Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

You really have to admire Trent Reznor’s staying power…

After writing, closing, and burning the book on industrial dance, he seemed to coast for years. The Fragile (1999) had some savage and compelling moments, but it fell far short of the standard Reznor set with The Downward Spiral (1994). With Teeth (2005) and Year Zero (2007) offered diluted versions of Nine Inch Nails, and — be honest — can you hum a single note from the 110-minute, four-disc collection Ghosts? It was easy to write Reznor off as an archive when he announced the formation of How To Destroy Angels, and to write off the project itself as a love letter to a young, exotic wife. But something pretty unexpected came in 2010: the debut EP was excellent. An Academy Award for the 2010 soundtrack to the David Fincher film The Social Network only confirmed it: the man isn’t going anywhere. Nor should he.

Expectations were high with the recent announcement of another original soundtrack. Another collaboration with Atticus Ross, another David Fincher motion picture, another 39 tracks. Fincher has famously stated his preference for “movies that scar,” and his latest is no exception. Based on Stieg Larsson’s posthumous novel Män som hatar kvinnor (“Men Who Hate Women”) and named after the book’s English-language translation, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a long, cold, brutal film. Strictly speaking the story of a disappearance — an ancient one, in law enforcement terms — at least three of the film’s subplots reveal how deeply a misnomer the English-language rechristening really was: the unsolved, religious-themed murder of a woman at the hands of Nazi Swedes. The molestation and eventual rape of a ward of the Swedish state, by her corrupt “Advokat” and social worker. And the primary male lead’s rather vain aloofness and puppydog philandering.

A motion picture soundtrack seems antithetical to the slow-cook tinkering required for artists like Reznor, whose songwriting proceeds one tiny, curious adjustment at a time: volume, pitch, speed, and the addition of innumerable effects to acoustic instruments, field recordings and other samples. Frequently — and true audiophiles might braces themselves for this — a motion picture soundtrack is an afterthought. During the editing phase, the production team will build a film around temp tracks: music that already exists, and is intended only as a preliminary sketch. Inevitably the sketch becomes the blueprint, and the producers are stuck with a choice: groveling for usage rights or approaching a composer for a similar piece of original music. Deadlines loom weeks away, days, sometimes. For those listeners who prefer The Downward Spiral and cannot abide Reznor’s more recent material, The Social Network OST may seem rushed. And that is why.

For the Dragon Tattoo score, Fincher gave Reznor and Ross a year. This way — instead of editing the score around completed film scenes — Fincher edited the film scenes to a completed original score.

The decanting has certainly improved the flavor. In a Fresh Air interview, Reznor states that Fincher sought “coldness,” and rejected the idea of an orchestral score. The composers found “a bunch of upright pianos for cheap,” and modified them in various ways: clothespins, replacing strings with nails, experimenting with buzzing strings. Reznor and Ross employed “lots of acoustic instruments” meant to be “played imperfectly.” Always the synthesizer tundra, the ambient purr underneath, and digital manipulations of every kind: Reznor is no longer that Cleveland hothead furiously composing Broken to raise legal fees. He is a keynote electroacoustic lecturer.

And the principal theme of the lecture would be trickling: there is no other way to depict the slow droplets of information percolating forth from a 40-year-old disappearance case than that. The film demanded a soundtrack that trickles, and this is where Reznor and Ross succeed triumphantly, without so much as a draft of the script for inspiration.

“A Thousand Details” is a common theme in the film’s final cut. The acoustic preparations here hint at something between ballroom piano and hammered dulcimer: it is a stark introduction, albeit an uptempo one. White and frenetic, like a Scandinavian blizzard. Enter the familiar guitar, as carbon-tipped and dissonant as always. “Hidden In Snow” might best showcase the soundtrack’s ethic of slight imperfections. The central riff features muted, incomplete piano notes performed shoulder-to-shoulder with fuller, more conventional ones, wind-howl synthesizer and remote guitar, locally anesthetized. The droplets of information continue to cache. “She Reminds Me of You” is another repeating motif, a one-handed bell melody, slightly mad, and only threatening in a refined, old-money way. The canvas of guitar drones is expertly chilling.

The highlight of the score is the collaboration with Karen O, an “Immigrant Song” cover that wins an unexpected trifecta: crackling with industrial energy, perfect for opening credits, yet fully recognizable as a Led Zeppelin creation. It blurs any line between the guilty pleasure and those of the more innocent variety, and it’s almost as out of place in the soundtrack as the title sequence is in the movie. The darkly-lit, petroleum-rich, nearly Gigeresque animation of the film’s opening minutes is a telling contrast to its snowy visuals and, yes, glacial pacing.

At 174 minutes, this could easily be the longest album in your collection: one that cries out for a playlist, a bit of trimming. The Bryan Ferry cover “Is Your Love Strong Enough” seems a bizarre choice for source material, and the update comes off as unintentionally earnest, something of a non sequitur. Indeed, the last quarter of the album seems to sag, although that might just be the inevitable thaw of listening for so long. And “Great Bird Of Prey” (track #33) is outstanding, some older-school Reznor with slow stick-fight percussion, downy synthesizer, and creepy vocal samples.

This is a major release, from an award-winning artist. CD purchase and immediate digital downloads are available now, courtesy of The Null Corporation. Or preorder the deluxe vinyl version, from an edition of 3,000, available for shipping on February 6.

- Fred Nolan for Fluid Radio