Radiohead - In Rainbows

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.

The idea that In Rainbows doesn't have a consistent sonic mood is fucking ludicrous.

BUT I REQUIRE ALL MY ALBUMS TO HAVE CONSISTENT SONIC MOODS OR BE EASILY RATE-ABLE AMONGST SAID ARTISTS ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY

jesus christ i feel sorry for radiohaed

me too

arggh i keep going back and forth with this one on every listen. i'll just say it's a decent enough Radiohead album and i'm quite happy with it.

15 Steps is kind of frustrating me at the moment, the first 40 seconds or so are rubbish (I put this down to Thom's annoying yelping vocal performance, too Eraser for me) but from then on it gets better and better. Also children shouting or whatever, that song is all about the bass - Colin plays a fucking blinder.

Yes, once that bass comes is in it is ON

15 Steps is kind of frustrating me at the moment, the first 40 seconds or so are rubbish (I put this down to Thom's annoying yelping vocal performance, too Eraser for me) but from then on it gets better and better.

i agree with all of this.

^me too. It's annoying, because everytime I play In Rainbows for someone else(all two times, so far), I can't stop myself from saying "...actually, the first minute is actually the worst on the album", and so on.

It's going to be fun to get the other disc and construct an improved tracklist and order.

^I've been having the same experience! I'm all "hold on! It gets really amazing! Just wait! No, seriously, this is way different than his solo album!"

Actually, I always say actually way too much in real life, actually.

God, I love that opening. Y'all are freaks. (I love you all too.)

i'm liking this more with each listen. it is slowly revealing itself. the production on thom's voice is beautiful. all these little touches like when, halfway through 15 steps, his voice seems to briefly escape the rigid machinery of the song, curling in dusty echoes to the horizon, only to be brought back into the panic. also how nude's intro and backing is like ghosts being sucked into heaven. and more or less every other moment. like when all i need finally breaks. it will be cool to eventually sing the words "weird fishes" alongside 10000 other concertgoers. anyways, right now my lights are off and this is a silk cocoon and it is my favorite radiohead.

Yea you're right, it's pretty much just on the last part of "National Anthem" when all those horns start going crazy, and that is all. Sorry. I just wish Radiohead explored that stuff more.

-- Mark Clemente, Friday, 12 October 2007 13:58

I agree! I'd love to have Joe McPhee show up and squawk all over (say) Weird Fishes.

I think this is the most I've enjoyed a radiohead album since, well, forever. What stands out for me after like the 13th or 14th play is the incredible care with which the album, as an album, was constructed. Each song seems a bit like a different flavor of sorbet on a tasting menu; you take a bite and it lingers around on your tongue for the first minute and a half or so, not really doing much besides creating an overwhelming, intense sensation of its particular "flavorness"; and then around the 2 minute mark the flavor changes a little bit, does something weird, which alters the sense of the overall flavor but remains decidedly "itself". And then the song ends and you take a bite of the next flavor on the plate. So different sonic sensations are offered in bite size portions, really, as long as you take really slow, sensuous kind of bites; but some bites take longer to reveal all their subtleties than others. And each flavor is sequenced really carefully with all the rest to intensify the sensation of having these 10 unique, individual 'essences' of songs. I think the only time we really have similar songs back to back is like with Faust Arp moving into Reckoner, and that is really effective as a way of kind of ramping up into the climax which reckoner kind of is.

In fact I think these are kind of the 'essences' of all the songs presented here, the most unique, strange, different-from-everything-next-to-them versions that could have been created. At first I hated the Videotape and All I Need on this album, because they were really gorgeous songs with such amazing movement and catharsis in the versions we have from tour bootlegs. But I realize now that these songs, as well as Arpeggi and House of Cards, were changed--flattened out, perhaps--in order to not give us any resolution within themselves; rather, they have to fit in the context of the album. And emotional satisfaction is experienced over the course of the Album, NOT on a song by song basis. I can't imagine really enjoying any of these except like Nude and Jigsaw on their own, outside of the album. The comparisons to HTTF and Amnesiac are, for that reason, I think really off the mark; those two albums are collections of songs, which may or may not cohere into an album; but this is an album, which just happens to be made of songs.
Thus, I think most of the experimentation that is going on here is about pushing four minute songs to be as intense and peculiar as they can possibly be and still fit the mood. In a sense these aren't pop songs anymore, in that they often don't give the pleasures of a pop song, or at least those pleasures: movement, climax, resolution etc., are really diluted, in favor of a different goal. I could say more about this later but I've already typed too much. Anyways I think, for 2007, I like this about the same as Sound of Silver which is its diametrical opposite in a lot of ways, but not in the way that both albums create grooves and then try to more or less sustain them over the course of individual tracks before a new track comes in and makes a different mood or groove. Theres nothing nearly as good as All My Friends on In Rainbows, and of course nothing I can really dance to or spin out etc. But so far I've listened to the entire Radiohead album more often in three days than the LCD Soundsystem in like 8 months anyways.

xpost wonderful comment about the silk cocoon etc, thats exactly where I've been for like the last 2 days.

what the fuck are you on about sorbet

sensuous bites of radiohead

you can't dance to it? i've been dancing to "jigsaw" and "bodysnatchers" all day.

I love the bit in "bodysnatchers" just before the "has the light gone out" bit where it sounds like the bottom falling out and there's this sudden... space.