reviews / 2011

TRENT REZNOR & ATTICUS ROSS - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Name: TRENT REZNOR & ATTICUS ROSS – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Item: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Rating: 7.5
Author: Marco Pagliariccio

2011 (The null corporation)

dark-ambient, industrial

by Marco Pagliariccio

7.5

Good old Trent Reznor must have found fresh inspiration in film scoring, after hitting the mark just 12 months earlier with the soundtrack to "The Social Network", alongside his trusty partner Atticus Ross, a score that was even honoured with an Oscar. How else to explain the ability to produce, in under a year, as many as 39 tracks totalling 3 hours of music to accompany a film running over two and a half hours?

Composing for film, of course, isn't the same as having free rein to make a "classic" album: the music has to fall into place and unfold according to the directives and needs dictated by the director and by the film's own narrative. A pre-emptive justification, one might say. Let's be clear about one thing: the compositions by the Reznor-Ross tandem are impeccable in terms of technique, sound definition, and the pulsing, suspended dark atmosphere into which they plunge the listener.

This time, however, unlike the sumptuous 2010 effort, the result is an album that, when judged by classical standards rather than as an excerpt from the film's soundtrack, proves rather hard to digest. Starting with its length. Three hours of melodies winding between vibrating tensions, deathly piano contemplations and increasingly rare outbursts of rage (evidently the film doesn't call for much of that - we'll understand better in February, when the movie hits Italian cinemas), which offer yet further proof of Mr. Self Destruction's superb touch, but which would bring even the most hardcore fan to their knees.

Serving as the alpha and omega of the work are the only two songs in the traditional sense of the term, both covers sung by female voices. "Immigrant Song", sung by Karen O, is what remains of Reznor's past. Powerful drumming underpinning the scratchy voice of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman sketches out an apocalyptic scenario that steers well clear of any Zeppelin-esque echoes, avoiding what could easily have been a slide into trashiness. At the close, instead, we find Mrs Reznor, Mariqueen Maandig, lending her sweet voice to a dark-electro rendition of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough?", drawn from How To Destroy Angels, the project helmed by the Reznor couple.

Between what will inevitably be the album's two export singles, an unusual sense of calm seems to settle over the darkness of the former (?) Nine Inch Nails frontman's world. A calm continually rippled by pitch-black waves that, however, never quite seem able to truly take over. Vibrant when the pace turns sulphurous, bordering on the Ligeti-esque ("Perhelion", "A Pair Of Doves"), the duo's compositional talent explodes in the harder tracks: irresistible, in this regard, are the relentless chaos of "A Thousand Details", the swirling acidity of "An Itch" and the surprising tribal mechanics of "Oraculum".

A work that, on the whole, doesn't lend itself well to traditional listening given its excessive length and its almost dreamlike "formlessness", but one whose sheer grandeur instils the kind of awe felt by someone standing before Michelangelo's Last Judgement: disoriented and enchanted.

Ride the wave of great music

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27/12/2011

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Marco Pagliariccio, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition