RAdiohead

i'd still expect they'll make a new album in a few years once thom & jonny are ready to take a break from the smile

I wouldn't be surprised if they never came out with another album of new material, although I could see them touring behind something else (maybe some sort of anniversary collection or recording different versions of old material).

But then again, I also wouldn't be surprised if they did. They know better than to "retire" and act like the door is closed.

it just seems like the main reason we haven't gotten a new album yet is that they weren't all able to meet up to write & record during the pandemic so thom & jonny formed the smile which has taken up their time & energy since then. they were planning to tour in 2021 before the pandemic happened, they haven't all lost interest in the band or anything, just the usual schedule was disrupted by the pandemic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2M3oaGJb48

It’s a weird take to say that the last track (true love waits) sounds like a closer to their career because pretty much every Radiohead closing track from The Bends onwards could serve this purpose.

Well, there is also the symbolic weight of it being an old song that long struggled for a place on an album and then finally got it, (literally) at last.

Ridiculously good Smile show last night here in SF. Glad I caught that -- still haven't seen the actual band since 2003 for all kinds of weird timing reasons but both this show and Thom Yorke solo three years back (almost to the day, same venue) were excellent.

I was there, too. I wasn't a huge fan of many of the "new" songs they played, but maybe they just need more time to grow. Skinner was amazing throughout. I don't know a lot about drums, but his internal metronome seems absolutely perfect. At times it was hard to reconcile what I saw the man doing vs what my ears were hearing. Like he had hidden invisible limbs.

Yeah I was nearest to Skinner -- on the floor standing to the side and very close to the stage -- and dude's a beast. The new songs sounded solid enough in context; I remain convinced that while I do enjoy studio work from Thom et al there is a specific next level they can only reach in live performance and that was on offer again.

Here's a bit of my video footage from the Denver show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkf_79w106E

i was at the SF show and IMO this easily matched the last two RAdiohead shows I saw (which was at Outside Lands and a show in san jose, can't remember when that was) as far as intensity. Fantastic all the way through.

Saw them in Portland last week. Amazing show.

Do they throw in the odd Radiohead B side or whatever?

No, the closest they get is ending the show with Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses which Radiohead played live at least once about 20 years ago as Reckoner (and was eventually recorded by Yorke solo)

I was at that show (gorge in Washington) where they played pulled apart by horses in 01 ;)

https://on4word.bandcamp.com/album/in-rainbow-roads

"In Rainbows by Radiohead recreated using N64 sounds. Mostly sounds from Super Mario 64."

well done

Nude slaps in this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBtJ9_zTqdE

new smile single, apparently not from the next album. i like it more than most of the last album

this is my favourite thing Yorke and company have done in like 20 years

after a few more listens i'll happily say it's my favourite since in rainbows

unfortunately i listened to the rest of the new songs and they're much more in line with the last album which i did not really care for

unrelated, but i'm starting to think HTTT is their Neil Young Tonight's the Night vibe equivalent. "A Punch Up at a Wedding" is just a groovy, loose jam with their usual flourishes.

Anyone else revisit In Rainbows after a long break and be disappointed by the limited dynamic range, so typical of the era it was recorded in? A band that crafts such intricate tunes, only for them to be so wearying on the ear. Imagine a Radiohead album with the production of a 1970s prog band instead.

It is a bit congested. I’ve not listened to the vinyl, is it the same?

New The Smile song is not produced by Neil Godrich and it’s noticeable because it sounds better than usual.

I agree with Melomane on that one, Nigel’s production sounded on point on albums like Kid A / Amnesiac but hasn’t quite worked for me ever since.

and yet Sea Change is massively dynamic in the “unmastered” version

Oh I mostly meant when working with Radiohead

This rips!

https://thesmile.bandcamp.com/album/wall-of-eyes

these two preview tracks have both been my favourite radiohead song in 20 years, the last minute of the title-track is astonishing, i had no idea they had something like that in them

i don't like "wall of eyes" as much as "bending hectic" but both of them have me optimistic about the album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFiIW-RKxQI

i really like this new one they were playing live but it doesn't seem to be on the album unless it's been renamed.

lol i much prefer the new song to that one i think, that one sounds like arpeggio practice

it's just a stronger tune than most of the smile stuff. it started off as a live jam at the end of talk show host

ah okay! I agree the songwriting instincts seem way stronger this time around, like they have more conviction now

"talk show host" is absolutely one of my favorite radiohead deep cuts... glad they're still playing it, they clearly love playing it

i checked out the smile, who i've never heard before... i didn't know jonny greenwood is in it. jonny and thom have been really close artistic collaborators... most of their lives. they've done some amazing stuff together, and while i don't think the new stuff is necessarily any _better_ than the last radiohead album, i don't think it's appreciably _worse_ either. i _loved_ the last radiohead album, and not just because the tracklist was in alphabetical order, which is OBJECTIVELY CORRECT. (sorry. 'tism.)

at the same time, uh, thom in particular has always been deeply political. i don't know, is he not political anymore? is that possible, for him to just _not talk about_ politics? and it's fall of 2023 and he's in a band with jonny greenwood... it's a ticking time bomb, isn't it? i'm not talking about the trans thing. that's _a_ time bomb, but i don't feel like it's the one that's more likely to go off.

is it rude for me to bring this up? it's all i think about when people talk about radiohead these days (and in this case, i _am_ talking bout the trans thing). it completely overshadows their music, which has been... really important to me for a long time.

uh, not sure what you want from them here. IMO Radiohead have not been overtly political in their music since Hail to the Thief era, certainly Moon Shaped Pool did not strike me as a very political album.

this is a great song, and a great video.

Hyped for this record

uh, not sure what you want from them here. IMO Radiohead have not been overtly political in their music since Hail to the Thief era, certainly Moon Shaped Pool did not strike me as a very political album.

this is a great song, and a great video.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm)

i mean i'd like to be able to trust that jonny greenwood isn't a transphobe, is what i'd like. right now i don't. at the same time i don't want to, like, argue whether jonny greenwood is a transphobe or not? i'm not saying it because i want to argue about it. i'm not going to mention the other thing because i _really_ don't want to argue about it. i remember - and my memory is unreliable - i remember people arguing about jonny greenwood's stance on the other thing as far back as 2016.

i did think of _a moon shaped pool_ as being a deeply political record. "burn the witch", to me, that's a political song as much as "2+2=5" is, "the numbers", that's a deeply political song to me.

We call upon the people
People have this power
The numbers don't decide
Your system is a lie
...
We'll take back what is ours
Take back what is ours
One day at a time

i mean, uh. i don't know how else to read those lyrics, you know? and i mean yeah, the personal is political. those lyrics resonate with me, that song resonates with me. and if jonny greenwood doesn't think i belong as part of the "we" yorke sings about, that's personally painful to me. it's not going to ruin my life or anything, but it's painful.

These two songs are more thrilling to me than the entire first album, which I couldn’t fully get into. Trying not to get my hopes up too high here

Excited that Nigel Godrich is not involved. Not that I don’t like his work but a gear switch could help.

xposts re the other thing: I'm assuming you mean their stance on Israel (or lack of). not excusing them at all, and in fact it's just one more thing that I find deeply disappointing in these current times, but there are long-standing reasons for it and it doesn't apply only to Jonny: https://www.vulture.com/2017/07/radioheads-relationship-with-israel-goes-way-back.html

the transphobia... yeah, it's one of those things where him or thom talking about it might make it worse? though not talking about it isn't great either. it mostly just sucks. :/

i'm not sure radiohead have ever been very specific when it comes to their politics anyway. they're good on broad themes like climate change or late-stage capitalism, but rarely direct their ire towards any state or actor, or get involved directly in activism or protest.

thom's politics are just pretty generic left-liberal stuff except with a gigantic blindspot on israel/palestine. he's been a big supporter of the english greens for a while, especially caroline lucas, but also backed corbyn when he was labour leader. he's backed various protests over the years, mostly anti-war or climate stuff, and has been pretty critical of the uk & us government over the years. pretty unobjectionable stuff with the major exception of israel

jonny's politics seem to be worse than thom's - he follows a bunch of terrible reactionary observer columnists & got caught liking a transphobic tweet by suzanne moore last year but said it was an accident and he doesn't intend to comment on issues he's ignorant about. i figure he very likely really does have transphobic sympathies but is smart enough not to become publicly obsessive about it like so many others. i can certainly understand if some want to draw the 'never listen to anything he's been involved with ever again' line there but i don't personally. his wife is a very right-wing israeli who got into all sorts of antivax conspiracy shit in the last few years and her politics are likely something to do with the band's uncharacteristically shit stance re: israel.

the others all seem pretty similar to thom just less active about it - pretty generic progressives.

Jonny Greenwood has been married to an israeli since 1995 which is an extra point that might explain why they ignore thar conflict.

Political-wise in their lyrics, tweets, interviews they lean left but I think it’s mostly shallow and uncontroversial.

jonny's politics seem to be worse than thom's - he follows a bunch of terrible reactionary observer columnists & got caught liking a transphobic tweet by suzanne moore last year but said it was an accident and he doesn't intend to comment on issues he's ignorant about. i figure he very likely really does have transphobic sympathies but is smart enough not to become publicly obsessive about it like so many others. i can certainly understand if some want to draw the 'never listen to anything he's been involved with ever again' line there but i don't personally. his wife is a very right-wing israeli who got into all sorts of antivax conspiracy shit in the last few years and her politics are likely something to do with the band's uncharacteristically shit stance re: israel.

― ufo

honestly? i've seen this play out a lot of times before. it's a pipeline. it's a pipeline and a lot of transphobes go down it. it doesn't matter how _smart_ someone is. a lot of the people who go down the pipeline _are_ intelligent people. once people get as far down the pipeline as jonny has gone, you don't go back. someone gets to the point of "accidentally" liking transphobic tweets, just _happening_ to follow transphobic columnists... the next step is "just asking questions".

i don't blame people for wanting to believe the best. everybody has different standards. i do want to believe the best, i want to believe that _this_ time, it'll be different. i don't believe that. i have to deal with the reality that, in all likelihood, the guitar player for a band whose music i love, whose music is really important to me, is transphobic.

Political-wise in their lyrics, tweets, interviews they lean left but I think it’s mostly shallow and uncontroversial.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka)

i don't think "uncontroversial" is a way to describe their current political orientation! greenwood's right-wing pro-israel stance, whatever personal reasons he may have for it, is... honestly, that's probably a bigger issue for me than the transphobia is. i just talk about the transphobia because it's more personal to me. because it sort of _requires_ a response from me.

i think there's a sort of grieving process when something like this happens, at least there is for me. i've gone through it a few times... a lot of the musicians i used to love, i've had to walk away from.

i don't know. maybe that's part of why i don't listen to so much music these days. i used to get really emotionally involved with music... to the extent that i also had strong emotional feelings about the musicians who made them. i don't think i'm unique in that. maybe some people do "separate the art from the artist". i've never done that before, but more and more, i find that... it's a necessity. doing that, though, that changes the way i can experience the art.

music used to be the only way i could feel emotion, and it's not anymore. and now that it's not, i guess there are better ways. i've fallen out of love with music, i guess. one by one, the artists i used to love... i used to believe in killing my idols, but now that the time's come, i find that all i'm really doing is walking away, grieving the loss but knowing that i'm doing the right thing, that i'm taking care of myself, that doing so will make me a better, stronger person.

like i said. i don't want to argue politics. i don't care about discourse. i'm grieving. i'm grieving a band i used to love, i used to, well, _trust_. i trusted them. and, well, i've changed, and probably they've changed, and now they aren't people i can trust, aren't people i can love the way i used to. part of growing older, i guess.

anyway. my gut feeling is that in time, other people are going to have to make their own choices, figure out how to deal with the reality of the members of radiohead supporting... intolerable things. anybody else here, how they deal with that, i guess that's up to them. all i can do is try to speak my truth as best i can.

pleasant reminder to all that these are also the blokes who regularly performed a song called "i might be wrong" for many, many years.

i'm not sure radiohead have ever been very specific when it comes to their politics anyway

I think the kind of generic "revolutionary" rhetoric in which they dabbled is no longer sufficient. I mean look at the lyrics quoted above:

We call upon the people
People have this power
The numbers don't decide
Your system is a lie
We'll take back what is ours
Take back what is ours
One day at a time

This could be their nemesis, Kid Rock, talking about crowning Trump emperor. Not that I'm accusing Radiohead of this, but these sort of words don't signify what they once did.

I think the kind of generic "revolutionary" rhetoric in which they dabbled is no longer sufficient. I mean look at the lyrics quoted above:

sufficient _how_? i don't think any sort of rhetoric is _sufficient_ in terms of bringing about meaningful change. i remember when the barbie movie was out i saw people saying similar things about it, that its "revolutionary" rhetoric wasn't sufficient. honestly i didn't expect the barbie movie to overthrow capitalism. i don't expect that from a popular gen x band like radiohead, either.

idk. i found that song inspirational, at one point. it helped keep me going, helped me feel better about myself when i felt lost and hopeless, at one point. sufficient? i don't know. it helped me. their songs, their lyrics, helped me out when i was having trouble. for me, that's sufficient.

Anyone else listening to the new season of Dissect on In Rainbows? I've only listened to the first episode, which covers the band's history and all albums leading up to In Rainbows, but I enjoyed it very much.

For those unfamiliar: podcast where each season covers a single album in depth, with episodes devoted to each track. A lot of music theory and lyrical analysis, as well as background on instrumentation, recording, etc. Most seasons have focused on rap -- believe this might be the first on a rock album.

You might consider that he's following those accounts because they're relevant to him in a different way. I don't know if you've ever seen early photos and videos of him, before they had any real PR. There's also what he's wearing in recent ones.

― caleb killed me

god this is so awkward

so this is a very long post, i've been trying to write and rewrite a lot of what i'm about to say all week and get it into a coherent form that doesn't ramble all over the place, and i haven't been able to do it. and at this point i'm just gonna call it and post it. it's a fucking message board post and i've done five drafts on it. enough.

i haven't really posted this stuff because it's so hard to talk about coherently to cis people. i don't know whether or not you're a cis person personally, i just know there are cis people who are going to be reading this, i'm writing to an audience and i want to do it as well as possible. i guess i'm going to half-ass it here and now, though.

talking about this is really embarrassing to me. i feel like i'm walking into a thread that's trying to discuss the new album by members of a really great band and just shouting "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!", and people just want to talk about the album. i want to talk about the album too! i don't want to talk about trans shit all the time. i have a life outside of being a... (checks notes) "melodramatic hot girl shitposter". (that's from a meme i have in my notes, which literally do exist and are even longer than this post. nobody's described me personally like that.)

the thing is it _is_ relevant and it _is_ important to talk about the transphobia and the right-wing politics, and what happens is of course what happens, that people want to argue about it. i don't know you. i don't know where you're coming from, how well you know jonny greenwood. i don't know what clothes jonny greenwood is wearing. i might, i mean, i might be wrong.

i was looking up... austin mentioned the lyrics to "i might be wrong" and i looked them up on genius... and genius says there's a possible reference to a quote by bertrand russell in the title. and russell says, he says "i would never die for my beliefs, because i might be wrong". and as much as i know that we're all different, i forget sometimes. i forget that for a guy like russell, he literally does have that choice. a lot of people who have that choice, it's so ingrained in them that it feels to them like everybody has that choice.

-

the thing i've really been trying to express this week, in particular... is that to me... not to everyone, but to me... i feel like there is a certain difference between the sort of transphobes who post copypasta encouraging anybody who's visibly trans on the internet to kill ourselves, and the transphobes who just, like, wish we'd go away. lily alexandre, this lady who does video essays, did one this week and she talked about that copypasta, which people post on her videos a lot... and what's interesting to me is that the copypasta ends "you've made your choice. there's no turning back." like to someone like me, detransition = death, but cis people don't necessarily think of the two as synonymous. i feel sometimes that a lot of transphobes out there are these sort of bertrand russell transphobes. they just want me to _change my mind_. to them i guess i might seem dogmatically ideological.

on the other hand, the people who share that shitty copypasta, who i guess actively want me to die... they're wrong about a lot of things, but on that one particular thing, they're right. i've made my choice. there's no turning back. not because i've, like, taken hormones or updated my paperwork or even because i'm trans, but because that's just... existence. none of us get to turn back. the idea of "detransition" never made sense to me. whatever gender i present as, that's not turning back the clock, that's just me continuing to change, to evolve... that's the way a lot of so-called "detransitioners" experience it, but that's not the way it gets talked about. i've made my choice. i might be wrong, but whatever the consequences are - and mostly the consequences have been good, so far - i get to face them.

-

one of the consequences is that ... i have lived experiences cis people don't. so right this is kind of a basic thing that a lot of people don't understand. i'm not _explaining_ it here, i'm just stating it for the record, like to me this is fact, this is axiomiatic. if someone doesn't understand this or doesn't _agree_ with what i'm saying, there's nothing i can meaningfully say to them. because of my position, because i have had to engage with transphobic politics to an extent and a level beyond what more cis people do, i am more knowledgeable and aware than most cis people as to what transphobia is, what it looks like, how it develops and manifests. i'm not, like, explaining here, i'm not justifying, i'm just doing the ron swanson thing and flat out saying "i know more than you".

and from a cisgender perspective that looks rude. from a trans perspective, the way you're addressing me, asking me if i've considered alternatives, ways that my statement that jonny greenwood is transphobic might be wrong... to me that's pretty rude. yes. yes, i have. when i say something like that it's not me going off and being melodramatic. i just want to be able to say something like that and have people trust that i have the lived experience to back it up, that i know what i'm talking about, that i'm not looking for people to peer-review my thesis.

i might be wrong. about jonny greenwood, about myself, about a lot of things. if somebody has evidence, absolutely, please, i'm open to it. if jonny greenwood is out there wearing a t-shirt that says "Transphobes Eat Shit and Die Alone", or something like that, yeah, to me that would indicate i'm probably wrong, and i'd be super fucking glad and relieved to be wrong. it's not just that i'd rather be wrong than hate-crimed, it's more that i really, genuinely don't want to go through this shit again. i've seen this pattern play out again and again, with rowling and with quite a few other people whose names i honestly can't remember, because they're not nearly as important and influential as rowling has been, and this process sucks, and i hate it, and i wish just once, just once, it would play out differently. i'd love to be wrong.

right now this is the part of the process where it's fucking clear as day to a great many trans people that jonny greenwood is a transphobe and a lot of cis people just don't _see_ it. (some cis people do. that's why i mentioned it here, when i've mentioned it elsewhere it's something that _is_ known and _is_ recognized outside the trans community.) and because cis people _don't_ necessarily know what it looks like when someone comes out as a transphobic, very often, when i call someone out as a transphobe, i do seem, you know, _melodramatic_. like, seriously, he _liked a tweet_ by _accident_ and i'm claiming that's proof positive that he's a transphobe? and of course the onus is put on me to try and justify and explain this complicated chain of events to people who _just want to fucking talk about a radiohead album_.

well, i guess i don't have to. i guess i can just play nice and _not_ go into a radiohead thread talking about jonny greenwood's transphobia. maybe that's the right thing to do. i genuinely don't know. it's not an all-or-nothing thing, of course. i could back off. i could back off at any time, and probably will. i did find your response to me kind of rude, though, caleb. just for the record.

thanks caleb. apology gladly accepted... people aren't born knowing this stuff, i wasn't either!