RAdiohead

Yeah, it's wild to compare OKC to IR. OKC is the career-defining guitar epic. IR is the "we're gonna start to mellow with age" album and marks the start of the arc that continued with TKOL and AMSP.

Zach's Taxonomy of Radiohead Eras:

Pablo Honey - OK Computer: "We're a rock band. Scratch that--we're the MOST IMPORTANT ROCK BAND OF OUR TIME."

Kid A - HTTT: "We have reinvented ourselves! But we're still kind of a rock band."

In Rainbows - AMSP: "Starting to feel old. What if we just kinda...chilled out and jammed?"

this album, which i have now heard, is a continuation of chilling out and jamming, except with a more boring drummer

calling it as one of the two best RH-related projects ever feels absolutely unhinged to me

i’m sorry, a more boring drummer

what must it be like to post when you have no idea what you’re talking about. am i the one imprisoned and is lj the really free one, able to hear awesome drumming and call it boring

yep, a more boring drummer. the same one who also turns sons of kemet into a stodgy one-paced jam outfit i believe. 'a hairdryer' would be a great song if he wasn't hellbent on tippy tapping that hi-hat in the same way for its entire duration

Pablo Honey - OK Computer: "We're a rock band. Scratch that--we're the MOST IMPORTANT ROCK BAND OF OUR TIME."

The problem with this is that OKC feels like a giant leap forward from The Bends. The Bends was basically a meat-and-potatoes indie rock record. OKC is a vast, troubling avant-prog masterpiece.

IDK. Each album builds vastly on the one before it, but there's a clear through line of progression to my ears. This may be the bias of hindsight. I was not listening to these records as they came out; I came on the bandwagon during the Kid A/Amnesiac era. Also, if you think The Bends is a "meat-and-potatoes" indie rock record, I wanna know where you're getting your indie meat and potatoes from!

its a meat and potatoes britpop record

I don't really listen to any britpop so I will take your word for it. Makes more sense to me than comparing it to like, The Breeders or something. My Americanness re: what constitutes "indie" is likely showing here.

i mean it's a very good britpop record but it's firmly within the style and sound palette of other stuff in that subgenre, unlike okc

I wasn’t comparing OKC to IR in terms of tone or vibe or whatever. I was saying it’s sort of a return of a more traditional rock album in song structures and instrumentation that a certain kind of fan (namely those who only like The Bends and OKC) would probably enjoy.

HTTT is probably the most similar one to OKC, but where OKC is oddly digestible and fun to listen to all the way through, HTTT makes for an exhausting listen and is way too morose in comparison.

What I’m saying is The Bends, OKC and In Rainbows are the three albums I’d recommend to a certain listener who is not too keen on “weird” Radiohead. Those 3 are by a margin their most accesible material.

HTTT...morose?!

it is filled with energy, electricity and invention

would love to try to get someone who is not already a radiohead fan to sit through "we suck young blood"

yeah and then it gets to the fast bit and they're like 'ohhhhh'

Yeah there’s energy but idk

I get a melancholic / space post-rock vibe from OKC, HTTT gives me more art rock / horror movie vibes.

hence why it owns!!!!

That said both albums are really good at defining the sound of their times. Late 90s were alienating, early to mid 00’s it felt hopeless.

Not saying HTTT is a bad album btw, just saying it feels like a very different beast to me

I was saying it’s sort of a return of a more traditional rock album in song structures and instrumentation that a certain kind of fan (namely those who only like The Bends and OKC) would probably enjoy

OKC is by no stretch a traditional rock album. And I love OKC but don't care for The Bends so

not sure what kind of an RH fan I am

Trying in my head to rank the albums by moroseness--this is an impossible task

I'm a fan of Radiohead when Thom isn't singing in his head voice w/ horribly smeared diction. Sadly that's been a lot since before HTTT.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Radiohead

Thom is best when his singing only implies his hair might be bunned. When you can plainly hear it's bunned, i'm not interested.

I totally agree with fgti re: 'progginess'. Maybe a reductive way to look at it is flow vs jaggedness -- 'Everything in its Right Place' is in 5 (or really 10, or phrases of 4/4 + 6/4, however you like) but in a way that doesn't draw attention to itself, and it's not the main distinguishing feature of the song.

And on the "weird 4/4" flip side, the only thing that makes 'Pyramid Song' is odd or elusive is the chord movement, and putting a chord on the downbeat that doesn't sound like a resolution or the beginning of a loop. But you don't get the sense that they're doing it specifically to wrongfoot the listener, they're just the chords that Thom wrote and played.

'15 Step' for me is one of their rare missteps into odd times for their own sake, even though I like the song. It feels more like an exercise of writing in 5/4, and in a sort of cliched way.

On the new record, 'You Will Never Work in Television Again' is a fantastic 5/4. It doesn't sound cliched and I didn't even notice it was in 5 on my first listen.

'Pana-vision' is right on the line for me. It's very obviously 7/4 and feels like it, but commits to the bit and feels like it comes pretty naturally out of that first piano line (whereas a more proggy/math-y version could more like a 4/4 phrase that was arbitrarily cut off to make it in 7 for its own sake, if that makes sense).

yep, a more boring drummer. the same one who also turns sons of kemet into a stodgy one-paced jam outfit i believe. 'a hairdryer' would be a great song if he wasn't hellbent on tippy tapping that hi-hat in the same way for its entire duration

― imago, Tuesday, May 17, 2022 9:38 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol ok. Actually I don't think he's served very well by the mix on this album, the drums are pretty far back in the mix and Nigel's drum sounds have been very bland on almost everything post-HttT. I wonder why.

hellbent on tippy tapping that hi-hat

reminds me of the classic thread What's with that constant cymbal tapping in jazz drumming?

beyond that, i find the criticism of skinner's playing as 'boring' (especially in the context of a pair of musicians who most frequently play with phil selway, who, to be clear, i like and has, for better or worse, always been an essential radiohead "sound", whatever that means) kinda so beyond absurd that it is funny and good, i commend you

nothing to add, but just once i want to see a really serious and respected critic put something in their writing about "tappy whappy ploddy toddy" things they don't like in the music.

i haven't listened to a light for attracting attention yet. am i boycotting it? idk. (shrug)

the hi-hat is one of the most expressive parts of the kit, it can go clickety clack but it can also go whiiish

always been a big fan of the shickety-shoo myself.

well yeah but additionally it also can go ka-chunk into a sizrunk without needing to program it, in a good drummer's hands

i am just joshing with all that, of course. like i said, phil was fine, he fit their sound, and he helped them sound like they did, which was rock gods, for quite a while

I like it when it goes

snp
snp
snp
snp
snp
snp
snp
snp

I am a really serious and respected critic, and you are all flops!

xp but if phil was part of the smile they'd either have to program in quite a bit of it or just change it to match him

again, a lot of this was covered when ed, colin, and phil were all sacked on the same day, i think sometime in 2020

i also think skinner is a big improvement on the programmed beats on thom's solo work. i'm just spitballing here but to me, the percussion on the smile sounds like the improved human version of those old beats, maybe more like what thom was thinking. it's a real pain in the ass to program skittering percussion. a very reasonable path is to go minimal. when you start making it sound "human", like on most of thom's solo stuff, you either have to do that for the entire song, which is laborious and also sometimes feels like it defeats the purpose, or let it be minimal and throw in occasional human-like elements like unexpected fills or "mistakes" or effects.

all of that is great, and lord knows i've spent way too much of my life programming in beats and trying to make them sound good. but it ALSO really cool and probably a huge load-off to just have a really good drummer play with you

I like it when the hi-hat goes CHchCHchCHchCHchCHsiupCHchCHchCHchCHchCH

like, skinner could be playing everything he's playing and eating a sandwich at the same time, and then could hear thom in the background daring him to "sound like a rubber ball for 3 seconds" and he just would, without missing a beat, and then go right back to the prior beat and the sandwich. he's fluent in drums

phil is great but there's a reason he plays the same exact fills in all the same exactly places in live performances over the past 25 years

(mainly i just want to turn this into defend phil selway day, lol)

the last time we had this conversation i think we all agreed that it was good phil took drum lessons around/after okc

and that the slurred 4/4 on "pyramid song" is cool and good

these are some of the consensus phil conversation beats, for sure

the phil meta

then there was the whole King of Limbs period where they got another Phil, and they had to deal with all of the confusion with that

(i'm assuming they found another second drummer, or a third drummer, after that, but it was also a bald white guy and they had to make one of those awful "listen, i don't mean to be unfair to this third guy but we can't have three phils in a row" conversations)