A POLL IN A CAGE ON ANTIBIOTICS - ILM Artist Poll #56 - RADIOHEAD - RESULTS THREAD

i feel like the representation of In Rainbows in the tracks poll is going to expose the ridiculousness of it placing 3rd in the albums poll.

i know, should have been higher.

*throws hands up in the air*

*waves them around like ... oh wait, this is a Radiohead thread*

in rainbows is the best radiohead album

yeah i almost put it at #1 too

Wait... there's people who hate In Rainbows?

fwiw, I like In Rainbows the most out of all the post-Kid A albums that I don't like.

i don't think i had any idea how divisive In Rainbows is. putting it #1 for albums was the easiest decision of my whole ballot.

― Roberto Spiralli

Same here. It's a perfect album. Really hoping Weird Fishes makes the list. Feel like it's one of the most ignored songs on the album but it's easily my favourite.

I wish I liked anything by Radiohead after "Worrywort" as much as some folks here seem to. 'In Rainbows' was definitely a big improvement over 'Hail To the Thief,' but even still it takes both discs being culled down to 10 or so tracks to be about as good as 'Amnesiac,' which was pretty middling.

Anybody else like the 'Atoms for Peace' disc and Yorke's solo album better than anything after 'Kid A' besides me?

Personally I rank post Kid A stuff as:

In Rainbows
Eraser / TKOL
Amnesiac / Atoms for Peace
Hail to the Thief

Hail to the Thief is their best album

3/10 so far; "Palo Alto" was also in my top ten, happy that it made the list.

also, just got home from work and am seeing the images on a computer screen instead of my phone, they're great

xxpost: I have grown to appreciate it better but it still feels exhausted and all over the place for me.

Since "Creep" has already placed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTF8Cn3Z0nI

Palo Alto my number one, thanks for asking

Eraser's my second favourite Radiohead and related projects album, after okc. Although except for in rainbows I hardly know any of the later albums, lol call myself a fan. Had a few goes at atoms for peace but so far it's failed to stick.

Before last week I hadn't listened to In Rainbows for ~3 years, and for some reason in that three years my dislike of it intensified based on my kinda misremembered impressions. But on re-listen I just found it inoffensive (and still liked it more than Pablo and Bends).

Still, it's far too austere for my liking and it's the height of Thom's lugubrious moaning which is just a chore to listen to. Pretty much everything I actually like about it is done better in TKOL.

How I Made My Millions is the height of Thom's lugubrious moaning.

Austere isn't really an adjective I recognise in relation to In Rainbows.

In Rainbows is such a sprawling mess. I probably would have stopped paying attention to Radiohead after it, if TKOL hadn't been so tight and concise.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm actually kinda glad that Thom as Atoms for Peace now, so that he can stick all of his worst, shitty sprawl tendencies in that band and save his more interesting work for Radiohead.

But all I'm gonna do on this thread is complain about the order and placement and rail against Radiohead fans and people who don't even like Radiohead but still have ~opinions~ on OK Computer and so really I should shut up and stay out and admit I have nothing more to say about this band to anyone.

The albums top 5 is almost identital to my own (I had Hail to the Thief at #5) but really I think everything bar Pablo Honey is great (even King of Limbs which only really clicked with me last week). HTTT is the closest to being too sprawling for me but the ratio of great songs to okay-ish songs is still incredibly high.

I don't recognise IR as sprawling, either! It feels really tight and focussed to me, with a nice balance of consistency of mood and tone and style to give it a sense of gestalt, and just enough variation to keep it interesting. The only track I don't like is Videotape. It feels like their most whole album qua album to me. Which is, obviously, a wanky rockist thing to think/feel, but I do.

HTTT feels far too sprawling and loose to me; the sequencing doesn't make sense, and there are a bunch of songs that I like aspects of but don't enjoy the whole of; Myxamatosis, Punch-Up At A Wedding, to name two. I suspect had it been sequenced 'better' (for my brane) then I'd like those songs more. I feel similarly about Amnesiac. Kid A works for me as an album, I just don't like it as much as IR.

Stick Cuttooth and Fog and Twisted Words and a load of other Amnesiac and HTTT b-sides together and you've got something as good as, or better, than Amnesiac or HTTT, as far as I'm concerned.

Spent two and a half days solidly listening to nowt but Radiohead last week while I decorated the nursery; not sure I've ever listened to them that intensively before. Really enjoyed it. I railed against them for years, I think now, simply because they were the band that everyone expected me to like.

very surprised at how low Creep placed. I know it's way way played out now, but I still expected it to go top 15 at least.

i don't know how common this is, but for me Kid A onward definitely diminished what came before, which was perhaps not deliberate although you could at least say self-fulfilled. i loved actually all three of the first albums at the time and i can tap into that still but there is a tinge of embarrassment, albeit faint.

there was a tinge of embarrassment to Creep about a minute into Planet Telex tho.

someone mentioned japan above who are an interesting comparative. maybe if you were a japan fan at the time Quiet Life would've made you like the first two albums less. personally my record collection back then consisted of one keith harris and orville 7" so i can't say, but looking back it is hard to imagine because early japan also rules.

"I railed against them for years, I think now, simply because they were the band that everyone expected me to like."

This is also my experience. I've come to see how toxic b/c merely reactive it is for my appreciation of the arts, but I've struggled with this since I was a nerdy kid and everyone expected me to like classical music and I became a pop fan instead. Things have gotten better but my popism, such as it is, can't be separated from a fuck you against my peers.

just to add something in support of Jigsaw: it's one of those every-so-often moments that sheds light on how far these guys have come as songwriters. back in the Bends days, the band would have opted for the sudden crescendo, upping the drama through impetuous guitar noise. but Jigsaw builds to its exhilarating climax, and exacts this climax, through tension and restraint; the instruments sound clenched, like they're tending the same delimiting ground for the duration of the song. the final, ascending passage plays out within the concentrated sphere of what's come before, it's just that the intensity has almost reached breaking point. but not quite. the song develops in an organic fashion, whilst paying respect to each and every ingredient that goes into it, preserving a certain consistency from start to finish. that, to me, is one of the hallmarks of great writing.

Calling IR 'sprawling' is the maddest and most inaccurate slight about it I've read yet.

Well no, it's just someone else's different reaction to a record. Not relating to id doesn't make it mad or inaccurate.

Fair enough, was being slightly hyperbolic. It sounds very concise and well sequenced to me though.

I'll stop now, most Radiohead threads seem to devolve into circular discussions of the merits of In Rainbows at some point (and I'm certainly part of the problem).

Sometimes I feel as though Radiohead have got it in them to make a proper album one day.

Jigsaw is my ikkle bro's favourite Radiohead song and I'm inclined to say it is totally excellent.

'The Bends' and 'Bones' are def my least favourite songs on the 2nd album. 'The Bends' especially, could have easily been taken from Pablo Honey.

i can't listen to anything of The Bends these days except Planet Telex

off

The biggest problem with jigsaw is that they decided to fade the song out (?) in the middle of Jonny's guitar solo (!?)

The big climactic end section has great chords and a great arrangement, but Thom's voice sounds oddly pinched and weedy in it, which ruins the whole effect.

This band, if they could only overcome these multiple stylistic and creative hurdles we're all pointing out, they could be quite the success.

it's a fantastic vocal line. the singing itself might be a bit underpowered, yeah.

x-post

lol Scik Mouthy

http://i.imgur.com/FyPvvQO.jpg

40. High and Dry [12 votes | 243 points]

O_O at high and dry...being voted for

lol

High and Dry is great forever.

I've heard it so many times I never deliberately play it, but when it comes on the iPod on shuffle I still love it.

Hoping for an impassioned defense of High and Dry, because really?

creep and high and dry are fine songs that people would still like if they were done by some rando 90s indie band

"They're the ooo-uuhh-ooones who'll spit at you..."

is The Place Beyond the Pines based on High and Dry?