Radiohead - In Rainbows

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.

xxpost yer right it does look ridiculous when you say it like that. its kinda like the album: makes more sense in its context.

the context being my head

nude sounds like elbow. i like this record.

Glad someone posted that rateyourmusic link way above...got the album artwork now. The album is great upon first few listens.

So far, we have Frusciante playing guitar with Mark Hollis alongside Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac and a smattering of Pearl Jam and the Eagles, with elements of Dusty Springfield, Neu, Wolfmother, Nick Drake and Peaches. This must be either awesome or a truly horrible mess!

(Actually, I dl'ed it and am still trying to absorb it here. First impressions: yes, most like Amnesiac which is good -- for me -- since the latter is my favourite Radiohead album. But all these comparisons get confusing, so I'll share impressions on its own terms later.)

i think it's the most confident sounding and least dark, anxiety-ridden album they've done. i have no idea where i'd place it in their oeuvre but i'm just really enjoying listening to it, really.

what has happened to ilm? around 2001 i was one of the few who defended "amnesiac" (besides john and melissa). i hadn't cared about them before. "hail to the thief" i liked too, don't remember what ilm thought. now they release an album which i find as uninteresting as everything pre-amnesiac and everybody (except bimble) is totally nuts about it. this reaction baffles me. or maybe it doesn't.

Don't feel alone, Alex in Mainhattan. My good friend Mr. Odd (who has neglected to post his opinion here) said he feels exactly as bored with this album as I do and that he has another friend who feels the same.

Who's to say it isn't somehow Coldplay's fault that they've sunk so low? Just a theory...

hehehe ouch Bimble. (actually, Faust Arp kinda sounded a little Coldplay to me, more so than Nick Drake.)

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.

-- Matt DC, Friday, 12 October 2007 23:05 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

OTM. The first 15 seconds are what initially stabbed me in the heart. I felt like a helium balloon that had been burst. Those 15 seconds are shit. They instantly make you think "Oh god, they're trying to be electronicky but instead it's just bad industrial music". Then this guitar line comes along and you're like "Oh?" and it builds and builds and builds. It only sounds like HTTT because of those first 15 seconds which throw your entire conception of the album. In reality it's a proper futuristic album. Remember when we were asking what music we could go back in time to 1994 and say "I am from the future, and I have the music to prove it" and no one could come up with very much? Ladies and gents, no one in 1994 could have made "In Rainbows". They could have made "Kid A" I reckon. "I Care Because You Do" and "Tri Repetae" aren't far off that record, but this is something else entirely.

Weird, but I think of Paul McCartney when I listen to Faust Arp.

the 13th or 14th play is the incredible care with which the album, as an album, was constructed.

100% OTM. Headphoning listening is required.

The end of Nude.

You notice I'm drunk? It's tragic.

Tell me: I'm on my second listen and this sounds great - I mean like Bjork or Scott Walker - and I'm just wondering if it sounds that way after, say, the seventh listen.

It sounds like Radiohead after the seventh listen.