Radiohead - The King of Limbs

i can never forgive jigsaw for fading out jonny's guitar solo

Jigsaw is one of their best songs, the last minute is bliss

so many great codas on IR. Thom's vocals in the last part of 'Nude' are among his all time best 'ooooooooooooh's

I mean, I like p much all the tracks on IR but Bodysnatchers is an outlier and without any other tracks in that style, it throws IR out of whack

I think of 'Weird Fishes/Arpeggi' as its counterpart, not as blown out but another uptempo live band-format track.

Jigsaw is one of their best songs, the last minute is bliss

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.),

Thom's weirdly strained vocals ruin it.

I think I still resent IR because my favorite songs were relegated to the bonus disc - Down is the New Up, Last Flowers til the Hospital, Up on the Ladder, Bangers + Mash. I mean, Last Flowers til the Hospital is one of the best ballads TY ever wrote.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the sequencing on In Rainbows, myself. It's one of Radiohead's 4 best LP's, I think.

In Rainbows is the only Radiohead record with no weak moments. It's easily my favourite these days. Weird Fishes could well be my favourite song of theirs.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the sequencing on In Rainbows, myself. It's one of Radiohead's 4 best LP's, I think.

It did well in the Radiohead poll a few years ago, came 3rd I think.

i was spoiled by the bootlegs of the 2006 tour and the 2005 orchestral performance of Arpeggi. the album was a severe let down in comparison, especially Arpeggi. but my mind was filling in the blanks. dangers of keeping up with bootlegs...

xxpost:

After OK Computer and Kid A? Makes sense.

Think so

Burn the witch grows on you, esp sans video

Video is cool but doesn't really match the song.

at abt 1:30 in "burn the witch", the mix foregrounds the staccato horror strings. that's the best bit, and it sadly never comes round again. remix wanted.

Brian Cant > Thom Yorke. Freddie Phillips >>>>>>> Jonny Greenwood.

I've never understood the impetus to drop into a fan thread and explain how other stuff is better than the band under discussion. Is it intended to be educational? trolling? hipster power move?
Although there are other artists I like better than R'head, I sometimes deliberately listen to their music in the FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT IT'S NOT THE ALL TIME ABSOLUTE BEST. Hope yall can deal.

Yeah I think I just set off the grenade on my own belt there. As you were.

I can't think of the last time I listened to Radiohead on purpose, so I put on In Rainbows today and loved every minute. Probably my fave after Kid A and OK Computer, and in some abstract way a great "final" record/capper.

(xp) lol, britishes reference alert

at abt 1:30 in "burn the witch", the mix foregrounds the staccato horror strings. that's the best bit, and it sadly never comes round again

The single seems to cut off very suddenly which suggests there's either a longer album version or the songs flow together in some ways. If it's predominantly orchestral I could see either scenario.

Radiohead haaaaate doing long songs, they're weird conciseness freaks

In any case Burn The Witch is like two minutes shorter than Paranoid Android so maybe it isn't a single edit, and they're highly unlikely to break the seven minute mark on anything.

one of their best traits imo

xp

have they ever even *done* a single edit?

the ending to Burn the Witch doesn't sound like a single edit at all to me. it sounds like the really predictable "build up and suddenly cut off" move that is used in many songs and pretty much every single movie trailer from the last 10 years

vacuum cleaner whooshing noise slowly overwhelming, swelling strings rising, sudden cutoff of everything followed by a soft bass tone and/or a muted explosive sound effect, sounds of heavy breathing, close-up of film star whispering "burn the witch", blackout, all caps "radiohead", blackout, "May 2016", brief credits, followed by instructions to put on your 3D glasses

yeah isn't it weird that Paranoid Android is their longest song at only six and a half minutes? Do they have a longer song?

Supercollider is longer I think

'Supercollider' is their longest song, it's over 7 minutes long.

Anyway, I'd rather bands packed in as many ideas as possible into a three minute long track than stretched them out over 20 minutes. Credit to Radiohead for realising how long their songs need to be.

Who here hasn't fantasised about a 15-minute Radiothon

Credit to Radiohead for realising how long their songs need to be.

Not like me, I know, but I will forgo the obvious zinger here.

Hahahaha!

And yet...

the chorus is kinda nice-ish
radiohead aren't making interesting music now
― And the cry rang out all o'er the town / Good Heavens! Tay is down (imago), Tuesday, 3 May 2016 15:39 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What chorus?

I'm sure if they wrote a song that felt like it should be 15 minutes long, then it would be 15 minutes long. I don't particularly see the point in taking 3-4 minutes worth of ideas an overinflating it for the sake of it.

*and

ok this song rules, i'm interested in radiohead again after almost 10 years. makes me want to listen to the old stuff. w/r/t thom yorke's lyrics sounding dated or stale - well, the song is from 2005...

I wish this song had a bridge or something more than just verse/chorus/verse/chorus because it ends before it really goes anywhere, making it feel slight.

Radiohead songs are short and loud because they're a pop band.

Yeah I mean Imago is the only poster who actively correlates track length with quality, he drops this one every time Radiohead release an album.

Maybe not quality but, y'know, 'ambition' or whatever.

It's because he thinks long = 'not pop' and he thinks pop is for kids.

do I have to show you the pop tracks in my EOY lists over the last 5 years

also I clearly don't correlate length with quality (these days), it'd just be interesting to see Radiohead attempt something long-form, challenge their own parameters

The pop wars were fought in 2003, kid.

At their core, as interesting and 'progressive' as they may seem to some, Radiohead are shrewd businessmen and pop musicians first and foremost, and radical art experimentalists somewhere much further down the line.

Which is to say that I can't see them ever doing anything longform and weird or fully abstracted.

I'm using none of these terms pejoratively, either. I'm delighted that they're shrewd businessmen and pop musicians.

TBH I think they'd be terrible at it, it would be license to unleash all their worst instincts.

The problem with TKoL in particular wasn't anything to do with length it was that it felt unfinished - both the album and several of the songs. Virtually all of them sounded way better live but then that's been true of most Radiohead from Kid A onwards.

It's possible to overemphasise the 'pop' side as well as the 'art' side fwiw. Putting both in scare quotes because I'm not sure Radiohead are either really.

Yeah, that's fair.

I go back to the tracks around TKoL far more than I do the album itself. Staircase, Daily Mail, etc etc. They;'re all really good. They feel more lithe than the album tracks.