Radiohead: A Moon Shaped POLL

Isn't this true of all albums/media these days? A few weeks is a long time. No one is talking about the Bowie album anymore, but that doesn't mean that no one is still listening.

Find this album a bore tbh. First three tracks and Tinker Tailor would make a sweet EP tho

Jordan otm.
I still dig this out fairly frequently but make a point of trying not to over-listen to it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

interesting. I thought Daydreaming would walk this. the first bit of Identikit frustrates me - sounds thin, awkward and unfinished like much of King of Limbs. I don't like how Thom puts the emphasis on "THAT we all can love / THAT we all can love"

that bit sounds like he's trying to crowbar lines into a melody that would have suited better lyrics

only 2 votes for "Ful Stop" is madness

Would not have expected Identikit to win, it's not even in my top five. The 'broken hearts' choral explosion is pretty astonishing, but as others say the intro and outro are relatively weak.

Thom is the worst part of Identikit but without him it sounds to me like a less interesting song from Studio (remember them?)

https://youtu.be/po8e8nftgqI

it might be one of the songs I usually skip... surprised to see it at 1

Is this the third time Thom has used a chorus of repeating rain-related ad nauseum?

1. Paranoid Android (rain down come on me)
2. Sit Down Stand Up (the raindrops (x100))
3. Identikit (broken hearts make it rain)

Seems he really enjoys repeating the word rain.

I'd happily hear a Radiohead cover of 'Have You Ever Seen The Rain?'

xp it's a billion times better than king of limbs Marcos. it's probably their best album since OKC or Kid A. takes a few listens. very chilled and monochromatic but never dull or boring

― Lennon, Elvis, Hendrix etc (dog latin)

or at least their best since "some girls"

I'd happily hear a Radiohead cover of 'Have You Ever Seen The Rain?'

― Lennon, Elvis, Hendrix etc (dog latin)

rain related songs i would listen to radiohead cover:

can't stand the rain
raining blood
buckets of rain/nuggets of rain
she brings the rain
lady rain
cold rain & snow

rain related songs i would not listen to radiohead cover:

sound of the rain
the rain song
purple rain
it's gonna rain
it's a rainy day sunshine girl

I could see them covering She Brings the Rain as they're huge Can fans and have covered them before.

They're also very much into Neil Young so:

See the sky about to rain
Be the rain

Be the rain has a global warming message in there so it seems specially fitting.

Other Neil young songs involving rain (huh? There's more than I thought seems that NY influence on Thom is they share a rain-obsessesion):

Early Morning Rain
Raining in my heart

Also you guys forgot "Box of Rain" by grateful dead that's a popular one.

"Rain Dogs" could be good.

rain

Although hard to think of two singers more different than Thom Yorke and Tom Waits.

The rain dogs the rain dogs the rain dogs the rain dogs

Yeah they're very different... I'd be more interested in Waits covering Radiohead. Life in a Glasshouse and Pyramid Songs would fit him nice.

Rain Dogs FTW

they would do a good "Rain" (Beatles) i feel

only 2 votes for "Ful Stop" is madness

yeah, definitely my fave. woulda voted for it

Live clips I've seen of "Identikit" can feel like they have a little more energy than the studio version but I still like it a lot.

'Ful Stop' seems to have become my favourite track on the album now, with 'Identikit' being nudged down into second place.

"Decks Dark", for that little Talk Talk choral lift.

weekly broadcast of archival gigs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJKOUQS1T4

In case folks didn't hear it, Radiohead eventually put "Ill Wind" (from the deluxe AMSP version) onto YouTube etc.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C7tfLhHaeU

The version of the album I essentially consider "the" version now lops off "Burn The Witch" (which doesn't fit the sound/vibe/flow of the rest of the album), and slots in "Ill Wind" in alphabetical order between "Identikit" and "The Numbers" and it works perfectly. A much more coherent and cohesive album--the Radiohead I put on most often, having listened for 26 years at this point.

me too

I dont know this album super well, nor am I a Radiohead stan so feel free to disregard my thoughts, but I'd say it's one of their least interesting. Lovely warm production, though they've been doing that a while now, great little touches, but doesnt show you anything they haven't done already, and better. Feels like a treading water effort.

ugh, wrong

Very, very wrong.

i talked about it a lot in some other thread but this is totally the best radiohead album imo

Nah, but it's top 5.

THE best? Not just the best for deep 'head heads? Better than in rainbows, okc and the bends? Ok.

Brad routinely claims the best album in a celebrated band's discography is among those you'd expect the least – it's an endearing quirk of theirs.

idk between the songs being very good if almost the loosest and most impressionistic set they'd ever written and the sustained haunted woods feeling which gets deeper and deeper as a result of the sequencing... yeah, it's the one for me. in rainbows used to be my fave. ok computer is a good record

It’s very concise and it’s well loved not just by “deep” radiohead fans. E.g.: In rateyourmusic where every radiohead album has over 40,000 the consensus is:

OKC > KID A > IR > AMSP > THE BENDS

I don’t really have a use for OKC anymore. At this point I’d say KID A, AMSP and TKOL are the Radiohead albums I personally feel like coming back to the most.

It's a clichéd thing to say, but OKC literally changed my life. It will always be my favourite.

Candyman sometimes I wonder if you’re Turrican in disguise :)

Brad is otm, Moon Shaped Pool the best Radiohead album.

Also: Wrong. This album is sublime.

I feel like I’m in an island when I say I’d rank TKOL in their top 5. Disclaimer: I count Staircase and Supercollider as part of TKOL to make it a 10 track album.

hmm, looks like i've never expressed my love for "glass eyes" in this thread, but i'm pretty certain i was that song's voter.

It's a clichéd thing to say, but OKC literally changed my life. It will always be my favourite.

― pomenitul

It was without doubt the Radiohead album that has triggered the heaviest emotional response for me, but it was pretty much the cd that never left my discman for almost two years. I think I might have overplayed it to death.

just realized they now seem to alternate between ornate, precisely engineered/performed albums (IR, AMSP) and more raw/off-the-cuff ones (TKOL, HTTT)

I think I might have overplayed it to death.

Me too, but I simply can't overstate its importance to my development as an obsessive Lover of Music.

candyman is RONG but got me listening to this for the first time in years. thanks, candyman.

Yeah relistening now. I didn’t use to care much for True Love Waits but it sounds fucking beautiful this morning.

Every song sounds even better than I remembered. Thanks candyman!

"true love waits" is beautiful in album form, but i'll always have a soft spot for that acoustic live version that came out 20 years earlier.

Were there samples or references to other EA compositions than mild und leise?

They sample arthur krieger's 'short piece' from the same 'elctronic music winners' album. That title!!!

*kreiger

Oh wow, they were winning pieces in the first ISCM competition!

Ha!!! I didn't know.

What's the etiquette around sampling two consecutive tracks off the same record in a song? I was under the impression that sort of thing was frowned upon at the time.

i think one is ok, two is definitely frowned upon, but if you do it three or more times it becomes something that is categorically different and maybe even better

relate to people upthread who say OKC felt like a pivotal life moment. it's not like i hadn't heard amazing, ambitious music by that point. i was already a fan of the bends. but OKC came out at exactly the right point: literally the day i finished my GCSEs, just as Britpop's shiny naivete was starting to fade. it felt right

xp You just keep sampling more of it like you're jamming and it'll look like you meant to do it