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

had four place today, up to six now.

Iron Lung is the song I didn't vote for that immediately lodged itself in my head after I'd sent my ballot. Is it a proto Paranoid Android? The wig-out-y bits feel very similar to me in isolation, though I've not played them back-to-back.

I thought very hard about whether to vote for High & Dry, because I used to adore it, and I do still love that kick drum sound in the intro. In the end it was a toss-up between that and Fake Plastic Trees, and I decided to go for the latter, just because it feels a little more sophisticated and therefore rewarding longterm strcuturally.

A great run here.

Iron Lung is my favourite song on The Bends and the song that sold Radiohead to me as more than just a post-grunge one hit wonder. I was pretty much obsessed with it as a teenager and spent years trying to perfect the intro riff on guitar. Voted it high at #3.

Despite the much-discussed sequencing issues on more recent Radiohead albums, they certainly know how to start and finish a record and that clutch of finishing tracks that came up is brilliant.

Wolf at the Door is excellent and creepy and kind of violent and I like the arpeggiated keys.
Voted Life In a Glasshouse high too: every so often Radiohead will surrender to pastiche, but in this case they use the Louis Armstrong-esque brass blues sound to maximal effect. They could stand to do more songs a bit like this.

And how can anyone not like The Tourist? Some have said it's an anticlimax, but it's the perfect closer for OKC for me - that feeling of inertia, clinical and airtight despite Thom insisting we 'slow down'. chap - I listen to the Easy Star version of OKC almost exclusively now, partly because I've heard the R'head version so many times and partly because the songs just work so well in dub mode.

The other thing that makes me feel as though 'Knives Out' is a retread of old material, as well as recycling the guitar part from Paranoid Android, the opening line sounds like Thom's about to sing 'I waant yoou to know (tice).. when I'm... not arouuund'

'Kid A' was the first thing I heard off the album - they were playing it in Time Records in Colchester on the day of release - and although I'd come to the shop expressly so I could buy it, I couldn't help but feel a mixture of excitement and disappointment.

On one hand my reaction was 'Wow, Radiohead are making music that sounds like THIS!' on the other, it did feel very heavily indebted to the Warp Records stuff I'd been getting into at the time and coupled with the TDR-friendly packaging (remember the secret booklet behind the CD caddy?) I couldn't help feeling my favourite rock band were in danger of parroting certain electronic music tropes and doing it badly. It took me quite a while to understand just how much more there was going on on Kid A (the album) than that. I'm still a bit hot and cold on Radiohead's more overt forays into electronica - sometimes it reminds me of when metal bands attempt to 'go techno' or slightly dodgy industrial music... Well maybe not that bad but still things like Eraser, Pulk/Pull, Kid A and a lot of King Of Limbs do little for me beyond making me feel slightly embarrassed.

My issue with their overt forays into full-on electronica was always that they didn't mix and master things like the people they were aping; they mixed and mastered things like a rock band, and a lot of the really subtle synaesthetic joy I get from Warp artists, Orbital, etc etc, comes in the way things were mixed and mastered so that they sounded so different from rock music. And this was phenomenologically like rock music, even as it aesthetically moved away from that.

At least to my ears, that is.

It could be that. All I associate with TKOL is awkward clacketty twiggy rhythms that don't really propel the songs any one way or the other. The songs have a lot of potential but there's barely any oomph in the production. It ends up feeling a bit like a rock band's impression of what electronic/dance-based music is. OTOH when they get the balance right (thinking about Idioteque especially) it works really well.

Never got Idioteque. Didn't vote for it.

I like it, but even Idioteque can feel a bit like it's missing a certain essential frequency that even the most average dance/electronic acts would include by default. Makes me realise how often I find myself complaining about this problem - recent work by Animal Collective and Arcade Fire also do this - in which big art-rock bands decide they're going to adopt an electronic influence but somehow find themselves unwilling or unable to inject the same lifeblood into their productions as their influences do. These guys are all clearly listening to avant-electronica, techno, dub/bass music etc, but why their productions all too often end up sounding so thin and ricketty is anyone's guess. Maybe, as Mouthy says, it's all down to mixing/mastering habits?

I wonder if we're likely to expect any more b-sides - especially ones form the pre-Kid A era? I'm especially fond of Talk Show Host, Bishops Robes, A Reminder and Melatonin but I doubt these'll get very high at all.

I think 'Talk Show Host' is in with a chance.

Is Talk Show Host Gazza's favourite Radiohead song?

Worrywort's probably gonna make it. Lots of people talking about it in the voting thread.

Also, I voted a non-album track at number 2, so hopefully that one comes through.

As tracks in the lower echelons of this poll regularly have 1 or 2 #1 votes, I'm not so sure it will

Speaking of non-album tracks I really hope Supercollider and Staircase make it, looking less and less likely at this point.

I had 'The Tourist' as my #1 but the other two album closers in the last batch have never been favourites of mine - my own edited-down version of HTTT finishes with 'Scatterbrain' which works nicely I think, it lets a bit of light back in.

can I belatedly say "In Limbo" is a gorgeous, gorgeous song

It is, but one which doesn't really work in isolation for me.

It only just made it onto my ballot but yeah it really is lovely. Great vocal.

It's a shame we couldn't have a side projects poll
Band Aid 20 ftw

http://i.imgur.com/26BBdHY.jpg

25. 15 Step [20 votes | 1 #1 vote | 411 points]

My number 1. I adore this song.

Herky jerky rhythms; too clever for its own good reference to 2 step except, you know, smarter; not quite awkward enough not to fall apart completely; and do I detect a hint of warmth in there? Yup it's Radio head in 2007.

i believe i had 15 step at #3 in the end. compulsively listened to it when IR first came out

I don't love it, but there's something satisfying about the way the drums and guitar lock together.

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

24. Optimistic [18 votes | 1 #1 vote | 427 points]

Like many I can't really unlock In Limbo and Optimistic from each other. That second part of Kid A is just too good to split up. But I really like Optimistic. The sort of background organy sound during the 'try the best you can' part really does it for me.

"Optimistic" has one of my favorite moments on Kid A, in fact, one of my favorite moments in Radiohead's oeuvre: the slight, nervous uptick in tempo near the end.

I love Radiohead's rhythm section and 15 Step shows them off perfectly. I love the way it starts with it's electronic bait and switch, and the way the live groove then falls in. I adore the little punctum bits when the kids voices come in ever so slightly.

Can't remember if Optimistic made my ballot. I like it, but I think there are similar examples of this kind of thing - krauty, nervous, tense - that they've done which I prefer.

No, you didn't vote for it.

http://i.imgur.com/hBl7nEi.jpg

23. Talk Show Host [20 votes | 431 points]

Optimistic was my #1. To me it's the most representative song of the band, and it consistently sounds amazing live.

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

22. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi [20 votes | 1 #1 vote | 452 points]

Ah great to see Talk Show Host there. Didn't know it was a fan fave. Was it in a film or something?

Yeah Romeo + Juliet I think.

I didn't vote for Talk Show Host instead I plumped for its neighbour on the single, Bishops Robes, but they're of a piece in my mind

I love the end section of Optimistic where they finally start rocking out with massive cymbal crashes after the twitchy nervinous most of the song. Terrific release. Also one of Yorke's best lyrics I think.

TSH has one of my favourite lines of his as well: "I'll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches".

Yeah great line. And it kind of precedes OKC with some of those nice electronic flourishes too

AFAICR it came out between OKC and Kid A, which makes sense.

It was a b-side of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" in early 1996.

Ha, shows what I know.

Weird fishes was my #2. This is far too low, ILM, you should be ashamed of yourself

I've always thought of it as a bridge from TB to OKC.

It was a b-side of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" in early 1996.

Speaking of which..

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

21. Street Spirit (Fade Out) [21 votes | 1 #1 vote | 471 points]

weird fishes is a beautiful song. gives me all of the feelings.

I liked it a lot upon IR's release. I think the "IR is booooring" folks got to me with that one.

Street Spirit is amazing and deserves to be top 10 ;_;