Radiohead - In Rainbows

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.

Wrote a review:
(hope you don't mind the spam.)

How long has it been since an album release was an event? When In Rainbows, the new Radiohead album, launched I received delirious text messages from long forgotten people known by my phone only as [first name] Radiohead, random, mostly strangers, many met on the last Radiohead tour all sharing a long lost feeling. If you're of a certain youth- say, post Napster- you may have never have done this but I remember queueing with friends at midnight and rushing home for the first listen knowing that everyone else was also hearing this for the first time. By releasing their album online, at whatever price you wish to pay for it and only ten days after it was announced, Radiohead have recaptured this moment and neatly side stepped the promo and marketing bullshit. There are no interviews, no launch parties and no television advertisements but plenty of hype. Hype that has been left unshaped by the critics who are all without advance copies. Listeners are left entirely to make up their own mind. I have mine, In Rainbows is Radiohead's best album.

The dark clouds of label life have cleared and a gay Radiohead is shown In Rainbows. At just ten tracks and a little over forty minutes, with purposeful sequencing, this asks to be listened to as an album rather than a collection of songs. In Rainbows has none of the patience-trying sprawl of their last album, 2003's Hail to the Thief, which felt like a disjointed Best of composed entirely of new songs. It is far more cohesive, akin to Kid A, but paradoxically it is also Radiohead's least electronic album since The Bends. The vast majority of the percussion is live and many songs are built upon sparse piano or acoustic guitar with the other instruments flowing organically in and out of the song. On last year's solo album, The Eraser, Thom Yorke discovered how not to hide his voice under the music, or, when that technique did not suit the song, distort the humanity out the performance. Evolving from that, his vocals, especially on the upbeat tracks, have a comfortable swagger that I've never heard from him before and which is reflected by the rest of the band.

The album opens with a false start, glitchy drums that sound like a sped up slow jam -a Timbaland technique thrown into 5/4- and Thom sings 'How come I end up where I started' to begin 15 Step, which can be read as loose parable of Radiohead's career only with samples of happy school children cheering and the dismissive, 'You used to be alright, What happened? Etcetera etcetera, Facts for whatever'. Bodysnatchers is reminiscent of The National Anthem with its heavy fuzzed-out bass. Thom snarls, 'I have no idea what you are talking about' and the track builds to create a breathless conclusion to the one two punch of using the album's most straight up rock songs as openers. A long breath and then a beat, that, I imagine, sounds like the last thing you hear before hypnotherapy, begins Nude whose gentle, swelling strings make you feel like you're floating down the Liffey. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi follows next and, rather literally, sounds like arpeggios mixed underwater, slightly outstaying its welcome. All I Need, one of the album's standouts, completes the first half and is anchored by a subtle sythn (one of the few) bass and the despairing romance of , 'I am a moth, who just wants to share your light'. A track sure to launch a thousand mix tapes at people too cute to speak to in person.

The second half of the album begins with the playful, 'One two three four, Wakey wakey' of Faust Arp which sounds absolutely nothing like the krautrock band. It is built around an intricate acoustic guitar and a insanely beautiful melody reminiscent of the The Beatles' finest. Thom slyly name drops 'Blackbird'. The next song, Reckoner, is set to be the most discussed among nerdy musical types. Drums hard right, tamberine hard left, which could be equally Motown as In a Silent Way era Miles Davis, yet Reckoner sounds more like something from Talk Talk's Laughing Stock. I can not get my head around it but I think it is brilliant. 'House of Cards' is an unlikely Radiohead song about sex and infidelity opening with the incongruous line, 'I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover' over a deep southern-soul groove filtered through dub; all elongated sounds and echoy vocals that transform what is a very simple song into something much more. Jigsaw Out of Place is the most accessible song on the album and sure single material. You can dance, or as Radiohead fans tend to do, nod your head to this shameless crowd-bait. Videotape is the piano and vocal closer. Very beautiful and filling its purpose adequately in much the same way as Motion Picture Soundtrack or True Love Waits but will be a love it or hate it affair.

At this price there is no reason not to listen to In Rainbows. If you are the eager for more, and you should be, the on sale only from Radiohead's website discbox ships by the 3rd of December and includes the album, in much higher fidelity, a second disc consisting of eight bonus tracks recorded during the same sessions and a bunch of other stuff. Will the bonus disc be the Amnesiac to this Kid A, ie. a less cohesive collection of arguably greater songs? Stay detuned.

Somehow I missed dude's sarcasm. Long day.
^^^

Also children shouting or whatever, that song is all about the bass - Colin plays a fucking blinder.

otm. I didn't even notice the children cheering until the third listen. On headphones that bass is so badass, surely his best since Airbag.

didn't think i was really getting into this album much. then WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI popped up in a dream last night.

Ned, there's no AMG review yet. Pls advise.

Still no reaction from geir?

House of Cards sounds like a Grizzly Bear record.

It sounds like Radiohead after the seventh listen.

-- Cosmo Vitelli, Saturday, October 13, 2007 7:03 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I want this enshrined in a plaque, thanks. This is the Nobel peace price (I mean prize) of this thread. Let's hang it on the wall and be done with it.

17 times and it still sounds remarkably like Radiohead, to wit.

Do us a favor Radiohead. Tell us you're going to e-mail codes to everybody who purchased "In Rainbows" online so they can get the bonus material included on the CD FOR FREE! And then stop talking shit about files. CDs sound bad. I'm surprised you're even selling them. The sampling rate is so LOW! Why not make everybody buy an SACD player, to hear your music right. Or, buy turntables to hear the infinitely superior vinyl. You think you're doing something innovative, but it just looks like you've got contempt for your audience. I never fire up the big rig anymore. I LOVE my iPod. Files rule. Get OVER IT!

Lefsetz chimes in on the idea that Radiohead will be selling a cd version in the stores soon with extra tracks. http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

BUT I REQUIRE ALL MY ALBUMS TO ... BE EASILY RATE-ABLE AMONGST SAID ARTISTS ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY

Wow, dudes are going crazy with the comparison stuff.

Mos def:

OK Computer > In Rainbows > Kid A > Hail To The Thief > The Bends > Amnesiac > Pablo Honey *

* Subject to change by 2012

* or tomorrow, which ever comes first

Oh and:

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.

OTM

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.

Well, OTM except for this edit.

the last minute of Reckoner still kills me every time

Oh and AMG's written review isn't up yet, but they have given it 4.5 stars and best track checkmarks to Bodysnatchers, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, All I Need, and Jigsaw Falling Into Place.

Can't really argue with that, though I might have checked Reckoner or House of Cards instead of All I Need.

i was going to post about not liking house of cards but then i listened to it and it's great.

First two tracks = good, especially "15 Step"

Rest of album = boring shit that only serves to remind me why I don't like Radiohead

"Faust Arp" is such a weird little song. I can't seem to wrap my head around it. At first I was on board with all of the "sounds like the Beatles, sorta" references, until I realized that it was only because the fingerpicking on it is almost a deadringer with John Lennon's "Julia".

the last minute of Reckoner still kills me every time

Yeah, me too, but it's been out for 3 1/2 days.

updated today on metacritic, Radiohead currently ranked number 2 for 2007 albums

http://www.metacritic.com/music/bests/2007.shtml

Yeah but only because a small handful of publications have the arrogance to review it at this point.

the last minute of Reckoner still kills me every time
i seriously don't get that. reckoner like most songs on the album starts well and doesn't go anywhere. it's all in the first two minutes before the break. afterwards there is a big void. just rehashing and strings and rubbish. i think they have kind of lost it. they can hardly write a three minute song which holds the tension and is varied from beginning to end. except 15 step. this album could well be the last album ever a million or so people are listening to. albums are anachronistic in these fast-paced days. which is quite sad. and this album would be a very disappointing last album.

this has a few really good tracks. but it also has a LOT of tracks that are so fucking boring that dont really go anywhere, just like half the songs on the last one.

I seem to be the only person on earth that thinks the opening minute is exhilarating.

But I've always kinda wanted them to do d&b + skronk or something.

I seem to be the only person on earth that thinks the opening minute is exhilarating.

Nope.

far from the only person.

it might be the best minute of the album.

I'm with you, HOOS. It's just the rest of the album that sucks, amirite.

Best moment of listening to record: about 20 seconds before the end of "15 Step" when I figured out the joke of the name.

i don't get it

there have supposedly been 1.3 million downloads of this so far.

"i don't get it"

2step---------->15step

rofl etc

cute

there have supposedly been 1.3 million downloads of this so far.

is it just me, or does that seem like rather a small number?

i'm still absolutely loving this album; i felt like i'd stopped caring about them about 5 years ago, but at this rate i'll be digging around in my cupboards for the letter i got from thom yorke a decade ago before the week is out.

It's a preposterously large number by the standards of physical releases. OK Computer has sold about three times as many copies, but it's been out for ten years, not four days.

And it's not too shabby considering that the website was basically unusable for people who tried to order on Thursday and Friday (rather than pre-order).

Also, if the average price people are paying really is £4, it's not exactly pocket change for the band, either.

i'll be digging around in my cupboards for the letter i got from thom yorke a decade ago

!

I was trying to pretend like I wasn't really, really intrigued by that comment.