Radiohead - In Rainbows

While hearing the Talk Talk reference, Reckoner sounds to me like a John Frusciante song with good vocals (Fall out of Love rhythm, Scar Tissue / Smile is a Rifle guitar). Obvi not meaning it's an influence, but others hear this? Same Frusciante guitar sound on House of Cards...

all this stuff about IR not being thematically consistent or whatever is mind-boggling. Why can't they just make a record that's just a strong collection of songs like any other artist? It's the same problem that I had with HTTT when it came out, people were so eager to read into it some sort of political statement or commentary on the state of the world. and if it wasn't that, they wanted the music itself to represent some kind of overarching feeling of unease, that sound that says "we're all doomed".

you could argue that the band asked for it after OK Computer/Kid A but it just seems kind of unfair at this point. even for a band like Radiohead. Sometimes Thom just wants to sing about a thwarted hook-up (I just looked up the lyrics to "Jigsaw" and haha.. if it's not a "Creep" for a new generation).

people caring about thematic content of an album = no music fans

ha frusciante

Haha I noticed the Scar Tissue but have been trying to ignore it.

As have I.

Does it need one?
-- Ned Raggett, Friday, October 12, 2007 9:50 AM (1 hour ago)

not necessarily - but that's part of the distinction (for me) between a good radiohead album and a great radiohead album. pablo honey, amnesiac, hail to the thief = no overarching mood/theme = good radiohead albums. the bends, ok computer, kid a = distinct moods, themes, lyrical structures through entire albums = great radiohead albums. so i would file In Rainbows with the first set.

I actually hadn't realized people still considered Amnesiac a B-side/throwaway collection! Wow. That actually kinda surprises me. (Then again I hadn't realized people still called Kid A 'cold' so who knows.)
-- Ned Raggett, Friday, October 12, 2007 9:55 AM (1 hour ago)

I wouldn't call Amnesiac a b-sides collection per se. it's a collection of about 4-5 fucking excellent songs, a few really good songs and then about 3 more that are just throwaways. it's a pretty good album but not consistent re: mood/sound. as for Kid A, i'd say it's pretty warm with Idioteque being the one *clear* exception - right down to the "ice age coming" lyrics.

(I think Amnesiac is their worst album that just happens to contain a couple of their best songs)
-- Matt DC, Friday, October 12, 2007 10:00 AM (1 hour ago)

OTM!

Why can't they just make a record that's just a strong collection of songs like any other artist?
-- Roz, Friday, October 12, 2007 10:36 AM (32 minutes ago)

i never said they can't do exactly that - it just won't result in their best work, cause they've already set a pretty ridiculously high precedent for cohesive album-length statements.

people caring about thematic content of an album = no music fans
-- rizzx, Friday, October 12, 2007 10:41 AM (27 minutes ago)

okay, ignoring the thematic content for a moment - the music behind Nude, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, Faust Arp, House of Cards and Videotape just doesn't work well for me, honestly. i wouldn't feel like these songs were throwaways (some to greater degrees than others) if they were woven into the record a little better thematically.

if you're going with that distinction, three out of seven ain't bad!

how does The Bends have more "distinct moods, themes, lyrical structures through entire albums than Pablo Honey or HTTT? I'm having trouble accepting your criteria for good vs great Radiohead.

After one half-listen (not paying full attention, rather than only listened to one half), this is the least annoying vocal performance by Thom Yorke since ever. Promising.

I was just reading some of the comments on Idolator. Is there that many people out there that think this isn't going to be the final, physically released version?

how does The Bends have more "distinct moods, themes, lyrical structures through entire albums than Pablo Honey or HTTT?
-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, October 12, 2007 11:21 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

The Bends is sonically consistent - it's a straightforward pop/rock album with excellent songs all around; the melodies to most of those songs are easily recalled just by looking at the song titles, i recall someone here saying recently, and none of the songs stray too far from the straightforward-ness of the album. you could really pull almost any of its songs, play it on UK rock radio in '95 and it'd work out pretty well i imagine.

same with Kid A - compared to everything else, it's highly experimental; the closest you'd come to finding a straightforward "single" worthy song is Optimistic, which due to its production/sonic layering and such is *still* way beyond anything on The Bends in terms of accessibility. so the album sticks to its guns, it's cohesive.

now looking at HTTT, you've got a handful of pop/rock songs (2+2=5, Go to Sleep, There there) another set of ballads (Sail to the moon, I will, Scatterbrain), a third set of songs that are very bassy/beat-driven, emphasis on low end (Backdrifts, The gloaming, Myxomatosis), a couple that are just fucking weird sonically and structurally (Sit down stand up, We suck young blood, A wolf at the door).......and another song or two I'm forgetting i suppose. and these songs fit together a lot less as a coherent *whole* album than Kid A or The Bends - you couldn't switch out songs on either of those records and still have the same record, whereas you could swap out a rocker, a ballad, a beatsong, and an experimental track on HTTT and still have more or less the same record as a whole entity. if that makes any sense.

Pablo Honey is not a "great album" for a different reason - because the songs are not consistently strong; it's The Bends v.1, aka Radiohead before they became themselves, set apart from the mid '90s pack of UK pop/rock, britrock-influenced, whatever bands. the songs aren't as good as The Bends (on average) and it affects the album as a while. just too many throwaway songs -- but it's a fun record, i'll give it that!

as a whole*

In one of those Idolator articles, the author claims to hear an Eagles influence on In Rainbows. Anybody else hear it? In what song?

there is a recent-ish interview with yorke somewhere where he mentions his fondness for recent chili peppers albums. it will make you cringe.

Frusciante's the only guy in that band who I like so if that's the connection I have no problems.

What I wouldn't give for the Radiohead Five to mimic the cover of Freaky Styley.

i actually like a lot of those sappy chili pepper ballads and the frusciante solo songs from the brown bunny soundtrack. i just can't imagine radiohead loving bro-ish, bland funk-rock.

after listeing to this album quite a bit in the past few days. for me this is probably the best album they have ever released. It's everything I could ever want in a radiohead LP and more. still love this.

the atmosphere of the album is more or less it's red line. it's woozy, out there feeling, sort of like Amnesiac's more coherent brother. I feel their back-to-Kid A-style-experimenting-in-the-studio comments, the comfort of their studio with them just getting into a zone, not caring too much about it all and then something like this comes out. For me, All I Need perfectly illustrates that, calm, warm but ending with a little explosion of joy

it's how they must feel right now

from an august 2006 Mojo interview with thom:

"There's one called Bodysnatchers - it's a little bit like Neu! meets dodgy hippy rock. It sounds like that new Australian band Wolfmother - I really like them actually. They're totally unashamed about what they're doing. They just don't give a fuck - and I really love that. There's a track called 15 Steps which was born out of a mad rhythm experiment that we did last year. At first we thought, "How the fuck can we pull this off live?" But then we were listening to Fuck The Pain Away by Peaches a lot and that indirectly inspired us to turn it into something different. It's got a bass line like Airbag and it's in 5/4 time with this 'clapping' groove throughout. I really like the lyrics. "You used to be alright / W hat happened? / Et cetera et cetera / Friends forever! 15 steps -then a sheer drop."

There's another song called House Of Cards - that's my personal favourite. It reminds me a lot of that tune by Fleetwood Mac - Albatross, which I absolutely love. House Of Cards sounds satisfying, really mellow and summery...

"Albatross," yeah, I can hear that pretty immediately now that I read that!

Frusciante's the only guy in that band who I like so if that's the connection I have no problems.
-- Ned Raggett, Friday, October 12, 2007 1:08 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Agreed. Just because it was nagging at me, the specific comparison just now clicked in my head, 'Murderers' (which is kinda a great song):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vMsL41ZSUPk

i dig the Fleetwood Mac comment a lot, actually one of the first things IR reminded me of was Tusk. i can't really pin down why exactly

Probably a lot of the lyrics.

Yikes! The review on local blog Austinist.com is nothing less than scathing:

First things first: we must differentiate between the chutzpah of a band at Radiohead's level of critical distinction and popularity initially releasing their album for donation and making the most revolutionary music industry statement since the dawn of the Internet Age...

(big breath)

...and the chutzpah it takes to make truly ground-breaking musical statements.

In Rainbows does not employ the latter. Still, one leaves with the impression that the boys from Oxford are convinced that, once again, they're setting the benchmark as they did with OK Computer and Kid A. Notwithstanding a handful of transcendent moments wherein the album almost achieves escape velocity to catapult itself out from the immense gravity of Radiohead's legacy, it's a mediocre, lazily conceived, and underwhelmingly produced project. Where it aspires to be organic or minimal it comes off as haphazard. Where it strains at creating catharsis, it merely herniates a "diskbox". I mean, Jesus, we all want Jonny, Thom, and the other three to stay best friends and make music forever and ever, but are we really going to convince ourselves that the lion's share of this record isn't jarringly derivative?

Continued here: http://austinist.com/2007/10/12/austinist_album_5.php

Teaser sentence for the rest of the Austinist review:

Then there are songs like "Faust Arp" which sounds like a Doves B-side.

I'm actually looking forward to a good comedown over the weekend so I can hide under my bedsheets listening to this. Any other Radiohead album would be dreadful in this circumstance but this album isn't as dreary.

i think someone probably already said this, but sonically this record seems much closer to Amnesiac than any of their other records

it's a slightly stronger, more cohesive set of songs than Amnesiac though

hahah I really like that Austinist review, even though I like the album okay. I think I have always partially enjoyed bad reviews of Radiohead so long as they have some thought to them.

it's a slightly stronger, more weaker, less cohesive set of songs than Amnesiac though
-- ciderpress, Friday, October 12, 2007 1:43 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

no worries, i fixed the typo for you!

all i need = you and whose army
house of cards = dollars & cents

reckoner = pyramid song??

ok i'll stop

if only they were that good

i mentioned already, i think nude = pyramid song

i'm suddenly reminded of how great the amnesiac b-sides were esp. "worrywort" and "fog"

oh god. ok now i definitely think that IR is nowhere near as good as amnesiac. still better than HTTT though.

I'd like to go back on what I said the other day that it sounded like HTTT. It sounds like "In Rainbows". It's seriously amazing.

IT's definitely the best of their latter-day albums (i.e. Kid A onwards).

IT's definitely the best of their latter-day albums (i.e. Kid A onwards).

Fixed!

Wow, dudes are going crazy with the comparison stuff.

The increasing amount of "I want Radiohead to sound like the boundary-testing sonic warriors I have built themselves up in my head to be" responses (not here, but I'm thinking of that Austinist review) amuse me.

yeah that's pretty much what i get from all the criticism, eventhough there is some justice in every man's own fantasies

I'm happy to amuse you then, Ned :)

Hooray amusement!

I mean, I said that it'd be nice if this was a definite break like Kid A proved to be -- it isn't, but I really like it on its own merits as opposed to NOT being whatever that fantasy record was in my head. (And I'm frankly not sure what it was I had in place at this point.) As such, a success.

Ann Powers has a nice take up. (My one '?' moment is that Pearl Jam is about the LAST band I would have thought of when it comes "Bodysnatchers" but that's the personal pantheon for you, to use her v. good phrase.)

I'm sure it's been mentioned (what hasn't in the last 60 hours) but I love the melding between initial listener reactions and more objective critical reviews that this album is forcing right now. Everything bleeding together at once, with an unprecedented lack of distinction. There's gotta be some frustrated writers (and their editors) out there.

Ahhh... I wondered when thebacklash would start creeping in.

My feelings exactly – the tension between inchoate thoughts and a fully considered review fit for publication, plus a natural instinct to compete.

Ann Powers OTM with the Prince comparison.