Trent Reznor has always been a solitary mandroid. But the Nine Inch Nails auteur's new band feels like a real partnership, with Reznor (and NIN assist men Atticus Ross and Rob Sheridan) handing lead vocals to his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, for an album of architecturally perfect, slow-slither electro pop. "When I lie on top of you, I'm afraid," she murmurs over tortured bass whir and goth whale noises on "Keep It Together." On "We Fade Away," phrases like "We decimate, eradicate" get whisper-chanted amid wounded-EKG bleat, ice sheets of ambient noise and what sounds like Reznor's buried voice, asking, "Am I just talking to myself?" For once, the answer is no.

“Helen Wheels”

A rollicking good-time hard rocker, "Helen Wheels" was not about a woman but about Paul McCartney's Land Rover, the anthemic chorus voicing the vehicle's reckless joy as "she" took to the road. The song was added to the U.S. version of Band on the Run but was issued only as a single in McCartney's native U.K. "I like that because it's a British road song and there's not many of those around," said McCartney. "It's always Route 66. But Carlisle? How many songs have got Carlisle in them?"