Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

And there I was thinking that Ghosts would be the only Nine Inch Nails record of 2008. How wrong am I? And how productive is Trent Reznor these days? Jeez. Anyways, Trent feels that he has hit a songwriting peak, aided by the addition of Robin Finck to their rehearsals of the touring they are about to do in the USA this summer. The result is The Slip - the 8th studio album by the industrial rockers and given out free by Reznor this morning, with artwork included. This was his way of saying thank you to the fans saying 'this one's on us.'

This is also definitely not the next part of Ghosts. What this ends up as is a much more direct album than Ghosts and Year Zero. 1,000,000 (the first proper track after the intro of 999,999) is a clear statement of intent - a song that rocks. Hard. The next song, Letting You, is even more brutal in its drumming and its clear at this point that Trent has found his bite again after the peaceful ambiance on Ghosts.

The two songs released for free by the band in the last couple of weeks follow. Discipline has now fully grown on me after my scathing review of it first time around and I now concur with the notion that this is a groovy song. Bass-driven, heavy, yet as danceable as The Hand That Feeds and Only, this could be a real highlight in the live sets. Echoplex is a pretty chilled out song in comparison but it has a really cool and sleek vibe to it. Heads Down is another typical NIN rocker with a bit of techno freestyling akin to The Great Destroyer from Year Zero added for good measure.

From here in on, the album very bluntly takes on a different tone. Lights In The Sky tries to be an intimate, raw, edgy piano ballad but it ends up being something that NIN have done before in the past a lot better. This leads into seven-minute instrumental Corona Radiata - the track most reminiscent of anything off Ghosts - which, whilst with its moments, is unspectacular. The Four Of Us Are Dying continues the ambient vibe but one with a more industrial sound and considerably louder. Demon Seed finishes off the album, but even that is instantly forgettable.

So, overall, this album definitely has its fair share of good tracks - something of a relief after the experimentations of their instrumental project. There are some stinkers towards the end that let down the album, but what people shouldn't forget is that Nine Inch Nails can still produce heavy, angry, noisy rock songs almost two decades after their debut record.

RATING - 7/10

You can download The Slip for free here.

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Editors - An End Has A Start

A very quick disclaimer. I know that this album was out last summer, but I only bought it today. All the album reviews I post on Musical Chairs will be albums that I've acquired as opposed to trying to be up-to-date. If I try and be up-to-date it ends up being rather formulaic and boring, which is what this blog should NOT be. Instead, I want to have a sense of spontaneity.

Anyway.

An End Has A Start is the second album by Editors, who hail from Birmingham. I was a fan of their debut album, The Back Room, in 2005 and was very intrigued as to what they would do next. After hearing Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors last year for the first time, I immediately dismissed it. But a quick succession of solid singles has slowly started to turn me around, and now I've finally decided to give it a go.

And it was £6 from HMV (yes, I know, HMV! A nice change from rip-off pricing).

It's a solid follow up, and also a completely gloomy one in its theme of death. The one clear difference on this album in terms of sound is that it sounds far more bigger and grandiose than The Back Room. One is almost tempted to utter the band beginning with U and ending in 2, but it's such an inevitable comparison, I'll save myself. These moments do work very well. Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors has turned from a track I dismissed the first time round into a statement of intent that is one of my favourites

One of the factors contributing to the more expansive sound is a more significant use of piano. It adds a sense of drama and it works for almost every track it's used on, with The Racing Rats and Push Your Head Towards The Air notable favourites. Editors though still can produce songs that are straightforward three and a half minute anthems that you can dance to. An End Has A Start and Bones showcase the sound of this four-piece that fans have known and loved. The trademark, eerie guitar sounds courtesy of Peter Urbanowicz and the fast, up-tempo rhythms are more than evident.

You do wonder though, after listening to the album all the way through whether or not you feel totally satisfied with this sophomore attempt. Even though the length is ideal and the songs are solid, I ask myself whether this is what I wanted from Editors for album two. I still don't really know, even whilst writing this up. What I can say though is that it is a solid album and that the potential is there for them to make even better albums. This is not their masterpiece, just merely a good album.

RATING 7/10

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Guillemots - Red

Guillemots released their 2006 debut album, Through The Window Pane, at a time when guitar bands were here, there and everywhere. It was a refreshing change to the Arctic Monkeys and their fellow strummers. It was a debut album that was beautiful, lush with arrangements that could make your heart melt and full of songs that were a mix of heartbreaking balladry and fun pop songs. It deserved its Mercury Prize nomination and it should have won it. But guess who did...

Red, their second album, could not be anymore different. This album feels like a different band compared to the gentleness of their debut. Guillemots as a band are ready to loosen up, relax, and make an album that is striking, bold and ambitious. The result is an album that has some of their best work in their short career, and a few real duds.

And if you need any further proof of the change in direction, you can look as early as the album opener, Kriss Kross. It's as immediate an opener as you'll hear on any album all year (thus far, of course) and it's fantastic. The strings are more frantic, the energy level has multiplied by the bucketload, and Ffye Dangerfield, the lead singer, sounds like a more determined, confident man. He asks 'are you coming out tonight?' This song makes me want to say yes instantly.

Another thing you notice about Red is the versatility of the music styles. R'n'B, disco, electronica, jazz, pop rock, jangle pop...the list is endless. The results of this challenging experimentation is mixed.

When it works, it really works. Cockateels is an exotic adventure straight out of Bollywood, with sweeping string arrangements. Last Kiss is an excellent stab at disco with a pulsating bass and gorgeous female vocals. Words is a downtempo jazzy number that finds Ffye in his element with some truly heartbreaking lyrics over a background of musical subtilties.

But the true highlight is perhaps the most simplest song - Falling Out Of Reach. It's an acoustic ballad that feels completely organic and would not feel out of place on their debut. It's touching, heartwarming and one of the best things they've put to tape. If it's not released as a single then I'll fume at Polydor.

But, when it doesn't work, the results are disappointing and frustrating. Pop rock stomper Get Over It is far too average of a song and a weak choice for a lead singer. Big Dog is a brave, but foolish attempt at an R'n'B hit. Standing On The Last Star is a musically quite sound jangle pop song and would be more brilliant if it weren't for the fact that Ffye's voice sounds an awful lot like Mika. For every two decent tracks, one duff one comes along to spoil the fun.

And that is what prevents from liking this album a lot. And I really, really want to like this. If Through The Window Pane was Guillemots' stab at a classical pop record, then this is an attempt at making pop music for the current generation. At most points, it works. At a few points, it doesn't. The cohesion, because of the shortcomings, feels lost.

But, this record still makes Guillemots a band you just can't pigeonhole to a certain genre. And that is a very good thing indeed.

RATING - 7/10

Guillemots

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The Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely

Aaaah, The Raconteurs. Their debut album release in 2006 called Broken Boy Soldiers wasn't too shabby. Songs like Steady As She Goes, Store Bought Bones and Hands rocked hard but had an air of pop sensibilities, similar in a sense to the work of Brendan Benson. The one main criticism I had with it though was that it was far, far too short (just over half an hour) and all the fun was over in a flash. So I had high hopes for a second album, hoping that the band would learn from mistakes in the past.

Since listening to it, I've learnt two key things.

The first thing, and the key reason that stops me from liking this album a lot, is the length, YET AGAIN. This album is 55 minutes long. There are about three or four songs on this album that just do not belong on here. Songs like Attention and Carolina Drama just sound so boring and uninteresting. This kind of thing makes the album more of a frustrating listen than Broken Boy Soldiers. You're ultimately left thinking, at the end of the album, that this could have been over 15 minutes or so ago and would feel far more satisfied for it.

The second thing is how much of a Jack White album this feels. There are several tracks on it that spell out his influence quite clearly, from some of the riffing on tracks like Salute Your Solution, the piano tinkling on tracks like You Don't Understand Me and Pull This Blanket Off, the trumpets from last White Stripes album Icky Thump on tracks like The Switch And The Spur...the list is endless.

There are, despite my grumblings, some pretty darn good, rockin' tracks on this album. Salute Your Solution is an ideal choice for a first single and is easily the most direct song on Consolers Of The Lonely. Five On The Five, Many Shades Of Black and the title track, Consoler Of The Lonely, are all also notable highlights. The Switch And The Spur is the true highlight though, with its absolutely brilliant and dramatic arrangements and it is probably as close as The Raconteurs get to something epic-sounding.

So, overall, there are some good songs on here, but they are all pretty much overshadowed by the issues I have with Consolers Of The Lonely. The fact that The Raconteurs can't seem to make an album of decent length makes them turn from a band with the potential to make something really awesome into a band that frustrates my musical ears.

What's even more worrying, potentially, is that I still feel that they haven't made an album that doesn't feel like more of a side-project for Mr Benson and Mr White. Consolers Of The Lonely does feel like at points the wealth of leftover material from Jack's short-lived Icky Thump phase of his White Stripes time.

It's not necessarily a disaster, just a bit of a disappointment.

RATING: 6/10

The Raconteurs

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Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts

It was always going to be interesting to see what Trent Reznor would do after he broke free from Interscope last year. His last album under Nine Inch Nails, Year Zero, was a departure to a more electronically textured sound and came third in my Albums of 2007 list. I still hold it in high regards as one of the best albums that Nine Inch Nails has released.

Which leads us to Ghosts. It' a 4-volume set (although Trent has promised that more might be coming soon) of ambient, instrumental music and the whole thing is just shy of two hours long. Instrumentals are not a new thing for Nine Inch Nails as there have been several of these on past albums like The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, and Year Zero, and all of those pieces fitted in well within the context of the respective albums.

It's a heavy listen. There are certain instrumentals on Ghosts that work really well and some that don't. You could say hit and miss. There also doesn't seem to be anything that connects them together as such. I was expecting it to be something coherent but instead it feels like a bunch of instrumentals. However, that said, the dynamics of the instrumentals are amazing. The softer, piano led ones are beautiful to listen to and the heavier, almost full-band like sound of the louder ones are fascinating to listen to.

So what is my overall impression? I think it's a brave thing to put out something like Ghosts. It is without doubt Trent's most demanding and challenging piece of work to date but, like Year Zero, the rewards are there to be reaped. However, for me anyway, I'm not sure whether I would feel like listening it as much as past albums. The ideas though are definitely there but, if anything, it works best as background music.

RATING - 6/10

DISCLAIMER: This is just a summary of my thoughts after the first listen. If it changes, I'll post up a second opinion in the future.

Nine Inch Nails

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An In Rainbows review

It came out smoothly on Wednesday. Here is my track-by-track verdict:

15 Step
The recorded version is not really changed from the live versions. It's a good thing because it was one of the new songs that probably didn't even need changing. As good as it ever was and perhaps the most danceable song on the album.

Bodysnatchers
Would quite possibly be the first single if there were any for this record. It's the most 'rock' sounding song on the album and it's been given a sort of raw sound on record - the guitars that now sound incredibly fuzzy. If anything, it reminds me of a next-gen version of Electioneering.

Nude
The first real indicator of the difference between this and all of Radiohead's other albums. Jonny's only gone and done string arrangements. 'Nude' has been ten years in the making and they have utterly nailed it. Which is just as well, because I wasn't the biggest fan of the song originally, especially after the version they did live last year which was a bit boring.

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Like Bodysnatchers, they've managed to add something to this song in the studio. The guitar effects on it really add to the atmosphere of the track. The drumming of Phil Selway on this is fantastic too.

All I Need
My favourite off the album. The song is one that gradually builds - starting with drums and a very scary-sounding bass line, then moving to xylophone and piano and then an explosion of sound towards the end. If you liked anything like 'Climbing Up The Walls' then you will love this track. They've done so much to it and have totally surpassed my expectations.

Faust Arp
The only new song that no one that heard and it turns out to be a short acoustic guitar and strings song. It doesn't serve as an meaningless interlude though as the strings are fantastically hypnotising and really compliment Thom's guitar playing and vocals.

Reckoner
It has to be a totally different 'Reckoner' to the one that debuted in 2001, which was far more rockier. This version reminds me of 'Analyse' off of ThomYorke's solo album 'The Eraser' and totally threw me on first listen. Upon further listens, it is a nice and gentle song.

House Of Cards
I've always hated House Of Cards. Last year I complained about it being overlong and incredibly boring. And Radiohead haven't changed it really.

Jigsaw Falling Into Piece
Formally known as 'Open Pick' and now featuring some nice acoustic work from Thom. A fun track that's fast, doesn't rest and has some excellent string work towards the end.

Videotape
I expected so, so much more from it. It's still a very good track but when they played it live it was far more epic as it just kept building and building. On record, it's just Thom on the piano with an unorthodox drum loop. It just didn't grab me really. A good song but it could have been a lot better.

So overall, I'd give it an 8/10. It was never going to be their best but they still 'have it' and are miles better than anything else that British music has come up with this year.

Buy 'In Rainbows'
Dead Air Space
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