imagery xmax.

There is, however, an odd mixing of metaphors when they throw in a line about "looking out a window at a swarm of locusts" right before a line about "keeping one's head above the tide".

Then again, the song is called "A Drowning", but the album and band are called How To Destroy Angels, so maybe there's some religious content in store for us.

Unless it's a tide of locusts.

Which doesn't work for me, personally.

Overall, it sounds like a "Ghosts" track with lyrics.

Whatever; Trent Reznor is making new music.

And pretty soon he'll make more.

You can hear the new track here.