Radiohead - In Rainbows

doesn't feel very warm to me. very dry and remote, just kinda sitting there in an uninviting way.

The idea that an album of relatively traditional guitar/piano songs was attempting to be Xenakis and should be criticized for failing to be Xenakis is completely nonsensical.

i have no idea who Iannis Xenakis is so i won't argue with that

Jonny mentioned him in an interview twice so now he's the standard that radiohead is judged against

lol that dusted review was written by one of my college roommates and the guy who introduced me to ilx. he is a smart guy and a bro but i don't agree with that review.

ha does/did he post here?

yeah he was "charlie in va." i don't think he's posted in years, and even when he did, it was very sporadic.

"charlie va" i guess. looks like it's been six years since he last posted!

So is Thom Yorke the most notably inscrutable mumble-mouthed singer since prime Michael Stipe? Does anyone rate his lyrics? All that comes to mind is the scattered line or two.

i have no idea what he is singing, ever

Does anyone rate his lyrics?

Most aren't anything special, but he has a nice, unexpected way with deadpan humour now and then. Like "I'll be waiting/With a gun and a pack of sandwiches" from Talkshow Host. Whatever, I'm generally not much of a lyrics guy.

Some review pointed out that "You've got some nerve" is the most stereotypical Radiohead opening line ever, which is OTM.

I should go back and give this album another shot but every time I do, the experience is wholly irritating and I end up putting on Hail To The Thief instead.

(I really like Hail To The Thief so the experience isn't all bad.)

Melissa W,

In live shows, has Radiohead ever segued from "Reckoner" into a cover of "Silly Love Songs" by Wings?

recently i had pointed out to me that there's a random tambourine moment at :33 in "reckoner", never noticed it before. it's in the right channel along with the drums, really wonder if it could have been left in by mistake.

It's probably purposeful to show it's not all sequenced. They left in a really obvious bass error on Lotus Flower for the same reason.

I love this album but I usually skip the first 2 songs, from then on it flows really beautifully.

Cornish grammar is also rlly idiosyncratic, and Thom Yorke once made a video where he was transformed into a tree! How great is that?

i think this is one of my favorite radiohead albums. maybe like #2 or #3.

but unless it's a tambourine falling off something in the drum room, it sounds like a digital mistake. basically it sounds like a tambourine being shaking in time pops in for two 16th notes and then is gone.

The opening pair are my favourites! And Reckoner.

The format of the box set just makes it rlly hard to get out & just listen and also it's not on Spodify, but since transferring it to an easier case I've been revisiting it a lot and just.. the vocal harmonies on Nude and the segue of Reckoner into House of Cards... lush.

It's so pastoral, it sounds like all forests and farmland instead of the claustrophobic cloisters of central Oxford.

Also consider who is playing the tambourine. Ed. Now what is more likely. Nigel making a digital error, or Ed getting stoned and missing his cue to come in at the right place? Let me think.

I blame Ed.

but it's the only time there's tambourine on that channel in the whole song (not talking about the real tambourine track that's on the left channel).

yeah i hear what you're talking about, my guess is it was an editing/mixing mistake but they left it in because they thought it sounded cool

i wonder if maybe it was some kind of scratch cue during the recording process and they decided to leave it in. kind of a weird place for that though.

I keep missing it but I'm listening on a shitty boombox with no time display.

i think this is one of my favorite radiohead albums. maybe like #2 or #3.

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:39 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's my number 1.

I listened to the drum stem (which I downloaded from iTunes, lol) and it does sound like a digital thing.

the discbox packaging warped my LP's over time... total bummer.

Played this at our record club last night. By far my favourite thing they've done.

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/radiohead-in-rainbows-round-43-nicks-choice/

Interestingly Rob was talking about how he's barely listened to it, because of how awkward the discbox packaging is.

In terms of the actual music, I haven’t a clue what Thom Yorke is singing about here, and don’t really care – he uses his voice much more effectively and with greater understanding here than he has before, layering it beatifically on “Numb”, finding jitteringly compelling space on “15 Step”, edging towards sublimation on “Reckoner”.

Do you mean "Nude" here? Speaking of which, that's the one song on In Rainbows that I could without. For some reason when he hits that high, isolated falsetto note near the end it embarrasses me to listen to it in a way that doesn't occur in other Radiohead songs. Also, "Nude" is an old radiohead song (from 1996 or early 1997, i think?) that fans were clamoring to be released for years, and then when it finally came out on In Rainbows it was disappointing on a few levels because I'd already heard it so many times on bootlegs back on high school, and also it somehow sounded dulled down compared to the original!

Damnit, I do. Will correct.

Have they got a song called Numb? I can't think of one but it's like the most Radiohead-y one-word songtitle ever.

Don't know about Radiohead but Portishead have a song called "Numb" (the one with the duck noises in the beginning on "Dummy") and it fits also very well as one word song title of the band.

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