Call me out of touch, but it wasn’t until I checked out Pitchfork today that I even knew there was a new Nine Inch Nails album out. The title, apparently, is With Teeth, and it seems to be getting pretty decent reviews, once you factor out all the “He’ll never be as popular/good as he was when The Downward Spiral came out” poo-poohing.
I was having a conversation a few nights ago in which Pretty Hate Machine came up, and I was saying that even though it would probably sound rather dated were I able to listen to it for the first time again, it’s probably one of my favorite albums ever. It consistently makes my list of Top 5 Desert Island Albums whenever that conversation comes up. The Downward Spiral was good, I thought, but not great, and while I still bought The Fragile on the day it came out, I recall thinking that it was somewhat overindulgent and wandering.
Long story short, I can’t decide whether it’s even worth it to me to check out the new record.