Here it is. The grand finale of my 20+ page In Rainbows review. Here is my attempt at quantifying and contextualizing the album.
***
Cut to 100+ listens later. The emotional impact has not been blunted. If anything, it has exponentially increased.
I am utterly unqualified to quantify this album. Is it really necessary? I suppose, if I call this a review, it necessitates a dissection of the album. Let’s keep the question simple. How does it compare aesthetically to other Radiohead albums and this year’s releases in general?
My other two favorite albums of 2007 are Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam and Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible. Both albums are musically similar to their predecessors but find the bands diverging thematically. They also lack the accessibility of the bands’ previous efforts. There is no Tunnels or Power Out on Neon Bible. Nor is there a Leaf House or Grass on Strawberry Jam. Instead, these two albums are slow burns, meant to be digested over many listens.
The similarities end here. Though Neon Bible is more consistent, Funeral had too many emotional peaks, too many “holy shit” moments, to allow Neon Bible to be called the better album. Strawberry Jam, on the other hand, could be Animal Collective’s best album to date. What it lacks in tribal pop accessibility it makes up for in warmth and emotional intensity. The heat in my chest when I run from Reverend Green into Fireworks is new from an Animal Collective album. Neon Bible, while many would argue it is a better overall album (Pitchfork, in their questionable wisdom, gave it a considerably lower score than Funeral, despite saying that it has a much longer shelf life) is a more distant, perhaps colder, album. The title comes from a novel by a man who never got recognition till a decade after his suicide and features a Springsteen-esque song about a man shilling his daughter for the money. Consider the high one gets from the stellar No Cars Go, which is promptly cut off by the opening chords of My Body Is A Cage. It’s a downer, to say the least, albeit making an interesting statement about the post-modern condition (short answer: you’re trapped in a life that sucks).
This is not to say that colder albums cannot be great albums. I mean to say that there needs to be a delicate balance. This is where Radiohead works wonders. I often describe Kid A as an icy cavern. You’re there with an anthropomorphic penguin. It’s jarring, words come in echoes. Occasionally, the penguin says “slide” and your heart melts. (Cue single frame of giant phallus). Songs like Everything In Its Right Place, Kid A, Treefingers, In Limbo, and Motion Picture Soundtrack provide Kid A glacial overtones. However, the album has incredible diversions. Compare Idioteque, Morning Bell, the National Anthem, Optimistic, and especially How to Disappear Completely to their brethren.
Kid A is stylistically parsecs from OK Computer and yet a general Radiohead aesthetic remains. Similar to Nirvana’s patented Verse-Chorus-Verse formula, Radiohead has the jarring opening that builds, falls, builds again, and so forth. Note the opening blast of Airbag, which morphs without pause into Paranoid Android. Beginning Everything In Its Right Place has a similar effect. At first, everyone was thinking, Where the hell are the guitars? One knows as they enter: this is going to be different. I get this though in my head when I also spin Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, and In Rainbows (metaphorically, of course – damn I want the CD).
When I think of Kid A fondly, my mind always turns to the song I consider the emotional apex, one of Radiohead’s greatest moments: How to Disappear Completely. Everything about this song is perfect to me. The soft acoustic. The accompanying bass line (which I play in my head over and over). Jonny’s ondes. The lyrics. Their delivery. The story even: the song comes from a mantra Michael Stipe taught Thom to cope with the pressure of accelerated success (see: the Meeting People Is Easy documentary).
The music industry was founded on the idea of singles and, even in the age of albums, we find ourselves returning to that idea. Our minds search out “that one song” and, for many Radiohead fans, it’s no different. Except, we tend to run to that song that’s not necessarily the catchiest but sends shivers down our spines or makes our throats dry, puts weight on our chest. The ends of Fake Plastic Trees and Let Down. The black, bittersweet Pyramid Song. I call this the emotional heart. Hail to the Thief, unfortunately, failed to provide any such moment for me. Many AtEasers thought Sail to the Moon would fit the bill, until it was butchered in the rushed studio production. I try to find this moment in In Rainbows. The last bit of All I Need comes close. As does the intro to Nude. Another mighty contender is Videotape, the most effective closing song Radiohead ever recorded: it’s like ending a book you want to start again immediately. Videotape conjures some fantastic images in my head. From How to Disappear Completely I picture Thom playing an acoustic on a battlefield as bombs rain down around him. Videotape is like watching a lover ride away on a train, perhaps to never be seen again. It’s like the last few lines of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The melancholy ending unwinds to its happier origins. Each conflates the other’s importance. Think of the famous line “My life flashed before my eyes.” What is that idea’s purpose, the need to illuminate one’s death with a movie reel of their life at the last instant? I am reminded of my favorite Flaming Lips song, Feeling Yourself Disintegrate:
Love in our life is just too valuable.
Oh, to feel for even a second without it.
But life without death is just impossible.
Oh, to realize that something is ending within us.
Going back to the idea of emotional maturity and the larger subject of this piece, self-reflection, Videotape is about serving an essential purpose: if life is a thread one must connect the ends to make a shape. Transform the one dimensional into two. Then contort it, examine it from all angles, moving it into the third dimension. Perhaps when we die, this happens in an instant, assuming one cannot do this after death. In Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, Wayne Coyne marvels at how love and loss, life and death, illuminate the other. The realization that you are slowly dying (see: Existentialism, Sylvia Plath) or slowly disintegrating, forces a reflection. In fact, by the logic of syllogism, love is impossible without loss. Every time you lose that which you have loved one travels backward and often lives long periods of their life in memory only. The first time through they were either only (ahem) killing time or missed out on valuable insight. God knows how many times I’ve found things about my past I missed the first time through.
Is Videotape some grand, life-altering statement on life and death? Probably not. Though, like the rest of the album, it is a simple yet human (read: mystifyingly complex) statement that offers valuable insight. Videotape is a reflection of our need to view and understand our lives when facing death. Like Mr. Coyne (and probably Mr. Yorke), I implore you: do not wait for death to realize.
Returning to the idea of the emotional heart: Radiohead could have easily added another minute to All I Need, or some strings to Videotape to sweeten it some more. Instead, the delivery comes at face value. The emotions rumbling, never boiling over. There is no drawn out, immense emotional release. The whole album provides little moments but no overt explosions of passion. This is a disappointment for some. People often want their minds blown. I am enjoying something…closer to reality. Not everything has to be like the movies, after all.
Hail to the Thief is admirable in that it also diverges from my idea of the Radiohead aesthetic in many ways. However, it suffers in the same way Radiohead’s lesser albums do: a lack of consistency. The Bends has several tracks featuring less-than-inspired and often overwrought lyrics (Bulletproof, Sulk). Amnesiac has it’s sub-par Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors immediately after the heartbreaking Pyramid Song as well as having Hunting Bears right before two closing tracks. Hail to the Thief was inconsistent but also distant and often sounded lifeless and/or flaccid (We Suck Young Blood, I Will). Having Radiohead’s longest running time (at 14 tracks) could’ve been a great thing, had it not been that four of those songs could’ve easily been left on the cutting floor. Yes, it was the return of Radiohead + guitars, but it lacked focus and direction. What was the point of a song like Go to Sleep or We Suck Young Blood? That Go to Sleep became a single is appalling. The tragedy is that there were enough songs to make a tight, concise record that, given enough time in the studio, would’ve rivaled OK Computer in post-modern guitar rock glory (2+2=5, Where I End and You Begin, Myxomatosis, There There) while maintaining their Kid A/mnesiac experimentation (Backdrifts, Sit Down Stand Up, The Gloaming). Furthermore, the gorgeous I Will that I remember from Meeting People Is Easy could’ve been delivered to us properly.
We’re getting In Rainbows more than four years after this wasted opportunity. Radiohead have changed considerably in this time. They have wives and children. Jonny is a composer for the BBC. Thom has released a solo album that borders Amnesiac territory. How will this affect their style and mood?
In Rainbows is the most consistent Radiohead album since OK Computer. I knew going into this release that there was no possible way their masterpiece could be bested. I know a great deal of people that claim Kid A or Amnesiac deserve the throne. These people casually toss the idea of an album out the window while applying their own theories on the album’s concept. “It doesn’t matter that Pyramid Song segues into Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors – that’s life, you go from sweet bliss to complete panic instantly.” While this explanation does make sense, it isn’t substantiated by anything Radiohead has shown us. In other words, it’s unlikely that your sentiment is what the artist intended. (Sidenote: In recent years, this segue has been referred to be Thom as a “litmus test”). Amnesiac isn’t about life more than any other album. That segue is aesthetically pugnacious and one of the leading reasons mainstream listeners ignore Amnesiac, brilliant though it may be as a whole. The song order and even some choices (no Cuttooth but we get Morning Bell/Amnesiac??) make the album so overwhelmingly inconsistent that it requires far more listens than any other Radiohead album to appreciate it beyond the more immediate arrangements. Think of their creative choices acting like a competitive inhibitor in the kinetic process that is the album’s appreciation. Luckily, for me, the overall emotional impact of the album, as it develops slowly over repeated listens, more than makes up for its lack of consistency.
If any Radiohead album is a concept about life it is probably Kid A, which moves from sonic nascence to lyrical death. However, Kid A doesn’t need a concept. Its songs flow considerably well. What Kid A lacks, however, is the strongest set of songs. Few will argue for Treefingers (though a nice palette cleanser after How to Disappear Completely, it runs for far too long, and that an extended version exists on the Memento soundtrack is mind-boggling) or for Optimistic and In Limbo to be among Radiohead’s greatest. Motion Picture Soundtrack, while touching, lacks a certain maturity. Here, we find Thom being despondent without reflection. Collapsing into “red wine and sleeping pills” and the realization that “it’s not like the movies.” We are given comfort in that we’ll see one another “in the next life,” but, considering how this one’s ending, I’m not sure that’s an affirmation or delivered with a sarcastic sigh. Yes, the ending is heavenly, but I still feel uneasy about the whole event. In other words, Motion Picture is fantastically appropriate for Kid A, but isn’t the strongest song on its own.
OK Computer trumps Kid A in that it also flows well (Airbag into Paranoid Android, the post-modern poetry of Fitter Happier into Electioneering’s political paranoia, the ghastly voices in Exit Music parting for Let Down being my favorite) and, unlike Kid A, every song is least a near classic. Paranoid Android might be Radiohead’s greatest legacy, its rich history of being inspired by John Lennon’s Happiness Is A Warm Gun coupled with comparisons of its schematics to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody places it among the timeless pantheon of Rock. Let Down is a forgotten classic, the best example of why modernity bugs the shit out of many. Karma Police is that song you think you’ve heard before but haven’t. It’s also Chris Martin’s Bible (…pre-2005, the good times). The Shakespearean Exit Music, in four minutes, makes a point about love and adolescence that MTV’s Romeo + Juliet failed to make in all its two hours. The lethargic protest song that is No Surprises states simply in two lines what whole nations continue to feel: Bring down the government/They don’t speak for us. I have seen crowds scream and cheer for these two little lines. Michael Stipe claims the greatest moment of his life was hearing this song chanted by thousands at a Radiohead concert (something I’ve witnessed twice, and yes, it’s a good feeling). There is simply too much to say about this album.
How does In Rainbows place among Radiohead’s albums: a question that’s been tossed around since October 10th. I can state with near certainty that it is better than Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, The Bends, and, of course, Pablo Honey. That I can say its name in the same sentence as Kid A and OK Computer is compliment enough. It’s the best I could have hoped for. Do I think it’s better than OK Computer? No. I’m not sure I will ever hear a better album in my life. Is that because I’m stubborn? No, it’s because I’m a pessimist. I would love to be proved wrong, especially by a new Radiohead album.
Objectively, OK Computer, Kid A, and In Rainbows represent the most sophisticated, well-produced pieces of music Radiohead has ever made. In establishing their respective moods, all three do them very well.
In Rainbows reflects that idea of it being a slow burning listen with few outright emotional crescendos. It’s groovy. Sometimes jazzy. Even 15 Step and Bodysnatchers, which appear to be album’s most upbeat songs rely heavily on rhythm. The album flows extremely well with a consistency that outdoes that of Kid A. If it had its own “How To Disappear Completely”, the silver medal would pass onto it easily. It still could, given that it took me a long time to appreciate How to Disappear Completely, it could happen for anything on In Rainbows.
On AtEase, I posted a poll where the tracks from Kid A were put head-to-head with In Rainbows’ tracks. The results were interesting and, as the poll matured, changed drastically. Initially, over 50% thought In Rainbows was as good or better than Kid A, while over 70% thought Kid A was as good or better. Most votes for best songs went to In Rainbows (which won 6/10). However, the votes for best album still went clearly to Kid A. I believed that this is because it has gestated in people’s hearts for seven years.
Then the In Rainbows fans caught a whiff of this. As it stands, Kid A and In Rainbows are in a near tie. In Rainbows won 7/10 tracks, its only losses being to How to Disappear Completely, Everything In Its Right Place, and Idioteque (compared to Arpeggi, 15 Step, and House of Cards).
This is impressive. While Kid A fans are horribly vocal about how shitty they think In Rainbows is compared to Kid A, many fans are silently ecstatic about the album. Beyond this fact, there is little that this poll can say about In Rainbows definitively. We are all still manically riding the IR horse in between windmills. Time is what we all need, to temper and coagulate our thoughts. Let the dust settle.
This has been true of all Radiohead albums. I just “got” Amnesiac this year, after all. There are going to be little touches on In Rainbows you won’t get for a while. I am just beginning to understand how well it is put together.
15 Step boasts some of Phil’s best drumming. The hand claps, the children screaming “Yeah!” makes this one of Radiohead’s more jubilant offerings. As it leads into the return of the triple guitar attack on Bodysnatchers, I am just…fantastically satisfied.
Nude transcends any attempt to critique it.
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi is where I am just astounded by what these guys can do with guitars. The arpeggios stand out most but keep your ear focused on Ed in the background. How he fills in some of the spaces. Especially at the 2.5 minute mark. As a friend of mine describes it, this is what it would sound like to drown in the middle of the ocean.
All I Need and House of Cards are two songs that could have gone in so many different directions. Both are quasi-love songs in that they’re not cut and dry. They reveal the dark complications that can arise in love. The sinister bass line in All I Need amplifies the lyrics’ obsessive tone. House of Cards, as I mentioned before, drowns the vocals in reverb. To me, it makes Thom distant, the words coming from far away, spatially or temporally. I have an image of his lover staring into space recounting the words in her mind.
Consider the aesthetic and lyrical differences between Bodysnatchers and Jigsaw Falling Into Place, the second and second-to-last songs, respectively. Besides the prominent guitars we get an interesting set of lyrics.
“Has the light gone out for you? Cause the light’s gone out for me.” – Bodysnatchers
“I am moth who just wants to share your light.” – All I Need
“You’ve got a light, you can feel it on your back.” – Jigsaw Falling
Something has changed over the course of the album. To me, the light serves as a metaphor for whatever it is we seek in life. We move from our panic and disability to finally realizing that it’s in the last place we look. Did Radiohead arrange the album like this on purpose? Thom tends to have his themes. However, considering the 2 years of writing, recording, and production, I would guess this arrangement was deliberate.
I noticed a pattern at the center of the album as well:
“I only stick with you because there are no others. You are all I need.” – All I Need
“Dare not speak his name. Did I cater to all your needs?” – Reckoner
These two songs sandwich Faust Arp, which, to me, is a person watching him or herself and someone they love fall to pieces. “I love you but enough is enough.” Over the course of these three center songs, have we watched a destructive relationship arise and fall, with Reckoner looking over the broken pieces?
There is, I think, a larger picture to In Rainbows. One that will slowly be revealed. There is a considerable amount of warmth, sweetness, and melancholy in this album. The production is astonishing. Thom’s voice is brought up front. His inflections, his intonations are bursting with sentiment. Colin and Phil are at the top of their game. The rhythm section has always been effective but has become increasingly integral with each successive album. Jonny’s ondes is, as usual, disarming. I cannot wait to hear his score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film, There Will Be Blood. The highest compliments may go to Ed, however. Though he seems a bit absent, I’ve slowly been discovering all the places he inhabits in this album. Let us not forget that Treefingers was his baby, and that the ambient/textural work with guitars is his forte. Weird Fishes, Bodysnatchers, and House of Cards are all made by Ed’s simple touches. Despite lacking a clear-cut emotional heart (at least for me, though All I Need is honestly getting there), there is not a weak song on this album, something I’m not sure we could’ve claimed before. In Rainbows neither relies on Radiohead’s guitar rock bravado or their electronic experimentations. What we have here is a synthesis of the two, somehow resulting in something new and extremely organic. Truly, better than what I had hoped for, and I had hoped for a lot.
***
Thank you to those that have kept up this far. Thank you for the compliments, friends and strangers alike. I really do appreciate it. This was a rare opportunity for me.
Till next time.