I'd always found things to like in Reznor's texture experiments but didn't realize that he'd been this inventive this early. This is a surprisingly complex, detail-packed album, every song full of twitches that defy earthly explanation, coalescing into notes that, against all odds, flow into honest to god songs. From static, guitars, synths, echoes, glitches, foley errors, misplaced bits, filters and the occasional bare moment of melody comes something bracing and beautiful.
The whole thing isn't nearly as terrifying as it wants to be, the years have taken its teeth. But it's still an intricate artifact to watch spin, never more so on the inexplicable, brilliant Closer. That song's still a minimalist-maximalist art-pop masterpiece.
It's not an approach that can sustain an album though. Outside of Closer, the instrumental A Warm Place, and the closer Hurt, the album's relentlessly overbusy, and by the halfway point the hyperdense pinpricks are numbing. What was an intricate puzzle to unwind on track 2 is has become exhausting and countlessly titchy by track 13. Restraint was never Reznor's strong suit, and his career ever after would retrace these steps, blowing past the perfectly-curated album into an unlistenable failed masterwork 3.5/5
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