When Trent Reznor debuted The Fragile, the followup to his star-making The Downward Spiral some five years after that record’s release, comparisons to Pink Floyd’s go-to double album The Wall abounded. For one thing, Reznor tapped that record’s producer, Bob Ezrin, to help sequence from the chaotic collection of tracks he’d assembled. For another, both records were released at the turn of their respective decades, and could be seen as summary statements for much of the music of the ten years that preceded them.
But the most direct point of comparison is the sheer scale of both recordings. No, not their length, but their height, if you will. Years of overfamiliarity might have dulled our appreciation for just how goddamn towering they both sound. The Wall’s two versions of its anthemic introductory track “In the Flesh” and David Gilmour’s soaring solo on “Comfortably Numb” all but demand you look upward to see where the notes are coming from. Reznor and his collaborators—most notably producer Alan Moulder and guest guitarist Adrian Belew—similarly made The Fragile’s songs sound like vertical constructions, piling element on element, often with dizzying rapidity. And in its newly remastered and rereleased incarnation, The Fragile (2017 Definitive Edition), the record scrapes the sky like never before.
“The Fragile” and “Just Like You Imagined,” highlights of the album’s first disc (thinking it of a CD is a hard habit to break after nearly twenty years), are two of The Fragile’s most effective moments in this regard. Shambling into existence with a slow, steady drum beat that sounds like rattling chains, the title track works its way through three iterations of its chorus, the sole lyric of which is the disarmingly direct promise “I won’t let you fall apart”: first softly, near the bottom of Reznor’s vocal register; then at an ear-splitting, double-tracked shout, accompanied by cinematic synths; and finally with multi-tracked, major-key harmonies that turn the phrase into something close to a prayer. “Just Like You Imagined,” arguably Reznor’s finest moment as a composer, picks up where “The Fragile” leaves off, using that same celestial-chorus harmony construction and prominent cameos from Bowie sidemen Mike Garson on piano and Belew on guitar to create a wordless epic, spiraling upward in volume and intensity.
Which is not to say that The Fragile is all lacerating art-rock bombast. On the Dr. Dre-assisted “Even Deeper” and the late-album high point “The Big Comedown,” Reznor crafts a methodical industrial robo-funk that evokes deep-sea sonar pings and a malfunctioning robot, respectively. “Into the Void,” a direct Black Sabbath reference, juxtaposes the very NIN sentiment “Tried to save myself but my self keeps slipping away” with very un-NIN “ooh-wah-ah-ah” backing vocals. Its follow-up, “Where Is Everybody?,” is a sludgy pelvic thrust with a title cribbed from “The Twilight Zone” and a delightfully dark doggerel chorus: “Pleading and needing and bleeding and breeding and feeding, exceeding…Trying and lying, defying, denying, crying and dying.” Both are reminiscent of first-disc standout “The Wretched,” a relentless throb with a chorus that bellows “Now you know this is what it feels like” (itself an answer to “How does it feel?,” the refrain of Reznor’s collaboration with industrial supergroup Pigface “Suck”) and the almost comically spiteful line “The clouds will part and the sky cracks open and God Himself will reach his fucking arm through just to push you down, just to hold you down.” Misery loves comedy!