Radiohead
“They ARE Pink Floyd!” – Jack Black
“They showed up on ‘
“You know, they did that song, I’m a Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.” – Cartman
Albums Reviewed:
I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings
Well, I figure this is a new site,
so what would be a great way to actually make people want to visit it? Make the first band I review Radiohead! That oughtta do the trick.
So, yeah, what is there to say about Radiohead
that hasn’t already been said? They’re
British (as nearly all of the best bands are, by the way), they met at
Thomas
Jagoditsch (t.ja@gmx.at) writes:
hi brad !
1st of all i want to thank you, thank you, thank you
!!!
i LMAO a couple of times i
read your reviews, in fact as i got to the part
@Radiohead where u
described the "ugly" guys i had a hard time
to stay on my chair ... *GNNNHHHHII* ... i have to
laugh now and will do every time i think about it
....
u c, i had that two concerts stayin
on my video server (till that dumb harddisk crashed
*GRRR*)
and got one from "Music Planet 2Nite" now (dont
know if u know the series in the states, was
moderated by ray cokes at the french channel ARTE,
nice one that) which features thom and
jonny playin some real cool
tracks together, while their bandmates just watch
(plus a couple of
stars in the audience, was the last "Music Planet 2Nite" show
anyway).
the point is, when my friends come by and we watch some movie i sometimes browse thru the
recordings to find something. as Radiohead are cool i sometimes try to play that concerts ... *G*
... despite the fact that their music is not that mass-compatible and thomy has a quite ...
uuuhmmm ... unusual voice their usual first reaction
is: "HEAST IS DER SCHIACH" which is
austrian-german and translate roughly to "look
at that ueber-ugly guy" ...
enuf about Radiohead -
which is definitifly the best actual band anyway.
awoehrel@netcarrier.com writes:
Radiohead. I love Johnny Greenwood. He's the man. Grat guitarwork, great melodies,
great textures. I love his bass-playing brother, Colin. He's awesome also.
However, I don't like Thom. Thom comes off as a whiny, pretentious twat. (Yet I
like The Pumpkins. Eh, I don't like Corgan much as a
person, just as a guitarist). Anyway, it's not so much Radiohead
themselves as Radiohead fans, who worship Thom and
co. like Gods. This is bullshittery. They're not even
one of the best bands of the 90's. The Pumpkins, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam beat
them on the level of mainstream, but then we got the Lips and Modest Mouse, and
COUNTLESS OTHERS in the indie/underground level.
Thom's an overdramatic singer. Sure, he can hit the notes and all, but he lacks
in emotion, in my opinion, at least, though others say otherwise. Give me Ian
Curtis' out-o'-tune tortured howls anyday. and Thom's
lyrics suck. Come on. Their best song has a chorus that consists of two words:
"WHAT'S THIIIIIIIIIS?!?!?"
Genius, Thom. GENIUS. You lazy eyed freak. Go smoke some crack. I say the Greenwood Bros. should take control of the band, heh. Anyway, as much as I hate to admit it, OKC is a 10. and Kid A is a 8. and Thom's not THAT bad, but they annoy me with their extreme pretentiousness and overrated-ness. And Tool is just like them, only heavy metal style, without Johnny Greenwood. Tool sucks.
Pablo Honey (1993)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Creep”
Radiohead’s debut album provided no indication WHATSOEVER of what they would later accomplish. Just another album by another Britrock band, basically. You can tell it’s Radiohead, though. The ubiquitous whine of Thom Yorke is pretty impossible to avoid, and they’ve already got a unique bit of instrumentation going on here, with THREE guitars, which is pretty cool. But, all in all, just another record.
That
doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad though.
In fact, it’s pretty good. With a
few exceptions, it’s very consistent.
Consistently just decent, but something doesn’t have to be “consistently
great” to be “consistent.” I’m not gonna try to be unique and say that something besides
“Creep” is the best song on here, because I’d just sound like an idiot. Jonny
There’s some other good songs on here too. “Anyone Can Play Guitar” has the best single moment on the album (when Lazy Eye Man grunts out “I wanna be wanna be wanna be Jim Morrison!” during the second verse). The chorus sucks, though, which is a problem with a few of the better songs here. Lots of good ideas in the verses, but the choruses are big, fat, stinking crapjobs. “Stop Whispering” does that too. “Prove Yourself” is the exception that proves the rule, though. GREAT chorus there, crappy verses. There are also a few songs that suck all the way through. “How Do You?” is awful. It’s got kind of a cool guitar feedback-and-crazy piano thing going on at the end, but ten seconds of a neat idea does not salvage a song that sounds like it was written by a pre-teen having a tantrum. “Lurgee” is pretty bad as well. It’s also got a stupid title. What’s a lurgee? Sounds like loogie. I don’t think anyone wants to name a song “Loogie,” unless they’re Thom Yorke, apparently.
It IS a good album, but there’s one thing about it that really bugs me. With every other Radiohead album, I get the feeling that these five extremely ugly men are just about the only band on the planet that could have made it. I don’t get that with Pablo Honey. Tons of other Britrock bands could have made this. For one thing, the songs are pretty simple, but it’s not that that bugs me. It’s the lyrics. Radiohead lyrics are usually weird, oblique, seemingly profound smatterings of occasional brilliance. Here you’ll find such life-defining mantras as “I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo,” “stop whispering, start shouting,” and, ofcourse, “I’m better off dead.” They’re so, I guess…direct. I mean, I could write the lyrics to the choruses of half of these songs. That’s not a feeling I like to get from a band, especially one I respect as much as Toasternoggin. They would move onto much better things, though.
The Bends (1995)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Fake Plastic Trees”
And they’d sure move onto those better things quickly! Don’t be fooled by the mere one point jump in rating. This is a MUCH better record that Pablo Honey. This is more like a jump from a 6.6 to an 8.4, but since I don’t use decimals in my rating system (since they suck! Down with the metric system! Measure everything in furlongs!), a one point jump it is. The realization that Radiohead have made a quantum leap here isn’t one that comes on gradually, but one that hits you violently and suddenly over the head with a two by four. The first sound of the record is not guitars, or bass, or drums, but WIND NOISES that gradually fade in (just like Pink Floyd…). They eventually turn into the opener “Planet Telex,” which pretty much kicks the shit out of anything from their last album, as does a good bit of this here record, especially “High And Dry,” which, to me, has the best chorus of any Radiohead song EVER. Does it get any better than “Don’t leave me HIIIIIGH! Don’t leave me DRYYYYY!” No, it doesn’t. Completely shocking factoid: I read somewhere that “High And Dry” was actually a completely untouched outtake from the sessions for Pablo Honey. The production on it isn’t as full as much of the rest of this album, but I still find that impossible to believe. I guess the song was too good. They wanted to be labeled one-hit wonders first, and then shove it up the pimply ass of rock critics. Professional (i.e. Rolling Stone, Spin, etc.) rock critics suck, by the way. Why, you ask? Well, they hate Yes, and Yes fucking RULES!
Anyway, as good as “High And Dry” is, it’s not even the best song here! That goes to “Fake Plastic Trees,” which is an excellent example of those oblique lyrics I mentioned before. I give this the nod for best song because it’s the only one here that literally gives me CHILLS. I get them during the near-end of the tune, when the acoustic guitar/organ gives way to loud, distorted, layered electric guitars. The “she looks like the real thing” part literally gave me the shakes when I first heard it. Beautiful.
Ofcourse, I did give this record an 8, and that’s because nothing else here really matches those two masterpieces, though “Planet Telex” and the creepy, atmospheric closer “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” come pretty close. In fact, the dynamic duo are followed directly by “Bones,” a song that really doesn’t do much for me. It might be the worst song on the album, I’m not sure, but it’s definitely one of three contenders. “My Iron Lung” and “Sulk” would be the other two. Understand, none of these songs blow in a “How Do You?” kind of way, or anywhere near it, but they don’t really do it for me, especially when placed next to the aforementioned dynamic duo.
OK, now that we’ve covered the winners and the losers, let’s cover the in-between-ers (is that a word? I don’t think so). “Just (You Do It To Yourself)” is probably the best of what’s left. It’s the most multi-part of any song here, and the little jangly-guitar interlude that’s followed by the most distorted riff on the album is frickin’ cool. “(Nice Dream)” and “Bulletproof…I Wish I Was” are pretty, but there’s not much else to say about them. The title track is solid, and “Black Star” has a really damn catchy chorus, though I’ve really got no idea whatsoever as to what the hell Thom Yorkshire Terrier is talking about in it.
This is a very good record that just misses being great, in my opinion. There is a distinct possibility that, had this been my first Televisionbrain record (OK Computer was), I would rate it higher, since you always feel a stronger connection to things you experience earlier in life (at least I do), but I dunno. It could also be the preposterous proliferation of parentheses (wow, alliteration!) that knocks it down to an 8. Three songs have them, and one is actually completely surrounded by them, which is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. I think what it comes down to is that this record is missing something. It’s not as deep as the albums that would follow it. It’s collection of (mostly) good to great songs, but unlike, say, OK Computer, subsequent listens don’t reveal things you didn’t hear before, the little extras and eccentricities that make OK Computer and, to a lesser extent, Kid A, great. It kicks ass, though. Highly recommended.
Nick
Barboa (merkaba82@hotmail.com) writes:
Hey
Brad,
I really dont have much to say other than I really
enjoyed your record
review page. I especially enjoyed the Radiohead,
Sigur Ros, and TOOL
features. The only disagreement I have is "Fake Plastic Trees"
is not the
greatest song on The Bends. Everyone knows that title goes to
"Street
Spirit". Hahahaha just joking with ya, to each his own in their song
beliefs. Well thats it for now, keep up the
great site so I can keep
checking it every so often. Later
Nick
OK Computer (1997)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Paranoid Android”
Now THIS is what I’m talking about! An absolute classic in every sense of the word, and though it’s not the best album of the decade (Naked Baby Chasing After A Dollar In A Pool is my pick), its definitely one of the top few. It’s attained its classic status extremely quickly, too, as it made VH1’s 100 Greatest Albums Of All Time something like two or three years after it actually came out. I’m not saying I LIKE VH1 or watch Journey’s “Behind The Music” religiously every time it’s on (I swear…), but that’s still pretty damn impressive, and deserved.
The first half of the album is probably the best 6-song stretch I’ve ever heard from an album in the 90’s (including Greedy Naked Baby!), and no one needs me to describe each song in detail, so I’ll just list a few of my favorite moments. The opening riff to the album in “Airbag.” I couldn’t figure out why it sounded so damn cool, but then I played the album on headphones, and there’s a frickin’ CELLO! Guitar in one phone, cello in the other. SWEET. The PERFECT percussion in the first section of “Paranoid Android” (the best song on here…duh), all like wood blocks and scratchy things and whatnot, and the humongous riff that gets us into section #3. Fun fact: “Paranoid Android” was originally like a 10-minute prog epic, but crowds at concerts didn’t much like the four minute organ solo at the end, so they cut it down to the six minutes we have here. The lyrics to “Subterranean Homesick Alien.” Thom wants to be abducted by aliens! Or maybe just by Phil Selway! The effect in “Exit Music (For A Film)” which sounds like a keyboard where the keys are actually an ENTIRE CHOIR singing the different notes. A moment in the last verse/chorus of “Let Down,” which begins with Thommy singing in the left headphone, but at the “one day…” part, left headphone Thom stops, and right headphone Thom picks it up, but left headphone Thom is still singing something we can’t understand, and he gets to higher and higher pitches, and then, when the chorus comes in, left headphone Thom just holds a solitary high note while right headphone Thom continues with the chorus. My favorite moment in the entire album! Absolutely gorgeous! Oh, and “Karma Police” kicks ass, too. It was my favorite song, originally, until I fully realized the genius that is “Paranoid Android.”
The second half of the album obviously can’t stand up to this, and it doesn’t, but it’s still awesome. I’ll skip over “Fitter Happier,” since it’s not a song, though I’ll say I once typed the whole thing into Simpletext on my computer at home and had Fred (or whatever the default voice is named) do the whole thing. I’m a dork. That gets us to “Electioneering,” the token “kick-ass rockin’” song, and “Climbing Up The Walls,” the token REALLY moody and atmospheric number in a moody and atmospheric album. They’re my two least favorite songs here, but that just means they’re equal to “Just” or “Nice Dream” or something from The Bends, just like the weakest songs on that album were equal to an average song from Pablo Honey. “No Surprises” is a lullaby, or sounds like one, and I can’t tell whether the backup singers in the last chorus are real female backup singers or just multiple overdubbed Thoms. I don’t know what the fact that I can’t tell Thom’s voice from a woman’s here tells me. I don’t really want to think about it either. The last two songs are slow and gorgeous, and that’s about all there is to them. “The Tourist,” the second of the two (which was written by Jonny Greenwood, NOT Yorkie, by the way), ends beautifully, though. The last sound you hear is a TRIANGLE! How cool is that!
So is this a concept album? I don’t know. Many say it is. Computerskull claim it isn’t. Some of the lyrics (especially “Fitter Happier”) seem to indicate so, and some make no sense at all (what’s an unborn chicken voice? And why is it in Thom’s head?). The only thing that screams “CONCEPT!” to me is that at the end of “The Tourist” Thom sings “Hey! Man! Slow Down!” as if he’s a passenger in a car about to crash, and then “Airbag” is about surviving a car crash (“an airbag saved my life”). It’s like a cycle in that sense, one that repeats itself with the end referring back to the beginning and starting the cycle over again. Hey, that’s just like a Pink Floyd album! ANY Pink Floyd album! Ah, whatever. Concept, schmoncept. This album rules mercilessly. Ofcourse, you know that. You probably already have it. Everybody does.
nator9999@comcast.net writes:
Oh, so you think you're a dork? I'll
have you know that I made my computer read 'Fitter Happier', recorded it, and
overdubbed instrumental loops on it! HA! WHO'S THE DORK NOW!!!!!
Dorkiness aside for the moment, let's talk about the
album. I pretty much agree with you here, it's a huge leap from The Bends, and
'Paranoid Android' is, indeed, the "duh" best song on here. I'd give
it a ten, but give slight preference to Kid A instead...idunno,
I just like how that one sounds more. As for the much hated 'Fitter Happier' I
think I would leave it on if I had the choice. It may not be very kind on the
ears, but it's the thematic centerpiece of the album, and as far as I know, Radiohead is the first cd-age
band that has used this technique of cutting the album into two halves...it's
kind of cool.
Oh, and by the way, sorry bout the flame on the Pink Floyd page. As I mentioned
earlier, I'm a big dork who takes pleasure in in
recording his computer's voice and sending random rants to internet music
reviewers.
Kid A (2000)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Morning
In one web review I read, I saw this album called “avant-garde electro-jazz.” In another, I saw it called “a meticulously crafted piece of crap.” You can call this album a lot of things, but NOT easy to get into, commercial, radio-friendly, happy, or pleasant. When I first heard it, I called it bullshit. Now I call it genius, and gladly give it a 10. I’ve never had a record come anywhere CLOSE to this one in terms of how much my feelings changed towards it over time. It’s very dense, but, once you’ve broken through, it’s very, very rewarding.
So what does it sound like? Well, nothing I’ve heard before, or since, though that may mean I just need to download some Aphex Twin records. The boys expanded their sonic palette (palate? I don’t care.) on OK Computer, but here they completely throw it out the window of their 1999 Kia Sportage and start from scratch. Well, mostly. Two songs still sound very much like old Radiohead. “How To Disappear Completely” is six minutes of lovely acoustic guitars and strings, and “Optimistic,” obviously their attempt for SOMETHING that could get played on the radio (after all, they’re called Radiohead, they should be played on the radio, shouldn’t they?), is driven by catchy guitar riffs, Thom Yorke “Ooo-ooo-ooo”’s and uncharacteristically, well, optimistic lyrics (“You can try the best you can. If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough”). Well, the chorus is uplifting anyway. The verses provide lines like “Flies are buzzing round my head, vultures circling the dead, picking up every last crumb.” That’s more the general tenor of the album. The vultures part. Anyway, what about the rest of it, you ask? Well, if you like creepy synths and organs, electronic gadgets, encoded lyrics, and apocalyptic horns, you’re in for a real fucking treat, my friend.
“Everything In Its Right Place” leads us off with a catchy (and creepy) keyboard riff which repeats throughout the entire song, and while Thom wails seemingly unconnected phrases like “there are two colors in my head” and “what was that you’d try to say?” odd samples (which are most definitely NOT in their right place) of Thom fade in and out of both speakers. This segues into the title track, which opens with the most utterly terrifying use of a child’s music box I have ever heard. Computerized drum blips, echoey organs, and heavily treated vocals (to the point of being completely indecipherable) come in, followed by a repeated drum loop, a pause, quiet, and a gradual fade-in of a synth-string chord. After some more indecipherable mumblings and music box samplings, it segues into “The National Anthem,” which is driven by a bass riff so simple (yet INCREDIBLY catchy) it could have been penned by Renee Zellweger’s son from Jerry Maguire. Eventually, it is led into oblivion by a horn section that was clearly told to play “as fucked up as possible,” and, after it crashes to earth, a brief, quiet orchestral interlude leads us into “How To Disappear Completely,” which provides six minutes of beauty amid the fear and hopelessness. The ambient background noise that is “Treefingers” would be more effective were it about 2 minutes shorter, but it functions as an effective segway and dividing point between the record’s two halves.
Half two begins with “Optimistic,” which, after its attempt at radio accessibility, ends with twenty seconds of a neat jazzy outro, and then segues into “In Limbo.” About halfway through the tune, Thom sings “I’ve lost my way,” at which point the song ITSELF abruptly begins to lose ITS way, not that it really had a way in the first place. Like “The National Anthem,” it more or less ends in chaos, and here is where the album REALLY begins to cook, as “Idioteque” crashes in. What a clever title! It’s ostensibly a dance song, but you can’t dance to it, and, truthfully, it’s rather frightening (a lot of this album is frightening, but in a very good way). The lyrics here are ESPECIALLY confounding. “Who’s in bunker? Who’s in bunker? Women and children first, and children first. I laugh until my head comes off. I swallow ‘til I burst.” Snuh? After all sorts of odd synths and electronic percussion come in and out, the song ends in feedback, over which then four bars of the AWESOME drum beat to “Morning Bell” become stuck in my head for the next week and a half, followed by the entrance of ANOTHER creepy, unsettling organ. Guitars come in gradually, then explode into noise, then just as suddenly vanish, followed by Thom’s fucking FREAKY singing of “cut the kids in half.” Yikes. The end of the song is just organ and bass, and, after a period of silence, a weeping (not creepy this time!) organ comes in for the closer “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” over which we hear the particularly mournful lines “Red wine and sleeping pills help me get back to your arms. Cheap sex and sad films help me get where I belong.” Heavenly harps and angelic choirs make themselves heard, and the album ends with the line “I will see you in the next life!” Kid A, the first human clone (what the concept of the record is, apparently) is ascending to heaven! I’m an atheist, but it is still achingly beautiful to me. Oh, and no, the record is NOT over. After a minute of silence, orchestral-sounding synths and keyboards fade back in for maybe thirty seconds (I think it’s the sound of Kid A actually being IN heaven), then fade out, and THEN the record is over. Phew.
So, yeah, that’s how the record sounds. Pretty cool, huh? Ovenface 4ever.
Amnesiac (2001)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “I Might Be Wrong”
During the sessions for Kid A, Radiohead recorded enough for two albums, apparently, and even though they were daring enough to actually put out an album like that in the first place, they weren’t daring enough to release a double album that sounded like it, so a matter of months after Kid A comes its little brother Kid B. Thommy called this baby the band’s “little secret,” and if the secret that he’s referring to is that half it sucks a nut, then he’s right.
While Kid A was a conceptually and musically unified work, this record here (even according to the band members themselves) is basically the songs that “didn’t fit.” And trust me, you can tell. It’s a hodgepodge of stuff that basically sounds like an outtakes album, and it’s ridiculously inconsistent. Half of it (5 songs, to be exact) is mindblowingly awesome, though, as good as anything they’ve ever done. “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box” is practically “Idioteque II,” and its almost as good as that masterpiece. “Pyramid Song” is gorgeous, with lilting piano chords and synth-strings. “You And Whose Army?” isn’t all that spectacular for its first two thirds, but the piano entrance will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and go “Shit, that was COOL!” “I Might Be Wrong” kicks all sorts of ass and takes all sorts of names, prematurely ends, and then comes back with an outro that absolutely rules. It’s even based on a bluesy-sounding guitar riff, which is a shock, although the techno percussion balances that out. “Life In A Glass House” ends the album and is great, too, featuring what sounds like a New Orleans jazz ensemble that had a little too much to drink, although that’s probably pretty common for things from New Orleans. “Knives Out” is nice, too. Nice acoustic guitars and a great melody sung by Thom, but it’s not quite as strong as the other five superb tunes, at least to me.
There’s five more songs here, though, and they can all be described as one thing: Poop. They’re poop for different reasons, but it cannot be denied that they are all, in fact, poop. “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” is the biggest piece of poop. First of all, it comes right smack-dab in the middle of four of the five great songs on the album (horrible sequencing), but it also just completely and totally SUCKS. It gives me a massive headache. Scratchy, fuzzy techno beats only Jonny and Colin Greenwood’s mother could love. Spoken, melodyless lyrics that say nothing but “There are barn doors, and there are revolving doors” and other meaningless crap about doors. POOP! The kind of green poop I once pooped and laughed at because my poop was green. “Like Spinning Plates” is poop for a similar reason, in that it’s a computerized avant-garde piece of trash. It was recorded backwards, I’m led to believe. It sounds like it was recorded sideways and Thom had the microphone up his bunghole. “Dollars And Cents” is poop because it’s boring. “Hunting Bears” is poop because it’s two completely useless minutes of guitar dicking where Jonny plays fewer notes per second than Dave Gilmour. “Morning Bell/Amnesiac” is poop because it’s a completely inferior version of “Morning Bell” from Kid A. It’s in 4/4 here instead of 5/4, and so the awesome drum beat is gone. The creepy organ is gone. The guitar noise attack is gone. It does have bells, though, so it’s got that going for it.
That’s
basically it. Half awesome and half
poop. I do have to compliment its
production though, as well as the production for the last two albums.
ANYWAY, stupid jokes aside, one has
to wonder where Radiohead goes from Kid
Amnesiac. If they follow the same
pattern as they have so far, their next record will be about 30 times as unlistenable as these last two, which would pretty much
suck. I vote they start to come back to
earth, as much as I love Kid A, before they go too far and make an
entire album of “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors.” It’s intriguing though. I’ll be at Newbury Comics with all the other headheads the first day if and when they release a new
record. That’s for sure.
I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (2001)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Like Spinning Plates”
Well, one direction they could go is a live album, and a surprisingly excellent one at that. I’m usually not a big fan of live albums. I like the studio production, and figure you miss half of the experience you SHOULD be having when you listen to a live album. I’ve gotta make an exception here. It provides enough interesting wrinkles and twists to be essential even if you’ve got all the studio material, which usually, at least for me, isn’t the case.
Now, it’s
not a live ALBUM, per se. It’s “live
recordings,” so I think that means these songs were taken from different
concerts, as opposed to one recorded live show.
It’s also shorter than most live albums.
Just about forty minutes exactly, only eight tracks, and no material
pre-Kid Amnesiac, but it still rules.
“The National Anthem” and “I Might Be Wrong” are the first two songs
they choose, and they both might be better than the studio versions. They sound like ROCK songs instead of creepy
studio creations! They’re both much
faster than in studio, with lots more energy, like a parallel universe where Radiohead is a punk band.
“The National Anthem” doesn’t have the horns that the studio version
does, but it does have a super-distorted bass!
“Morning
After that, the track listing says “Like Spinning Plates,” but I honestly don’t believe that track listing. It’s a slow, lilting, beautiful piano ballad. I guess we’ll find out what song it is when Thom starts sing-OH MY GOD! IT IS! LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO “LIKE SPINNING PLATES!” WOW. The live version of “Like Spinning Plates” is the most beautiful thing they’ve ever done, bar none. Case closed. And now that it doesn’t suck, I get a chance to listen to the lyrics, and, by Heracles, they are AWESOME! “While you make pretty speeches, I’m being cut to shreds.” As a student at Harvard (or as I like to call it, H to the Izz-arvard), this is how I feel EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE. My professors make pretty speeches. Larry Summers makes a speech (that’s not very pretty…he’s not a good speaker). I’m “cut to shreds” by stress, work…everything. Let’s just move on before I start rambling a little TOO much.
Now, “Idioteque” comes next. I’ve seen a video of Thom performing this live, and he jumps around so maniacally it looks like he’s having a seizure. What’s cool is you can actually tell he’s doing this just by listening to the track here. It’s so manic. The percussion is all off the beat and out of place. Everything’s very hectic. The end of the song is crazy, with big WHHOOOOOOSH’s coming in and out of the speakers and Thom yelling “and first it’s women and children! And first it’s women and children!” Neat. “Everything In It’s Right Place” is EIGHT minutes long, though in fairness a minute of that is added at the beginning because the band actually fucks up the song once before they get it right (cool that they included the fuck-up on the record). It’s not much different than the studio recording, except that EVERY WORD THOM SAYS is echoed around my head by some apparatus Jonny trucked on stage with him (they don’t leave their gadgets in the studio). At about the 5:30 mark, Thom himself stops singing, and the vocals are handled by the army of Frodo Yorkes that Jonny created. It’s too bad they included “Dollars and Cents” on the album, though. There are so many better choices. It does come off a little better on stage (not so boring), but I still don’t like the song that much. They finish with “True Love Waits,” the only non-album track here and one of two bones they threw to the fans (like me) when they put out this baby (“Like Spinning Plates” being the other). It’s Thom solo onstage with an acoustic guitar, and ofcourse it’s great. One little nitpick with the mixing: Thom’s voice is so LOUD. I love his voice, but every now and then here it just gives me a headache. Not like Geddy Lee gives me a headache (which is every time I hear his stupid high voice, the fucking fruit), but enough to leave an impression. Great song, though, and great record.
You know, once Refrigeratorforeskin
(get it? Head? Foreskin?
I kill me.) came through
Hail To The Thief (2003)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “2+2=5”
First, let me bitch for just a moment. There’s two reasons I’m disappointed in this album, though I pretty much expected both of them before it even came out (and NO, I didn’t download it prematurely, BITCH). First, it’s just a bunch of songs. Unlike OKC or Kid A (but not The Bends, I guess), it doesn’t feel like a concept album, and there’s no “flow” or whatever that made those records so cool, though I’ll admit that’s a pretty subjective and nitpicky statement. Second, for the first time in Radiohead’s history as a band, a new album does NOT mean a complete change in artistic priorities. They didn’t really advance into any new territory here, though, as I think I mentioned in the Amnesiac review, that might be a good thing. Or the whole album could sound like “Pulk/Pull Revolving SUCK MY ASSHOLE,” and we wouldn’t want that, I don’t think.
OK, now that that’s out of the way, I can rave about how great this album is. It’s not as good as OKC or Kid A, but it’s better than The Bends (and I will continue to say until the day I die that, despite the fact that I’m a diehard Radiohead fan and when I found out they were coming to Boston in August I almost shat my pants, The Bends is an overrated record. A good, solid 8. But a masterpiece? My ASS!), and I’m gonna go ahead and rate this thing third in their output (not counting the live album…because it’s a fucking live album).
I said this record doesn’t mean a change in artistic priorities, and I do mean that. I’d say this album sounds like Amnesiac more than anything else, but with a full record’s worth of ACTUAL SONGS, instead of like six topped off with avant techno-trash, inferior alternate takes, and Pink Floyd guitar instrumentals. Just lots of good, diverse, songs. A stinker or two thrown in (the running time pushes an hour, so that’s inevitable), but still loads of good stuff to find, like the band is in a groove now. They say they only like took a few weeks to make this thing or some shit. If that’s true, I figure they can just stay in this groove and milk it for another three or four albums. I’d be down for that. They already made their two requisite masterpieces. Do they really need to push themselves to make a third? I’d be happy with this album repeated another couple times.
Alright,
actual song time. *Rolls up
sleeves* First of all, the opening five
tracks on this album are across-the-board brilliant, and when I first listened
to this thing, for the first twenty minutes I was just COMPLETELY blown away by
the quality. It sags a little later on,
but, again, it’s just a bunch of songs this time, so that’s
inevitable. The opener, “2+2=5,” might
be my favorite Radiohead song of all time. Its unspeakable brilliance makes me strip
naked, grease myself up in hog fat, and do banjo-accompanied Bavarian chants in
the middle of
Following that, “Sit Down. Stand Up” creeps me out super-effectively for its first half, before exploding in goofy synth noises that sounds like MIND BULLETS (!!!!). “Sail To The Moon” wants to be “Pyramid Song,” but isn’t quite as good, but “Pyramid Song” is the best piano-based song Radiohead’s ever done, so that’s tough. It still rules. “Backdrifts” starts out like an Amnesiac-bullshit outtake synth gloopfest, but then this electronic drum beat kicks in, and, the melody, GOOD GOD, THE MELODY!!!! There are NO real instruments in this song. AT ALL. Yet it absolutely sucks me in and doesn’t let go. And THAT, my friends, is genius. Finally, “Go To Sleep” starts out like a better version of “Knives Out” before morphing into a butt-shaking acoustic jig overdubbed by odd lyric samples and acid guitar bits all over the headphones. If you don’t adore this album by this point, there’s no hope for you.
Again, the remaining nine tracks can’t measure up for the most part, but there’s only two songs I really don’t like. “We Suck Young Blood” needs a kick in the ass and an arrangement change. It’s WAYYYYYY too slow, and those handclaps annoy the shit out of me. And what’s with the completely random five second speed-up in the middle? Huh? Anyone? Bueller? HUH!!!!???? Other than that, pretty good, though! Cool, creepy atmosphere. Then “Myxomatosis” is the worst song this band’s ever done that’s not on Pablo Honey or Amnesiac, and it needs to go back to the trash bin. The synth tone annoys me, and, while I enjoy Thom’s new-found lower register, it sounds like he’s rapping or something, and, um, he shouldn’t do that.
No reason to knock the rest of these tunes, though! Neat, creepy, and, above all, INTERESTING! This is why I prefer this incarnation of the band to The Bends. All sorts of weird, incomprehensible, just interesting stuff popping up everywhere. The single, “There There,” has an interesting sound (sort of like “Optimistic,” but a lot more spacey and withdrawn), and it takes a while to sink in, but once it does, IT WILL NOT LET GO! Probably my favorite melody on the album (“Just because you feeeeel it…doesn’t mean it’s there…”), although the amount of musical ideas within can’t come CLOSE to matching the genius of “2+2=5.” “Where I End And You Begin” and “The Gloaming” just get by on atmosphere alone, which might the ultimate test of the creativity of a band (such as PINK FLOYD, for instance!), and, though “The Gloaming” comes dangerously close to Amnesiac shit techno avant-outtake-ness, it never crosses the line. “I Will” is pretty underdeveloped as an actual song, but, as a study on how many neat ways Thom can overdub his voice over itself, it’s probably the best the band’s ever done. “A Punchup At A Wedding” has a GROOVE, like it really grooves along! And you’re shaking that big, fat ass! All slow and sexy! THEY’VE NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE! I didn’t think they were capable, to be honest. And, finally, “Scatterbrain” and “A Wolf At The Door” are perfectly excellent ways to end the record. The former reminds me a little of “In Limbo,” and the latter doesn’t really remind me of anything specific, because this review is too long and the Red Sox game started twenty minutes ago.
So, I hope you’ve enjoyed my opinions on the new Radiohead album. I know everyone’s been waiting BREATHLESSLY for it! And by “everyone,” I, as always, mean “Al.” He’s a cool dude, you know. And so is Thom Yorke. Final conclusion? Radiohead is still an excellent band, not that you didn’t know that already.
In Rainbows
(2007)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Reckoner”
So yeah, this review’s a little late, but notice how many reviews I’ve posted since this record came out. Two! And I wrote one of those in like early October. It’s called grad school, and last semester turned into a clusterfuck within only a month of starting, to the point where I was questioning what I was doing here in the first place. I still kind of am, but that’s neither here nor there – plus, I have a pretty smooth escape plan should I decide to bail in the next year or two: just go back to secondary school teaching! I’m good at it. Why not?
But let’s not talk about my lack of a career. Let’s talk about the only record album I’ve yet downloaded about which I can’t make a joke about how I downloaded it. Plus…well, I didn’t even download it! The day it came out I tried to get onto the Radiohead website to download my own copy, but the fact that I hadn’t “registered” or whatever I was supposed to do first was quickly proven monumentally stupid as the rest of the world tried to log onto one website at one time and left me up shit creek without a Radiohead album. Fortunately, my roommate Clarkness had done whatever pre-registration hibbity-jibbity was necessary for purchase of said record and burned me his copy, prefacing it with the kind of quick-witted Clarknessism Clarkness is known and loved for around these parts: “I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I’ll just tell you this: it’s pretty good.”
In a development surprising to absolutely no one, he was right. Just like Hail to the Thief, this is not gonna replace Kid A or OK Computer atop the mountain of Radiohead awesomeness, but it’s still a perfectly admirable, perfectly superb 9 that leaves the vast majority of bands to have ever walked the earth praying they could make something as good as this thing that isn’t even as good as Radiohead can do when they really want to. And even more than Hail to the Thief, this really sounds to me like a “summation” or “wrapping up” or what-have-you of the band’s more “out-there” tendencies and a statement that they’re not gonna try to be groundbreaking anymore, and they’re not gonna try to be the absolute best they can be anymore, but it doesn’t matter because they’re still gonna be awesome.
Hail to the Thief had “electronic” songs that sounded like some of the odder experiments from Amnesiac and it had “soft, pretty songs” that sounded like “How to Disappear Completely” or something from the end of OK Computer and it had “interesting rock songs” that sounded like the love child of “Airbag” and “Optimistic.” In Rainbows doesn’t really have songs that neatly fit into any of these categories. What it does have is an “interesting rock song” with touches of “electronic song” or an “electronic song” with a heavy dose of “soft, pretty song” and a dash of “interesting rock song.” Unlike Hail to the Thief, then, which was full of stuff that sounded like Radiohead “types” previously established on OK Kid Amnesiac, this record has songs that combine all the stuff Radiohead’s been working with since OK Computer into neatly digestible yet deceptively complex pieces of Good Radiohead Music. Individual songs are less obviously easy to discuss because elements of this song occur in three other songs later on, or that great beat in the one song at the end is totally the one I heard a few tracks back in that one, etc. It’s unified, even if I don’t know if it was meant to be, because it doesn’t sound like every song was individually labored over for months to get the electronic *thwap* just right or to get the guitar tone scratchy enough but not too scratchy. Even though I know some of these songs date from a long time ago in the Timeline of Radiohead, it doesn’t at all sound like it. It sounds like the band just sat down for a week and tossed off a bunch of songs they liked and called it a day (even though a careful listen will reveal that they certainly did not do this). This whole “toss-off” feeling leads to this being probably the first Radiohead album that I can describe as “warm.” It’s inviting.
Lord knows every song on here probably has some sort of electronics I’m not aware of, but they’re rarely very obtrusive, and the twittering electro-beat that the opening “15 Steps” greets you with doesn’t necessarily give you an idea of what’s to come until it’s combined with the pretty arpeggiated guitar things. “Interesting rock song” + “electronic song,” remember? They kick some butt on the fuzzy “Bodysnatchers” and get all sweet on the lovely “All I Need,” but no matter how different these songs are, they all follow the same pattern of subtly layered awesomeness on top of seemingly simple beginning and top-notch vocal melody (and yes, Thom is still in peak form). As I’m a sucker for a gorgeous, original guitar part and a percussion part that’s heavy on the cymbals, I dig “Reckoner” more than the rest here, but you can’t go wrong with anything, even if none of it would make Radiohead’s top 10 or 15 best-of tracks ever. It’s just not that kind of album. It doesn’t have big highs and lows, and it doesn’t necessarily display that great of a stylistic range, unless of course you accept that throwing 3 or 4 seemingly disparate elements together seamlessly into one song and repeatedly making such songs awesome can be defined as “stylistic range.” And no, the stuff in here doesn’t seem that disparate at all, but that’s because everyone has a decade of Radiohead’s being the best band on the planet and doing stuff similar to what this album does to use for comparison. The album occasionally sounds ho-hum only because Radiohead made it. It’s ho-hum for Radiohead. It’s fucking fantastic for anyone else.
So yes, this album is not godlike or a masterpiece or any other such superlative you may want to throw at it. It’s just really, really good, plus it’s relaxed and even-keel and not self-consciously artsy or epic or anything else like that you could rightly accuse Hail to the OK Kid Amnesiac of being. Radiohead are still good.
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happening...