Radiohead - In Rainbows

THE KING BOY PATO OFFICIAL REVIEW OF RADIOHEAD'S LATEST AND GREATEST ARTISTIC PIECE WHICH AGAIN BLOWS THE MIND WHILE CREATING A SINGULAR PIECE OF ART NEVER BEFORE SEEN IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND NEVER WILL BE AGAIN, "IN RAINBOWS":

What a load of boring old shit.

7 years ago, I bought Kid A at a midnight sale, came back home, put on the headphones and fell asleep while listening. tonight I finished a book at 2 am, turned on computer, downloaded, and once again fell asleep listening with the same headphones. I woke back up during Reckoner though, thinking it was great, made it through to the end, and am now on my 2nd listen cuz I wanted to hear the middle tracks that I slept through the first time.

I fail to hate this album at the moment. :-/

:(

Where's my activation code?

fuck you spam filter, i thought the internet hated me for a minute there

Huh? Did they make the Atease board registered only all of a sudden?

I've listened to it twice now.
I think I like it.

bizarrely, i have fallen for the hype.
i love the whole event aspect, and subsequently didn't want to be left out (a rare situation with regards to radiohead product for me)
also, as a sideline, the servers are holding up remarkably well - registered and d/l'd all within 7 minutes.

guys we're getting almost doubled by the comments on the oink torrent.

What does that mean?

Need to get home. I really want to download this album!

I didn't expect anything out of this record. I never cared at all for Hail to the Thief, but man. This record is really, really good. Just so sensual and quiet and so warm and I'm loving it.

It's so warm!

ysi?

I want to email them pretending to be someone's grandma who downloaded the wrong album for her grandson's birthday but it turns out he really wanted 'The Bends' and wants to ask if she could get an exchange or refund.

d/l real quick - now listening - warm is right.

Warm is good, most of their best material is warm. Radiohead have never been particularly good at doing chilly.

This may have been covered upthread, but am I right in assuming this record won't chart?

Xfm are doing a full album playback at 12 midday (NOW) listen in

X-clusive: Hear The New Radiohead Album Today On Xfm
http://www.xfm.co.uk/Article.asp?b=news&id=490630#

first established media review of the album posted by John Mulvey @ Uncut

Uncut.co.uk | Wild Mercury Sound - Post details: Radiohead's "In Rainbows"
http://tinyurl.com/2ygc7r

Sounds nice so far.

is there a pop song on it?

Yeah, there's about 10 or so I'd say.

Paul Morley blogging about it:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observermusic/2007/10/rainbow_warriors.html

some very quick first thoughts

some tracks:

Bodysnatchers = The Notwist + Smashing Pumpkins. The most rock track on the album?

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi = Brian Eno produced U2 Unforgettable Fire

All I Need = Talk Talk + Manual + Ulrich Schnauss + Kraftwerk + The Blue Nile + The Broadway Project

Faust ARP = Beatles influenced melodies

House Of Cards - more Talk Talk and a.r.kane influences

Jigsaw Falling Into Place - more The Notwist + The Woodentops circa 1986 + even James - the way the acoustic guitars have an uptempo jangle style

Videotape - more Talk Talk / Mark Holis slow paced arty-rock piano minimalism, this even sounds like Ulver on their new album !

Bodysnatchers starts off like a long lost Pablo Honey rarity - especially Thom's voice which he uses in a way I haven't heard in a very long time. It soon bursts into something else though.

Will everyone stop fucking fooling themselves? This is typical Radiohead - ie: a load of boring old shit. Anyone who can compare this to Talk Talk is a really stupid cunt who needs to educate themselves on how to fucking listen asap.

You can fuck off any time you want, thank you.

open up your ears - they have used similar sound construction techniques to talk talk on this album, e.g slow paced delicate drummimg

King Boy Pato: you do know that Talk Talk made more than just the two hits everyone knows, right?

Faust Arp sounds like Polyethylene part 1 crossed with Exit Music. But there's more to it once again.

Oh, come on.

Why am I trying to talk sense about Radiohead to Radiohead fans anyway?

*dissipates into a fog of anti-logic*

It's not a million miles away from Hail To The Thief though is it? Those expecting a complete change like Kid A after the long break will be disappointed. Those expecting a great Radiohead album won't.

Pato: I don't think this is the right day to be slagging off Radiohead, even if you don't care for them.

Why am I trying to talk sense about Radiohead to Radiohead fans anyway?

You're not "talking sense" or even just disagreeing or being critical of the album, you're being a dick and calling everyone who is enjoying the album a "really stupid cunt". Did you really expect anyone to take you seriously?

Prick.

Has there been any artwork released with the download yet?

Will everyone stop fucking fooling themselves? This is typical Radiohead - ie: a load of boring old shit. Anyone who can compare this to Talk Talk is a really stupid cunt who needs to educate themselves on how to fucking listen asap.

Correct, this is much better.

Thanks King Boy Pato, i've now seen the error of my ways and am going to destroy all my Radiohead records as i'm clearly a stupid cunt for having them.

Melissa, please listen to the Ulver new track Funebre and compare it to Radiohead - Videotape - there are some similarities, both are slow paced piano tracks

myspace - Ulver
http://www.myspace.com/ulver1

I am really digging this album right now. Style is very much in the vein of HTTT but it's much much more cohesive. It's very successful at merging the two sides of their sound (rock/ambient, pop/avant, whatever you want to call it), rather than their last album which was kind of both and neither at the same time.

Just woke up, had the mail in my inbox and the download went like a charm in two, three minutes. *NICE.* Will listen to it once I'm in at work.

Apparently, people who order it now are getting a "you are in a queue" message.

So they DID have some load balancing mail system going on. Roz' "it cut off after 30 Mb" is the only complaint I've read about the download so far, really impressive.

Got it, listening to it, it is NOICE. Oddly upbeat for York & company- first track "15 Step" even has a repeated sample of what sounds like a crowd of children cheering.

And for the record, the 160kbps files sound fine, surprisingly so in fact. The only thing I'm annoyed about is a lack of embedded cover art in the file or a .jpg of it in the zip archive as I like to use Coverflow.

I'm printing one from www.rainbowpuke.com

Yeah, it actually is a crowd of children cheering. :D

x-post

I wrote these note on my semi-private site, but I may as well share with the group:

It seems rather appropriate that I hear In Rainbows for the first time in the early morning, after the rain. After "15 Step" and "Bodysnatchers," the record feels like the calm after a storm. It feels extremely light and airy -- lots of empty space, little to no strumming or heavy chords. The band are obsessed with arpeggiation, enough so that "arp" ends up part of the titles of two cuts. (I was kinda hoping that the Arp in "Faust Arp" would be a reference to Arp synthesizers, but no such luck.) It's funny, I think this album is a lot more accessible to people who listen to a lot of melancholy guitar music, but anyone who might call this easy or straightforward or wants to say that this is much of anything like pre-Kid A Radiohead has no idea what they are talking about.

I totally get why "Bangers N Mash" and "Down Is The New Up" were cut, though. They are both better than some of the songs that made the cut, but they would've radically altered the character of the album. This is a beautifully composed album, but I think a few of these songs wouldn't quite work outside of its context.

The band's discography continues to roughly mirror that of David Byrne/Talking Heads. If you count Amnesiac along with Kid A as the parallel to Remain In Light, Thom Yorke's The Eraser was his The Catherine Wheel, and In Rainbows is Radiohead's Little Creatures. I mean, it's not at all peppy, but in both cases it is a deliberate move towards simple yet very sophisticated songwriting.

I thought that Faust Arp would be a krautrockesque analogue synth wig out, how wrong i was...

comparing this to little creatures does not bode well for me, but i'm sure i'll like it anyway

ha! i was wondering where the kids were!

akm, I want to stress that I don't think it SOUNDS like Little Creatures, I just think it follows a rough parallel of the two bands' career arcs.

i'm getting the talk talk vibe on some of it too. nude especially.

Style is very much in the vein of HTTT but it's much much more cohesive. It's very successful at merging the two sides of their sound (rock/ambient, pop/avant, whatever you want to call it), rather than their last album which was kind of both and neither at the same time.

This pretty much hits it as far as my first impression goes. HTTT sounded kind of sloppy in that regard, a mish-mash of stuff that never cohesed (is that even a word?), but this one really works better as an album. All the tracks sit well next to each other, it has enough variation to address the various sounds the band has used over the years.

Other things: a lot of these tracks are surprisingly upbeat. Very little vocal processing, too. Like the Eraser, Thom's voice is pretty upfront and clear. Sometimes I like that, sometimes I don't.

This may have been covered upthread, but am I right in assuming this record won't chart?

Yes, doesn't meet chart criteria.

On Last FM, '15 Step', 48,632 plays. 'Weird Fish/Arpeggi', 104 plays. Are people abandoning it so quickly? Sounds like their most accessible work since OKC.

yea that BBC article was pretty dumb