RAdiohead

like, skinner could be playing everything he's playing and eating a sandwich at the same time, and then could hear thom in the background daring him to "sound like a rubber ball for 3 seconds" and he just would, without missing a beat, and then go right back to the prior beat and the sandwich. he's fluent in drums

phil is great but there's a reason he plays the same exact fills in all the same exactly places in live performances over the past 25 years

(mainly i just want to turn this into defend phil selway day, lol)

the last time we had this conversation i think we all agreed that it was good phil took drum lessons around/after okc

and that the slurred 4/4 on "pyramid song" is cool and good

these are some of the consensus phil conversation beats, for sure

the phil meta

then there was the whole King of Limbs period where they got another Phil, and they had to deal with all of the confusion with that

(i'm assuming they found another second drummer, or a third drummer, after that, but it was also a bald white guy and they had to make one of those awful "listen, i don't mean to be unfair to this third guy but we can't have three phils in a row" conversations)

Phil should be canonized for 'Morning Bell' alone.

phil is great but there's a reason he plays the same exact fills in all the same exactly places in live performances over the past 25 years

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 17 May 2022 19:45 (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

...because they own and are part of the song as written? Radiohead's songs are incredibly tightly-constructed, it is their strength a d their curse, they've never done a studio song over 7 minutes long for example

I always loved his groove on subterranean homesick alien, too. the ghost notes alternating between the snare drum and the bass drum, like tides

xp

iirc "subterranean homesick alien" was the first thing that came to mind when i rushed to phil's defense before he was inexorably sacked

looked forward to the new album by the sacked members of radiohead "we don't need no stinkin hi-hats"

First there was Thom. Then there was Tom. And before anyone realizes what was happening, they were covering “Lorelei” and Jonny had been sacked

I kind of want to play the old Radiohead conversation hits and subtly change up my parts, introduce some new things

where is the ride cymbal in all this

there wasn't really anything on this album that made me think 'phil couldn't have done this' idk, didn't feel like a huge stylistic shift

'the smoke'?

half of this album is pretty good (though not up with rh's best) and the other half loses me

still feels like it suffers a little from having less moving parts than radiohead, the orchestration helps fill in those gaps but sometimes it feels like things aren't quite as fleshed out still

i also wasn't serious about this being their prog album or anything lol sorry for starting the "what is prog" debate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upWL_oB53vQ

they're doing "feeling pulled apart by horses" live

okay i'm going into this with a megapint of haterade and even i can't front on "thin thing."

whoo that is some psychotic hypnotic post-kraut ephemera. megajam.

listening again.

like if you told me this was a kid a outtake, i would believe it completely. easy highlight.

second half of the album is way better, but it still feels like maybe a solid 3 mic side project to me. makes sense that they're playing thom's solo material live - that's what it reminds me of most. not bad, though it's not hitting me like anima did at first. that one's lustre wore off with repeat listens for me, so maybe i'll revisit and compare with this again. it's alright though - pretty good, i guess. sorry again for my outburst re:jg upthread. he might be a jerk, but whatever fine, he's in the band whether or not it bugs me so i might as well listen.

thin thing is fuckin incredible

This album is great!

they're not playing any other thom solo stuff live (would have thought "cymbal rush" would be a reasonable chance though) & "feeling pulled apart by horses" is one of thom's solo tracks that started off as a radiohead song & jonny has a writing credit on it & played on the studio version

I'd put Atoms for Peace and this ahead of King of Limbs, easily.

i wouldn't, at all.

they're not playing any other thom solo stuff live (would have thought "cymbal rush" would be a reasonable chance though) & "feeling pulled apart by horses" is one of thom's solo tracks that started off as a radiohead song & jonny has a writing credit on it & played on the studio version

― ufo, Tuesday, May 17, 2022 7:36 PM

yeah, i always liked thom's recording of that song, but i hardly ever put it on. something about his "thom" material just doesn't keep my attention for very long.

That song “feeling pulled apart by horses” is the original Reckoner and the one where the IR “Reckoner” came from.

The intro to “feeling pulled apart by horses” is the section where Reckoner came from. You can sort of hear it on the outro to the latter, however who knows what those initial demos of the song sounded like, I guess they used to be in the same key before being different songs.

I think Jonny also has a writing credit on The Eraser’s title track.

Would be amazing to see them try that one on this new setting but I don’t think they’ll do it.

HTTT is probably the most similar one to OKC, but where OKC is oddly digestible and fun to listen to all the way through, HTTT makes for an exhausting listen and is way too morose in comparison.
moka always otm wrt radiohead

Thin Thing is very good, a highlight for sure, but when it comes to 'psychotic hypnotic post-kraut ephemera megajams' it has maybe a tenth of the intensity of, say, Oranssi Pazuzu. and maybe that's okay - not everyone is required to like metal vocals ;)

I think Jonny also has a writing credit on The Eraser’s title track.

iirc it was just thom sampled the piano chords from jonny noodling around on the piano

"the opposite" and "thin thing" are both onto something but end up a little, well, thin. "a hairdryer" just sounds like a king of limbs outtake (though with less percussion)

(except more tippytapping)

A friend asked me about the time signatures on this record (or rather asked if someone on reddit was right), so I took a listen:

The Same: 4/4
The Opposite: 4/4
YWNWITA: 5/4
Pana-Vision: 7/8
The Smoke: 4/4
Speech Bubbles: 4/4
Thin Thing: 6/8 or 12/8, but I consider those pretty much synonymous with 4/4 and with each other, it's just a matter of how you prefer to think about it.
Open The Floodgates: 4/4
Free In The Knowledge: 4/4
A Hairdryer: 4/4
Waving A White Flag: 11/4, or a phrase consisting of a bar of 6/4 + a bar of 5/4. But that's all the same thing really.
WDKWTB: 4/4
Skrting On The Surface: 11/8

hard record to tippytap my foot to, sheesh

And when you add them all together, you get a sum time signature of 68/64

Making the average time signature for this album a cool 17/16

lol

Struck hard by “Open the Floodgates” this morning

Best song in here

Fantano gave his review already and it’s not so surprising that I don’t agree with 90% of his takes. The songs he doesn’t highlight are my favorite ones in here.

He has plenty of wrong Radiohead related takes.

Also OTF has the distinction of stealing its first couplet from Roxette

just gonna say singing "look at all the pretty lies" in a creepy "insane" voice earns an instant skip from me, I don't care what the rest of the track is doing.

The smoke kind of sounds like Sault

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C06Rr2nFXk0

you will never work in television live on fallon

How great it would be if they honored the song’s title and the performance ended with them kicking Fallon out of the studio.

The Smile is showing up all over these end of the year critics lists. I haven't played it yet but reading a bit up thread it sounds like I need to rectify that.