Radiohead: Classic or Dud?

yeah? i've never been a huge fan, but i think they're good and fairly consistent! in rainbows might be my fave record by them. but that's just me.

woah afriendlypioneer isn't afraid to speak his mind

Dud. I loathe this band. They were acceptable until Amnesiac, then they shot their wad and became the most overhyped group of twats in the biz.

― afriendlypioneer, Monday, 7 November 2011 16:29 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

A strange tipping point to choose - don't think they really changed outlook/style/priorities around this time?

are radiohead good live?

They tended to stick to the studio arrangements as closely as possible the times I saw them, so there were few instances of unexpected fireworks. Oddly, it was the mostly electronic songs -- particularly "Everything In Its Right Place" -- that strayed furthest from the album versions, and were the highlights of the last show of theirs I saw (which was 2001).

Thought they became unbearably cheesy w/ Amnesiac and the following albums were just bland-to-bad in my view. Sorry for speaking my mind. The thread's called "Classic or Dud," right? Just one man's opinion... doubt I'll affect their record sales.

never be sorry for speaking your mind, freedom of speech and all that

Escape Goat OTM. A lot of their more recent post-Kid A songs, especially the electronic ones, have had a tendency to sound half-finished on record. Live they really fill out and come into their own.

In Rainbows sounded fuller and fresher live, agreed. The band was fitter, happier, more productive.

Still dud though.

not contesting your POV afriendlypioneer, but how was Amnesiac and everything after it any more cheesy than Kid A (or OKC for that matter?). How is it "cheesy", even? Was it Yorke's increasing quasi-political remarks, or their earnestness to experiment?

that weirdo live album they did in 2001 was pretty neat, especially because I agree that they've sounded a little weak after Kid A. Still think "Hail to the Thief" is pretty underrated, "In Rainbows" is good, "The King of Lambs" is kind of a dud

I like my lamb cooked on the rare side.

Anyway, tylerw, they're wondrous live. Don't let the ~Taylor Swift is SO deep~ crowd lead you to think otherwise.

I like my lamb cooked on the rare side.

― Turangalila, Monday, November 7, 2011 11:10 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

If you can’t put a butterfly in a jar
If violence mars your final hour
If you make others feel like jam
Poured on a piece of charbroiled lamb

Anyway, tylerw, they're wondrous live. Don't let the ~Taylor Swift is SO deep~ crowd lead you to think otherwise.

Don't let the flat zings crowd deflate you.

feel like "Jump Then Fall" could be a Radiohead title.

Hmm, might try to go to the Atlanta show.

The shitty thing is this time around they're like, stadium-level shows. Which is a nightmare.

I saw them in Houston on the Amnesiac tour and at Coachella after Hail to the Thief and both shows were great. I'm sure this tour will be much more low-key, but the Frank Erwin Center is the perfect place for me to see them. It is very tiny for an arena, so these types of big rock concerts end up feeling much more intimate, which I think works well with the more quiet direction they've taken on the last couple albums.

The shitty thing is this time around they're like, stadium-level shows. Which is a nightmare.

They were playing huge places in 2001, too. The show I saw was at a horse racing track outside of Boston. 39,000 out of the 40,000 people present couldn't see shit.

They're great live, but yeah, yuck at Stadium shows. I was at the glorious 2001 chicago show (while jon was working overtime! sorry man, that's awful) and was one of those kids who showed up 12 hours early to get up really close. totally worth it. saw them on the Hail to the Thief tour a few times, in more stadium-esque locations, and it was a bit of a let down comparatively.

they don't improvise much live (although comments about them stretching out their electronic songs more otm) but they still have room to stretch their legs a bit on most of the songs, often via jonny's solos. this upcoming tour might be pretty awesome with two drummers - many of the songs could sound quite a bit different.

haven't been to the place they're playing in colorado but it's not huge, as far as i can tell. not intimate, but not a baseball stadium or anything. i think the roller derby happens there.

this upcoming tour might be pretty awesome with two drummers - many of the songs could sound quite a bit different.

Yeah, I was thinking that this could be a good reason why this tour could be worth catching. I'm hoping for another U.S. tour later in the summer or additional dates. Really be kinda surprised if they completely skip out on NYC/Chicago/L.A.

They're covering most of Speak Now, I read.

They should tour together specifically to cause critical agony.

Lex: "Can't...no...must...ARRRRRGGHHH!"

I wouldn't be against that. Maybe then she'd start experimenting with minor keys and dissonance and wouldn't sound like a pink fart.

they were awesome when i saw them at a stadium in 2001, i had pretty good seats, though.

how much! cuanto cuesto!

In 2011 Radiohead fans are as likely to sport a couple of Swift tunes on an iPod as Swift fans are with Radiohead tunes.

xxp lol idk maybe I'm too misanthropic & agoraphobic & terrible for the whole stadium/sports arena thing. I'll hope & wait for dates in smaller venues (perhaps in Europe?) to be announced.

i think it made more sense (the arena thing) when they were still playing songs from The Bends and stuff. there's a lot of ~ dynamics ~ in their newer stuff that probably wouldn't translate well to xtra large spaces.

Equally classic and equally dud.

I think 'Pablo Honey' = half-dud, half-good. It's a much better record than people give it credit for. Yes, it has more than its fair share of flaws, and sure, it's not the best collection of songs the band would ever make, but its highlights are truly wonderful, IMO: 'You', 'Creep', 'Stop Whispering', 'I Can't...', 'Blow Out'. Yes, there are stinkers like 'How Do You?', but filter out all the lesser songs and you've still got a decent EP/mini-album in there. The way I've seen some people talk about this record on the internet, you'd think it had absolutely zero redeeming features at all. This is certainly not the case.

'The Bends' = classic. I bought this album simply on the strength of hearing it play from start-to-finish in my local record store in early 1996, and played the hell out of it at the time. The album is full of beautiful melodies and very strong songwriting, IMO. It's somewhat galling to see the "newer" breed of Radiohead fans criticise the likes of 'High And Dry' because it doesn't have synth bleeps on it and Thom Yorke doesn't sound like he's singing in a cave (with the vocal track removed and the reverb left on). So what? It's a beautiful song, and shut up.

'OK Computer' = also classic. In hindsight, the 'Paranoid Android' single was a bit of a red herring for this album, because once you get past the first couple of tracks on the album, it reveals itself to be mostly mellow, save for 'Electioneering' which to me could have fit on 'The Bends', but also doesn't come close to most tracks on that album quality-wise. Plenty of fine moments on this record. The chiming guitars on 'Let Down', the fuzz bass on the outro to 'Exit Music (For A Film)' (which sounds like a template for Muse), the way the outro to 'Karma Police' takes the track somewhere else entirely. I could go on, I won't...

'Kid A' = classic. A lot has been made of Radiohead's "change in sound" on this album, but strip away all of the production and you're still mostly left with a bunch of typical Radiohead songs - and mostly good ones for that matter. Factor the production back into the equation, and you've got a bunch of typical Radiohead songs enriched with a different, possibly even deeper production treatment than what they'd attempted before. The song-sequencing is spot on on this record, and there's some good stuff here: 'Everything In Its Right Place', 'How To Disappear Completely', 'The National Anthem', 'Optimistic', 'Idioteque', 'Motion Picture Soundtrack'. So much emphasis has been placed on the "change in sound" aspect of this album, that I think people overlook the strength of the songwriting. The only dud for me on the record is the title track, which I don't think even compares to the Warp Records stuff that is a clear influence on it.

'Amnesiac' = dud. While it's admirable that Radiohead attempted to construct what is essentially an album of off-cuts as a standalone album in its own right, I really have never come across anybody who views it as such. There's an easy EP of superb material here: 'Packt Like Sardines', 'Pyramid Song', 'You And Whose Army?', 'Knives Out'. The rest of the album is dull as dishwater, IMO, and full of very unsuccessful experiments.

'Hail To The Thief' = dud. Like 'Amnesiac', there's a solid EP in this album. '2+2=5', 'Where I End And You Begin', 'There There' and 'A Wolf At The Door' being notable highlights for me. However, I find the rest of the record incredibly tedious and very going-through-the-motions-like. 'Sail To The Moon', 'Scatterbrain' and 'A Punchup At A Wedding' are all crippling borefests. 'Go To Sleep' is a great riff, but that's all it is.

'In Rainbows' = classic. This was easily the first record Radiohead had put out since 'Kid A' that I could get on board with as a complete work, and easily their strongest collection of material since then.

'The King Of Limbs' = crippling fucking dud. All style and no substance. I've written about this record before and why I feel that way about it elsewhere on these boards, but I won't bother re-typing it out completely - but in a nutshell, I think this record at its core is the most mediocre collection of material Radiohead have ever put out, and no amount of sonics and studio trickery to reel in the hipster kids can disguise that for me. I've heard this record being compared to 'Kid A', but... no. 'Kid A' is a far, far stronger and memorable record than this effort.

"sail to the moon" is one of their best songs. kid a and amnesiac may as well not have been released, so boring

I honestly couldn't agree that 'Sail To The Moon' is one of Radiohead's best songs. No way.

I love "A Punchup At A Wedding" to an almost unreasonable degree.

I am also a huge fan of "The Gloaming", "I Will", "Myxomatosis" and "We Suck Young Blood"

You are a man of taste, then. <3

I love the riff to "Myxomatosis" a lot, but I don't think they got the best out of it.

The closest I get to disliking a song on HTTT is some amount of indifference towards "Go To Sleep" when I'm not actively listening to it.

"Myxomatosis" is more about the interplay between the riff and the thundering drums of doom than it is about that riff alone; actually on a lot of these songs I feel like the interplay between the rhythm section and the melodic instruments is the overwhelming component that makes the songs awesome. (Obv not true of, say, "I Will", which replaces the death drums with sinewy interweaving vocal lines, but in general I think few of the songs work as well when you isolate their components as they do when you listen to how the band plays off of and responds to each other.)

I didn't give In Rainbows much of a shot and I'm thinking I need to revisit it. Overall, Thom Yorke's voice has really grown to bother me to the point where I have trouble making it through any of their material. I thought "Lotus Flower" was a decent song, but the rest of King of Limbs fell flat to me. I'm glad they're starting to de-emphasize Yorke's voice somewhat but I find the songs weak. Hail to the Thief is where they really lost me.

I'd be interested in hearing more instrumental tracks and maybe vocal contributions from someone else in the band. Time to mix things up.

And I actually like "Go to Sleep." I thought the video was pretty cool too.

So OTM about everything right now, DJP. I think the problem with that record is maybe how it was recorded/mixed? I've never understood the centrality of the beats of "Sit Down. Stand Up" (it's all about the driving PIANO) --- or, how the "There There" solo, for example, sounds so tame in comparison with the live version.

listening to "Backdrifts" now on headphones and the panning in the main keyboard line is transcendent, making that part feel like it is bouncing off of the drum machine and bass line with the vocal lines and guitar interjections floating through both like bees buzzing over flowers

basically, this album is everything I liked about Radiohead's career up to that point mashed together in series of awesome songs

'starting to de-emphasize Yorke's voice'?

You're kidding right? I thought the arc of that particular story was Thom has been trying to hide and destroy the place of his voice for a fucking decade since at least OK Computer and that it took recording The Eraser, without a band and with less places to hide, for him to become more comfortable with his voice again. Certainly his voice is far cleaner and less fucked with on In Rainbows than it has been for a long, long time,.

love backdrifts

A friend of mine once said that whenever she heard Thom do that "ah! ah! ah!" thing when the music stops in 'Backdrifts' she found it quite sexual. I just thought he was trying to do an impression of the Count from Sesame Street.

I like quite a few Radiohead songs through In Rainbows, The Bends excepted (I can't stand the record and sold it a few months ago). The breaking point for me is Yorke's voice, whose sound made me recoil even in '93: its tone, timbre, range. Then there are his lyrics, such as they are.

I agree with you on the lyrics front, Soto. I don't think Thom Yorke has ever been a decent lyricist.

And then there's the junk writing he posts to the internet. Yikes.

Agree with almost everything Turrican says other than this bit:

However, I find the rest of the record incredibly tedious and very going-through-the-motions-like. 'Sail To The Moon', 'Scatterbrain' and 'A Punchup At A Wedding' are all crippling borefests.

The latter two are some of my favourite bits on the album. HTTF is flawed by wonky sequencing. Take out a few ho-hum bits, rearrange it and you'd have had a killer record, not too far off the OKC mark IMO. There There is their best song.

HTTT is the first Radiohead album where I can't remember how all the songs go (think there might be one on Amnesiac). I'd be tempted to try rearranging HTTT to make it less flabby.