Here I am saying The Slip is the best Nine Inch Nails album since the first one when I haven't really listened to any of them since Broken. So I've been trying to catch up, going from recent to older; Year Zero and With Teeth are actually better than I thought, but neither are reach-out-and-grabby like The Slip, and both suffer from album bloat. I am especially impressed with the opener from With Teeth, "All the Love in the World," which starts with a dub beat before morphing into a piano ballad (with falsetto, even!) and then finally an arena rocker:
Trent is relentless with his morbidly dour lyrics, though; it becomes overbearing after a while. I think I can place them all into three categories:
- I have low self-esteem.
- We live in a dystopia.
- Living in a dystopia has given me low self-esteem.
Did I miss anything? What would Nine Inch Nails sound like if fronted by, say, Tom Waits and his morbidly gleeful lyrics? Like this, I bet:
This song contains one of my all-time favorite weird couplets:
Turn the dust out, oh clear a way
When the injury swells up, it will not be contained
Yeah! What the hell does that mean? I don't know, but it sure is catchy! Peter Hope first emerged in 1983 as the lead singer for The Box, a Sheffield band made up of former ClockDVA members. Mick Fish give some details in his book about Cabaret Voltaire, Industrial Evolution:
The Box tried a number of singers, one who sort of whooped like a Red Indian chief but couldn't sing in tune. They even played two gigs with Mal [Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire] on vocals -- a marriage of styles that was quite successful in its own way.... The Box eventually advertised for a singer. By far the best response came from Pete Hope from Hertford. Vocally somewhere between Tom Waits and Howlin' Wolf, he moved up to Sheffield with his young family.
Hope's inventive lyrics and unbridled singing style perfectly complemented The Box's no-wave skronk. Although they released several records, The Box never broke out, and they disbanded in 1985. Peter Hope then embarked on a series of one-off collaborations: this EP with synth whiz David Harrow (now known as James Hardway), an album with Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H. Kirk, an album with Jonathan S. Podmore (now known as Jono Podmore a.k.a. Kumo), and a 12" single with studio engineer Mark Estdale as Chain:
I just adore that gothic-industrial-funk sound; if only that had caught on in the way Nine Inch Nails did. Maybe it'll come back... Peter Hope, where are you?