Radiohead can do anything, oh yes they can?

Bananarama >>>>>> Radiohead anyday

Maybe it's just that all their success hasn't gone to their head (or as Meeting People is Easy shows, their success only served to make them uncomfortable). Maybe they really believe in their anti-corporatist/capitalist/consumerism rhetoric and don't find acquiring huge sums of money to be as fulfilling as it's made out to be. At least they're consistent. I really wish that people would stop harping on this point in this discussion; it's perfectly reasonable to me that success hasn't/shouldn't changed their artistic direction. Whether they should expand an "emotional palette" for other reasons (stagnation, variety, so Stylus popists can hack away at them in the Singles Jukebox) is at least a coherent argument, but it seems totally ridiculous to me to ask an artist to "be happier" and change their direction solely because they've achieved a high level of success. It would be baffling to ask, say, Bergman or Herzog to "lighten up, you're the toast of the town, pitch us a romantic comedy". Some artists simply work better with darker material (and I'm not a "radiohead's gawd, and there's no way around it" fan, I haven't even listened to anything before Kid A or b-sides in probably a year, so don't accuse me of pretension when I'm throwing around words like Artist) and if you don't appreciate it there's really no reason to keep annoying yourself.

I mean, are all artists supposed to cover the entire emotional spectrum? I'm getting different expectations from different people here - what do you think this new direction should look like? Drop the political bits and go back to The Bends, but janglier and with a catchy chorus? I don't understand what you're trying to say with "joyful" - it seems crass to me, to go out and write something specifically (what do you really mean by joyful? I just don't understand) for the novelty, to take a completely opposite tack from the rest of their career. I know I keep repeating myself. Maybe they have tried different material and it hasn't worked out for them. Must their records be a complete mirror of their emotions? I know it's abstract and probably impossible to answer, but what do you think you'd get out of it? What would they say? Do you want a love song? A song free from irony about how everything is going to be alright?

I also don't understand this emotional monochromaticism. Are we just talking subject material here? A general feeling like depression? I'll admit there is a lyrical tendency towards despair, alienation, fear, and weakness - but musically (and I don't mean strictly tonally) there's a pretty wide range of feeling. Yeah, there's claustrophobia (Climbing Up The Walls), grunge-angst (Just), emotional distance (Morning Bell), paranoid fear and anger (A Wolf At the Door), but there are also moments of humor (the lightly bitter humor of Sulk, the boozy whimsicality of Life in a Glass House, the absurdity of We Suck Young Blood) and beauty (Pyramid Song). So much of their material is multivalent in feeling if not literal lyrical meaning, it's really a disservice and critical laziness to just call it depressing and walk away without really trying to get more out of the songs. I mean, isn't that what really appreciating music is? Digging deeper than the surface-level impression to derive a greater meaning? If that's not what you get from this group, fine (I'm not picking on anyone specific here), but plenty of people do get a lot more out of it (as someone upthread said about life-affirming Hitchcock or Shostakovitch).

As for the humor... well, no, it isn't really ha-ha humor but gallows irony and absurdity (Thom on Let Down: I was pissed in a club, and I suddenly had the funniest thought I'd had for ages - what if all the people who were drinking were hanging from the bottles... if the bottles were hung from the ceiling with string, and the floor caved in, and the only thing that kept everyone up was the bottles?), at least within the music itself. Those lyrics shouldn't all be taken seriously all the time. Outside the music, you get stuff like the ridiculous alternate titles from HTTT, Ed's never-departing onstage smile, Thom's put-on Byrnian seizuring during their performances, and the weirdness of their website. Admittedly there's more humor both in and out of the music nowadays; remember, only HTTT is at all recent, the Kid A sessions were 98-99 and they were in a much darker mood back then - I'm confident the next album will in fact be a bit more "joyous" and playful relative to their material from seven-ten years ago, as they're a lot more comfortable in their skin as musicians and (I hope) well-rounded human beings.

-- Nigel (sellout...), February 21st, 2006."

if they would like, i would gladly offer my undivided attention to them;)

as always, it seems, w/ RH, there's just no middle ground.
i guess i'll just remain in the dark concerning they're gawd-like status amongst folks...and not really care until given reason to...

Ed O'Brien solo album reportedly on the way. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG-Od2-OTdg

ed o'brien solo album is mostly just ok, but 'olympik' is giving me serious zooropa vibes.