This morning I received my much-awaited link from Radiohead to download their new you-name-the-price album In Rainbows (you can go to this site for the download). After one listen I can say with all honesty that I enjoy it greatly. I’m offering my first impressions and make no promises to stick by these initial reactions. My favorite song so far is “All I Need.”
The band seems to have found their groove. They filled their first few albums with heavy experimentation that worked extremely well. A more straight forward and very well-crafted with hints of the future album, The Bends (1995), was followed up by the reinvention of rock on OK Computer (1997), and then the drop-kick to all pop Kid A (2000). Someone said that Amnesiac (2001) was Radiohead’s first album where they didn’t completely reinvent themselves between records, but that’s not entirely fair since they recorded Amnesiac at the same time as Kid A. I still don’t know why they didn’t just release a double album. Hail to the Thief (2003) was something of the Hegelian synthesis of OK Computer’s thesis and Kid A’s antithesis. Radiohead has mixed traditional and electronic/digital instruments to varying degrees on all their work. On OK Computer, guitars, bass, piano, and drums dominated the songs and the digital components filled out the sound. On Kid A, the traditional instruments took a backseat to the drum machines and synthesizers. On Hail to the Thief, all the instruments were layered so that just when you thought guitars had returned in full force, a synth loop led the next song.
In Rainbows also exists in the tension between OK Computer and Kid A, though it is a bit more terrestrial. (For what it’s worth, nearly all of Radiohead’s albums will likely be compared to those two seminal works of art. Also, does anyone really count Pablo Honey [1993] as part of the Radiohead canon?) On the first few bars of the drum beat of the opener “15 Step,” I actually had the sinking feeling that the band was repeating itself. But something is different about this album and it’s the prominence of Thom Yorke’s vocals. On Kid A, songs like “Everything in its Right Place” deconstructed the vocals into another instrument, especially since many of the lyrics were nonsensical and intended to fill the listener with a sense of anxiety and tension rather than describing Yorke’s dread. On In Rainbows, Yorke’s voice finds itself coming through with little modulation or effects. Also, this album seems to have more up-tempo songs. There were heavier rock songs on their last album, but the tempo there was still deliberate (see: “Myxomatosis. [Judge, Jury & Executioner.]”). As I said above, “All I Need” is my favorite song so far. You don’t know where it’s going and initially the song feels claustrophobic, but by the middle, it blooms into a wonderfully open orchestral space.
One of the ways I judge works of art is by the creative response I have to them. That is, does a painting, a movie, a book, or a song, make me want to create something? When I watch The Royal Tennenbaums I want to rush to my computer and work on that novel that I haven’t touched in weeks. When I listen to Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From the Storm” or Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C major (“Dissonance”), K. 465, I want to write songs. Radiohead, for however much their artistry blows me away, has always inspired me to create even if my chances are slim of making something as beautiful and challenging as their music. I want to put In Rainbows on and see what comes out.
Perhaps it’s the postmodern nature of Radiohead’s and Thomas Pynchon’s works or just the similar titles, but I’d love to sit down and keep reading Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow with In Rainbows playing. Maybe I’ll eat rainbow sherbert and watch an episode of Reading Rainbow first.
That’s all for now. I need to listen to the album again. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
UPDATE: Reading Gravity’s Rainbow while listening to In Rainbows proved to be a fascinating experience. I hope to do it again soon.
This is a great review and historical meandering through Radiohead’s work.
I loved this bit: “Hail to the Thief (2003) was something of the Hegelian synthesis of OK Computer’s thesis and Kid A’s antithesis.” It made me reconsider the ‘Hail To The Thief’ album, as I really just saw it as a continuation of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’, perhaps better than the cluster of songs on Amnesiac, but short of Kid A. And somehow I could here a lot of Zeppelin in it as well. I wasn’t sure that was a step forward, per se.
It was Yorke’s tone toward the US in ‘Hail to the Thief’ like in ‘Sit Down, Stand Up’ and virtually throughout that made me take my first step back from him since Pablo Honey, which indeed should be included in the canon [Poppier, but still good]. I have a hard time not saying “sit down” to Yorke himself sometimes because he has toured extensively in the US, and if he disapproves of us that much then ‘how about giving back the money from your adoring fans here, Thom?’ But I try to remind myself that this sort of feeling I somehow have present itself within me is a herring, and that all arguments should be taken on their merit, whether or not one practices what he preaches. The funny thing is that I share his sentiment quite a bit, but when it is a critical perspective offered from outside the US I get a bit apprehensive at times. Sort of weird, I suppose. But all of this to say [and piggy back on your idea] that his lyrics do stir thoughts in me as well, and Kid A has never once failed to urge me to create, fashion ideas for projects, or the like. It has a brilliant way of stirring paranoid thoughts, regardless of whether or not that is good or ill.
All that said, I have not yet downloaded the new album, but do like very much the colorful constructions of the well-designed website.
Hope some other people chime in here, or that you have some follow up thoughts to offer, Tyler. Sorry about getting to this post so late…an excellent perusal and critique.
Comment by DLYONS — October 16, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, DLYONS. I haven’t found a Radiohead album I haven’t liked, though I think I enjoy their latest more than Hail to the Thief. But it’s a matter of degree. Even when they don’t hit the 500 ft. homer, their work is still more original and challenging on many levels than nearly any other mainstream band.
I guess the politics of Hail to the Thief didn’t bother me that much. The band has always been political and Yorke’s lyrics have always bordered on the paranoid. Amnesiac’s “You and Whose Army?” is a prime example. I don’t resonate with the specifics of the paranoia per se, but I do resonate with the general distrust of the direction of Western society. Their politics have become more pointed. OK Computer felt more of a critique of our mechanized/digital world and “Electioneering” seemed to be a statement of how the political system itself has become like a machine that we cannot stop. Kid A and after seemed to direct the criticism at specific mindsets. The band says the album’s title does not refer to the 2000 election, but they are still critical of the US’ foreign position.
Also, I guess I assumed that Yorke took a position similar to that of many of his political mindset: the people of America aren’t that bad, but the government and its foreign policy shouldn’t be trusted.
Radiohead has proven to be a set of paradoxes. First, there is the one you mention—that they are critical of the US, but embrace their fan base here as well as reap rewards from fans here. Then there is the paranoia and mistrust of the technologizing of our world, but their albums contain heavy electronic and digital experimentation (and not in an ironic way). Similarly, some of their songs contain concerns about the environment, but their instrumentation and production are far from organic. They’re critical of unfettered capitalism, but sell albums, concert tickets, etc. and have done very well through it. Even the latest album is a paradox of control and releasing control. The band paid for the album themselves and says anyone who wants the album has to go through them to get it—even the people who review music downloaded it at the same time as the rest of us plebeians. But then they relinquish control in letting the customer set the price as well as providing the files without DRM so that the buyer can now put the mp3’s on however many machines they want.
Honestly, it’s the inability to nail down Radiohead that makes them so fascinating to me. That and they make damn good music.
Comment by Tyler Watson — October 17, 2007 @ 8:28 am
Thanks for filling things out a bit more. I agree that when you try to nail down the band, they seem to wiggle free. I like that as well. It can be quite boring to break the encryption of things very quickly.
Unlike “Electioneering” and Kid A which [as you note] the band denies to be a reaction to the 2000 election, it is extremely probable that 2+2=5, given the date is was released, was a reaction to both the election of 2000 and subsequent wars. “It’s the devil’s way now, and there’s no way out. You can scream and shout. But it’s too late now.” The video puts peace in a cage, claims the political process is wanting and that political free speech falls on deaf ears, and all that remains is a process through propaganda that is rapidly leading us to an era of darkness: “Payin’ attention, penitention, penetration!” ...”Don’t question my authority…put me in a box” to be tortured under lock and key. “Oh go and tell the king that the sky is falling in…when it’s not.” I don’t feel they are too far off on some of these things. When criticizing extremely controversial policy is demonized as unpatriotic, we are not far off at all indeed.
I’m not sure the tensions and contradictions of Radiohead [which you outline extremely well above] bother me as much as perhaps they should. If what they claim is true, from their position in the art world there is not much else they can do. As they continue to think things through and create, they have attempted to adapt to actions that might better reflect their philosophies. Putting the album up for sale at the user’s price is a step against capitalism on a minute and very generous level. It is a more environmentally sound method than previous ones which were more traditional in format: Less plastic, less cds, etc., at least on a small scale. It is better to recycle some than not at all, as it were. ...But I think they are caught in a system where their discursive approach cannot achieve much in the larger scheme of things, a system which makes all their work quite constricted within its self-reflexive critique. E.g., I always have a hard time justifying spending so much money on nice clothing, so that I can walk around and look professional to administrators, department chairs, and deans. For the price of this stupid shirt I could have produced an important critical project, offered a donation to any of numerous causes, or made a small contribution to others in need, but if I wear soiled t-shirts with paint on them, even as an “art instructor” for crying out loud[
], my job is in jeopardy…and I am deemed unprofessional and lacking the required seriousness about holding the standards up high in academia. Terrible.
Thanks again for your thoughts, Tyler. There are not that many folks I bump into who love Radiohead as much as you do. And amongst the students these days, a great many of them, all they want to hear is Scream-O. A nightmare in itself.
Comment by DL — October 17, 2007 @ 3:26 pm