Radiohead - In Rainbows

Nude was my initial instant favourite on the album and I think the spacey arrangement is lovely - probably helps that I'm not a mega-obsessive fan and had no awareness of previous versions of the song. Reckoner and Weird Fishes have taken the lead in my affections in the years since IR was released.

The "Live From The Basement" versions are even better, adding a missing human element.

this video takes a lot of detours to make the simple point that the piano riff in Videotape is syncopated - fun nonetheless:

https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/8/4/16092184/videotape-radiohead-secret-rhythm-earworm

That video is simultaneously interesting and, depending on your point of view, what was wrong with much of modern Radiohead/Yorke.

"Mmmm, I like this. It's complex and inert." :P

i just skimmed that video but listening to "videotape" again it seems like bullshit? i'm no musicologist but it feels like for the piano to be syncopated it has to be syncopated against something, but everything else in the song follows the same timing as the piano until the metronome/click thing that comes in at the end. so i'd say maybe the click sound is syncopated but not the piano.

I think they're right based on the live versions of the songs, especially that festival one. And the drumming (like on the Basement version, and even the studio one) makes a lot more sense this way. But yeah it seems like a silly and stubborn arrangement choice, it just makes it really hard to play, for no real payoff.

Also yes that video could have been 45 seconds long.

maybe the band is thinking of it as being syncopated as they play it but just listening to the album version it's hard to hear it that way

i just skimmed that video...
maybe the band is thinking of it as being syncopated as they play it but just listening to the album version it's hard to hear it that way

yeah, near the end of the video they finally make clear that they're talking about the syncopation in the live version in the song, and that the album version's lack of a backbeat takes away the syncopation, even though there are still traces of to be heard (like in the metronome you mentioned, and also just the phrasing of the vocals imo)

"In Rainbows Turns 10" cash-in headlines should be arriving in a few short weeks. Does life get any better?

I'm listening to the "Live from the Basement" version on Youtube and the piano is establishing a straight beat along with the kick drum, with syncopated flourishes popping up here and there in the accompanying percussion.

maybe it's kind of like an easter egg, from a listening perspective I'm not sure what it adds

I'm surprised Thom rates it so highly, I'd take that and bodysnatchers off In Rainbows if I were sequencing it

I agree. But on this version, there's a pretty clear drum beat that puts the piano/vocals a 1/6th note ahead of each quarter note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isETL6R7x2w

Maybe by the time of the Basement version they decided to stop being so hard on themselves and just play it the way everyone else hears it. Or maybe they didn't want to explain to Clive that "no, actually..."

xp

They're premiering a live show from the In Rainbows era (where they played the full album in order) on youtube rn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppQkKRIQiO8

Here's the note Colin sent a few days ago:

Hello everybody. I hope you’re all safe and well, and not chafing too much between the frustrations of lockdown and the promise of Spring.

It’s been nearly four months since my younger brother wrote, dreaming of being back in the world and playing shows. And here we are, a step closer to that, thanks to science and the vaccines.

Until that happens, we’ve rummaged about again for the next few concerts we’ve loved, from a past life that seems so far away, one we all yearn to return to.

They are all performances we’ve cherished, and we are starting with us playing a very strange concert in a tiny club at the last minute in January 2008, in London. We had been due to play at the Rough Trade record store in East London, but it was moved for safety reasons that evening, to a tiny club called “ 93 ft East “ - maybe it was 93 ft east of the record store, I like to think so anyway.

We played “ In Rainbows “ in the album order, as well as older songs. It was small, sweaty and shouty, and we all absolutely loved it.

If you listen very, very closely, you can just about glean the hint of a fuzz bass on the first song, “ 15 Step “. I think I must’ve trodden on the pedal by mistake. Again. I’d like to take this moment, twelve years later, to apologise to you, and to my colleagues. It won’t happen again. Well, it probably will.

I just love how the video footage looks from the night, all blown out acid colours and soft distorted pinks blues and greens. It’s weirdly in key with the record’s artwork. It all looks like some secret celebration, captured by a bunch of security cameras that can’t believe their luck.

i've been watching since "all i need"

it's amazing how well they play "house of cards". it's just a lovely song

Cool. I totally wanted to cry today.

Seriously, though, thanks for sharing! Very cool to see!

thanks for posting - been going through one of my radiohead phases again. I overplayed it at the time, but think this might be my favourite record of theirs again

weird fishes is their best song, right? don't know how it took me so long to realise

certainly one of their sickest beats

can confirm

i've been saying forever they need to go full krautrock for an album

My upstairs neighbours who normally blast nickelback + all the worst songs you can imagine had this come on the other day and I was absolutely stumped. Of course they skipped it after about 15 seconds but is this having some sort of Spotify resurgence? Because I have absolutely no idea how this would have hit their playlist, nothing they listen to is like it.

This album is full of sick beats. It might be their most consistent set of songs, no good tracks, all great tracks. The lyrics are so open throughout in rainbows too. A directness that wasn’t there since The Bends.

I always kinda chuckle to myself at the “ughhh” that starts this track. Like Yorke is about to lead it into a James Brown funk number.

I’m not even convinced this is the best song on In Rainbows, let alone their discography. It’s a toss up of the last four tracks on in rainbows for me, with one of the last two most likely to take the top spot depending on mood. I’m so partial to jigsaw falling into place. It’s a bit melodramatic, but the vocal melody and build is just otherworldly. + it has the best Radiohead trope bleeding through it: paranoia.

Give me separator or everything in its right place or lucky as their best

I saw "The Creator" the other day (the movie's kinda a too long mishmash of a bunch of other sci-fi but it's pretty visually impressive), and "Everything in Its Right Place" popped up as a cue. I haven't listened to Radiohead in ages, but it sounded pretty cool in futuristic context, not at all dated. Radiohead music appears a good deal in movies and TV and always seems to fit in.

I think this was the scene in question (unless someone constructed their own):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebJgtzsyEhI

Yeah, I take back my previous post, everything in its right place is the best Radiohead track. An impossible song, the desperate vocal delivery, the cut-up lyrics hitting harder than anything else Yorke’s written, the light at the end of the tunnel after the vocals stack on top of each other on top of each other on top of each other. It’s the freshest breath of air

I always kinda chuckle to myself at the “ughhh” that starts this track. Like Yorke is about to lead it into a James Brown funk number.

Hate to spoil it for you, but that sounds like a bass slide to me - same effect though!

Favourite on In Rainbows is easily "Nude" for me; that extended final section with the layered voices is so startling and satisfying

Weird Fishes has been covered by a remarkable amount of people in recent times, it's almost become a standard

Call me a basic, but nothing will beat There There as their best track despite it being on a bit of a hodgypodgy album

No way that’s a bass slide, definitely vocals

Found my proof
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-5vL1rAj0

Maybe we're talking about different bits!

definitely my favorite of the radiohead albums after the ok computer/kid a/amnesiac canonical run

I really enjoyed the recent run of the Dissect podcast that goes through IR track by track. Not so much the lyrical analysis or the breathless ruminations on the human condition, but the musical analysis w/the isolated stems really did make me appreciate a ton of stuff that I either hadn't noticed before or had always wondered about.

A feature of Radiohead’s thing is “weak B-sections”, like so many of their songs begin with the best assemblage of sounds you’ve ever heard, and then suddenly change into something that is an ineffective pay-off— I consider this more of a feature than a bug

“Everything…” and “Weird Fishes” both have this going on

But then there are songs that are just payoff after payoff… “Paranoid Android” will prob always be their best song imo, despite the dated lyrics, just because of how ambitious its structure is and effortless its execution

But my favourite Radiohead is always krautrock Radiohead (my favourite mode of any band is their krautrock mode!)

man that's a fast version of weird fishes xxp

into it

A feature of Radiohead’s thing is “weak B-sections”, like so many of their songs begin with the best assemblage of sounds you’ve ever heard, and then suddenly change into something that is an ineffective pay-off— I consider this more of a feature than a bug

i'd agree here, the, well... arpeggiated bits of this song are some of my favorite music ever but the last third feels slight. still cool sounds going on throughout of course

But my favourite Radiohead is always krautrock Radiohead (my favourite mode of any band is their krautrock mode!)

YES!

wish they'd done more like 'these are my twisted words'

Interesting, I do forget about most of the B/C sections and codas on this record, so it's a nice surprise when they hit and the strings/Ondes Martenot come in.

the bridge/b-section/whatever of "bodysnatchers" (has the light gone out for you/cuz the light's gone out for me/it's the 21st century/etc) makes the song

Weird Fishes in particular has a very cool harmony/melody decision that I should one day sit down and figure out, it’s subtle not-complicated but very effective. Great song

Pre-In Rainbows, but as an experiment I'm gonna go back to this today, haven't heard it in years:
https://bbemusic.bandcamp.com/album/exit-music-songs-with-radio-heads

(my favourite mode of any band is their krautrock mode!)

I’m just thinking in rainbows, but some of its B sections are the best to my taste. Jigsaw callings climax, body snatchers comedown and build, Reckoners separating on a blank shore (etc., really for every track except weird fishes and Nude) are all my favourite parts. Everything in its right place does not have a lacking part to it at all.

feel like this dropping 40 or so years later FOR FREE "pay what you want" so many people dancing in the streets where i was is the closest i'll come to experiencing sgt. pepper / lonely hearts club band getting released

i've long wanted a krautrock radiohead album

these days mind there's only one thing i want from radiohead, and it's not krautrock :(

Side A + Lotus Flower of King Of Limbs is enough Radiohead krautrock for me (I like it)

i have no complaints about the b & c sections of "weird fishes", they're both wonderful, especially the c section - that driving bass line! the disintegrating guitars! the background drones!

Give me separator or everything in its right place or lucky as their best

― H.P, Thursday, January 4, 2024 6:47 AM

*leaping high ten*

Catching that hi-10 friend. Johnnys guitar coming in at “I fell open / I lay under” is chills every time. That Kraut drum beat, so good