Still The Best Band In The Universe (Pt 1)Nov 16 '07 (Updated Nov 19 '07) Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line In Rainbows from Radiohead is a five-star album with no flaws whatsoever. Below is a review of its brilliance. For over a decade now, there has been one unstoppable band of vituperative visionaries and mournful musicians walking this planet with a canon of unmatchable modern music; that which burrows deep into the core of the human condition and reveals it to be all rotten and hollow underneath. No – not KC & The Sunshine Band – I am, of course, referring to Oxbridge urchins Radiohead. This piece heralds the beginning of my protracted winter tribute to said outfit. It might come across as mere gratuitous flattery (my speciality), but if there is one group every man, woman, post-op transsexual and lady boy should be applauding – it is indeed the Radiohead. The first encounter I had with Radiohead was over nine English years ago to this (approximate) date. Karma Police was a popular hit of the moribund Brit-Pop era, and this spiralling, hellish lullaby was left ringing in my ears for months on end after I heard it. “No alarms and no surprises… I’ll take the quiet life, a handshake and some carbon monoxide…” sang this sad elfin doom merchant; a man I later discovered to be named Thom Yorke. Who was this damaged dwarf, I wondered, and what was it about his voice that stirred such an awakening in my soul? On this I pondered. The answer proved simple: I was depressed, and this music was more depressed than I was. The bond between my gloom-filled adolescent self and the well-spoken gents of this angular miserablist agit-rock outfit was established at once. The Greenwood Brothers were my soul brothers. Mr. Yorke was my spiritual half-sister whom no-one talked about. The others? Well, Phil Selway was an uncle, I suppose. Ed O’Brien was a creepy aunt. The point is, Radiohead became a second family to me. Whenever I required that cosy squeeze of oblivion; that warm hug of inescapable woe; I reached for their mellifluous ditties and smirked as the chill took hold of me once again. Happy days… There will be time for further anecdotes later. I intend to flip back into the past to reassess some of their classic works throughout November and December. For now, I must begin this fresh look at the first-ever download-only release from the pioneering punk-mopers. Why? In the immortal words of Bamber Gascoigne, “I’ve started so I’ll finish…” In Rainbows – A Review Radiohead are a Great British musical institution, sewn into the patchwork of our cultural history for single-handedly typifying the sound of pre-millennial doom and prophesising the buckets of rain about to fall upon this dark old world. In the 1990s, that mess of a decade when people were hell-bent on recreating the 1960s, one group rose above it all and delivered an album of cathartic stadium rock named The Bends. At first it sounded a little too mournful beside the plethora of Cockernee and Mancunian pop sensations, and the group were hailed cult geniuses until a certain record surfaced in 1997. OK Computer sent Radiohead’s reputation into overdrive and the furore around them has yet to calm down ever since. In their music, people took the excessive emotion of Greenwood’s melodies and the damaged honesty of Thom Yorke’s voice to heart and accepted it for the beautiful, timeless music it was. People were starting to realise that towards the end of a decade of such unbridled hedonism, something had to change for the worse. That something Radiohead had seemingly known about for years, and with a wistful glance they looked to the future and hung their heads in despair. In Rainbows is a record that juggles the overwrought melancholia of Amnesiac with the more accessible (and often lighter) song structures on Hail To The Thief. It is another elegant and understated album from the unit and is deserving of its full price, regardless of all those thieves who have taken the record for a pittance. I should confess that I paid less than is reasonable for this record, but for the simple reason that I am an impoverished former student with debts the size of Gibraltar on my back. So there. Most people in the UK paid as little as possible for the album, but I believe it has nothing to do with their opinion of the music. It just seems illogical that fans should shell out full price and make the multi-millionaires even richer, just because they wish to remain honest and prove a point about the justice of internet downloads. A band such as Radiohead have surpassed record deals and the world of touring. They exist now as a paragon of musical brilliance, and have the freedom to do anything they want to with their music. Whether or not this was a test of their fans' integrity remains unclear. To the songs… 15 Step opens the album and is the trickiest tune to embrace. With an electro drum machine beat, similar to the percussion found in Thom Yorke’s solo offering The Eraser, the track begins to little fanfare. The awkward skittishness here is almost off-putting until Yorke enters with a mumbled lyrical phrase that is more in line with drum and bass music. At around 45 seconds, the distinctive guitar of Greenwood enters and a simpler tune begins to emerge from the chaos. Yorke wields metaphors about us all being puppets and some such gloominess, before the meatier bass accompaniment joins in to push things on. The rest of tune is assisted by ghoulish harmonies and eerie tape loops of children cheering (which is especially effective). We also have the reappearance of that spooky instrument found on Where I End & You Begin. Bonus points for someone who can tell me what it is. All in all, an effective start. Bodysnatchers pushes the band back towards bona fide rock music with a thrusting guitar line here that sounds encased in some kind of futuristic plasma. The resultant squall and beat is more reminiscent of such anthemic stadium fodder as Electioneering or I Might Be Wrong. Which is no bad thing in the eyes of this Radiohead devotee. There is also something quite reassuring to hear Yorke back and shouting: “I have no idea what I am talking about, I am trapped in this body and can’t get out!” The second half of the song involves the first emotional bridge of the album, where the track rushes into a frantic and desperate little section with a gorgeous chord progression that effortlessly shifts back into the melee. The final half is a ranting rave-up where Yorke perhaps stretches the “feeling trapped” theme a little, but this is still exceptional work. Nude follows, the first of the more mournful pieces on the album. With a gentle splicing together of backwards tape loops and trademark ghoulish harmonies, a gentle bass line and drum tap propels the defeated croon of Yorke who informs us: “Don’t get any big ideas… they’re not going to happen.” Indeed not. These opening verses are beautiful; achingly melancholic and deeply affecting; especially with the gentle guitar line and rising string arrangements which engulf the music like a certain Pyramid Song. The tune rocks back and forth after the gentle emotional climax in the middle, and even ends itself on a perfect cadence (a note of optimism, perhaps?) Weird Fishes/ Arpeggi might have a ridiculous title but is the finest slow-builder on the album. The first half uses a tingling electric guitar overlap to create perfect oceanic imagery, aided by a rather straightforward drum beat. Yorke arrives swathed in echo for his verses, lending the tune the impression of sinking deeper and deeper. The track feels repetitious, but starts to build with subtle chord switches, moving harmonies and additional tingles; reminiscent at times of God Moving Over the Face of the Waters from Moby. Yorke is “eaten by the worms” and weird fishes of the title, and the second half of the song is his eerie descent to the bottom of the ocean. It all gets wonderfully macabre here. The music feels as though it is sinking and Yorke sounds practically chewed to pieces as he drawls: “I hit the bottom and escape…” All I Need does not liven up the tone. Nor should it do. With a downbeat synthesiser sound to begin with, more ominous than a Halloween with John Carpenter, the electric bass then enters to create a terrified and desperate palette of noise. Yorke then sings with resignation: “I’m an animal, trapped in your hot car… I’m all the days you choose to ignore.” This track is perhaps the most emotionally resonant of them all. A deeply affecting account of unrequited love, conveying the agony and dark humour of such a scenario, the glockenspiel tingles only serve to add to the unbearable sense of dread within the tune. It builds to an upsetting climax, almost like the sound of a car careering into a brick wall as the listener realises the fate of the subject matter. Yes… Radiohead are back, all right. Faust Arp is another bad title. It is also the most tightly packed and strangest piece on the album. With just an acoustic guitar, Yorke speeds through his well-honed verses and the glorious string arrangements surround him with all the towering desolation of Portishead. A good thing? What do you think? Reckoner reassures us that the remainder of In Rainbows is destined for greatness. To me, this tune is the most suggestive of rainbows (most of the tracks reference colours of the rainbow), with its alternate speaker percussion and the dripping guitar line falling like summer rain. Yorke drawls his lyrics out to beyond comprehension, but it seems to matter little for this piece, since his voice is wielded more as an instrument on this occasion. The elegance of this tune is what always strikes me. His voice, together with the ingenious string arrangements, sway in unison with the sort of classical grace that is both touching and hypnotic. Another definitive Radiohead classic. House of Cards is the longest and darkest piece on the LP; its music a painful cavern of midnight terrors and lumbering pitch-black memories. Over the harder stomp of the percussion and mesmeric swing of the guitar, the echo-drenched Yorke opens with the surprising line purloined from Texas’ 1988 hit I Don’t Want A Lover: “I don’t want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover.” It is once again the string arrangements here that lift this incredible tune to its shimmering heights of moving sadness. It almost sounds as though Radiohead returned to the same eerie old house where OK Computer was recorded, since this evokes the same otherworldly feeling as Exit Music (For A Film) or tunes of its ilk. When Yorke croons that one word, that’s the point this tune becomes my favourite of the entire record: “Denial…” If this staggering piece of music fails to reassure the listener Radiohead are still the undisputed heavyweight champions of modern music, then nothing will. Jigsaw Falling Into Place is a lighter tune in comparison, making the album not too overly depressive, and its acoustic melody is catchier and more buoyant that the previous material. It still leaps around the place with lashings of panic, and is abound with doom-filled imagery, but it will keep the casual listener from reaching for the Prozac before the end. Videotape is a piano-driven tune with simple, affecting chords reminiscent of Cat Power, but is lifted through the haunting vocals of Yorke and the soft, understated minor chord changes. The song feels repetitious again, but once the gentle harmonies and distant drum rattles enter the mix, this track wraps around your heart and reaches you in that special place only Radiohead can. See also the beautiful closing lyric: “Today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen…” In Rainbows is, without a shadow of a doubt, a contender for the best record Radiohead have ever made. I can assert with confidence it is the finest record of 2007, and an essential purchase for all those with access to a computer and a credit card. This album demonstrates a band who have honed their strengths and the fruits of their experimentation into accessible and timeless songs of quite unmatchable proportions. There are no artists making music as personal, universal, cryptic and staggeringly gorgeous as this band today. It is quite astonishing. When an album as wonderful is this is being sold for under one dollar on the web, and so much dross is being retailed at over twenty-five bucks in the shops, one suspects In Rainbows heralds a sea change in the way artists get themselves heard. This might find itself released in the shops in CD format one day, who knows, but I suspect Radiohead are happy just to make music because it is their lifeblood. It is their way of expressing the inherent beauty in humanity amid all the sadness. I recommend this to all those with a pulse. I have postponed Radiohead reviews for a while, seeing there are so many of them, but I can be silenced no longer. More to come from me on the best band in the known universe very soon. Here are reviews on all the band's major LPs and EPs: Com Lag (2plus2isfive) (2004) Hail To The Thief (2003) I Might Be Wrong – Live Recordings (2001) Amnesiac (2001) Kid A (2001) Airbag/ How Am I Driving? [EP] (1998) OK Computer (1997) The Bends (1995) My Iron Lung [EP] (1994) Itch [Import] (1994) Pablo Honey (1993)  |
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