Radiohead: In Rainbows [a review]

Review:

I got a prompt from Radiohead’s W.A.S.T.E. this morning with a link to the downloadable version of their 7th studio LP and felt this was a benchmark in my life as a music consumer. ‘Pay whatever you want,’ is a concept I could get used to. I’m just crossing my fingers hoping that this is the end times for major record labels and all their vile, exhausted schemes.

Nothings stuck out immediately, well, not truthfully. “Bodysnatchers” completely destroys in all it’s ripping guitar awesomeness. It’s going to be really hard to find any fault on this gem of rock beauty. Like their best records, Radiohead get into your heart by surgically removing your skepticism. Radiohead make records, unlike popular music artists, who make singles, which is why the release of In Rainbows is so exciting to an audiophile like myself. Though with some scrutiny this particular album seems more song oriented than their past bouts.

Looking forward to December when the ‘Disc Box’ ships, almost like I’ll have a new opportunity to rediscover In Rainbows on vinyl. I love vinyl, its warmth, that hiss, some day my children will listen to old records on my Benjamin Miracord (once owned by their Grandfather) and scratch their heads in wonder asking; ‘why does it sound so scratchy?’ I’ll laugh, as I put the needle down on my 180 gram copy of In Rainbows and say, ‘that’s the sound of authenticity kids! Listen to how amazing “Nude” sounds, the music is practically naked! And by the way, side 2 is always better.’

The reverb drenched effects of ‘All I Need’ fortifies this ethereal track, anchoring it once the drums kick in, washed out crash cymbals punctuate Thom’s melancholy warble. The folkiness of “Faust Arp” with orchestral accents and flat picked acoustic guitar break up what would seem like side 1 from side 2, (if this was vinyl) quite nicely.

Track 7, “Reckoner” comes through the speakers like some lost child, clapping hands, shaking tambourine, stomping bells, grinning solemnly. Johnny Greenwoods got that whole arpeggio clarity thing nailed. And Thom. He who spells his name with a silent ‘H’ wails beautifully along a syncopated beat. This song is the centerpiece, one that ties past efforts together with the current effort. You can hear bits of Pablo/Kid A/OK Computer and Hail to the Thief in this song.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m of the type that has enjoyed all of their releases and has relished each for the unique way each was composed and released. My initial, immediate impression is that I like the second half of the record better. The second half doesn’t seem quite as esoteric as the first. Thom’s lyrics are more informed; at least they seem so on “House of Cards.” Where it seems the last 8 years of a nightmare world where Bush is the president twice over and Iran could be the next target of a ‘coalition of the willing’ could be coming to an end. A hopeful tune on a Radiohead album? Yes! But it is a song that is hopeful in that dreary, sweater wearing British way. A real house of cards can’t stand up to strong winds, maybe collective outrage fatigue has hit its tipping point and people are ready to actually put their foot down and say ‘enough!’

“Jigsaw Falling Into Place,” is a driving tune. That acoustic guitar leads the rhythm, pushes the beat, its percussive tonality compliments the eeriness of Thom’s ghostly backup vocal track. A song with a million layers. A song with a dozen implications. The lyrics, like black suited paramilitary troops, invading the urban squalor of the mind through the canals of the ears to whisper answers in the form of questions. Its nice to know Radiohead can inspire creative thinking without bludgeoning listeners with concepts such as global warming, er…while singing about climate change.

I’m anxious for the vinyl to ship. It is annoying listening to this band without some sort of visual guide for the songs. I hate not being able to sit down and open a gatefold read lyrics to every song and get totally immersed in the world they’ve created. I’m happy to report that I will be receiving the ‘Disc box’ with its book, art and two vinyl’s (one In Rainbows and the other is just ‘other’ they didn’t fit on the album). I like the way Radiohead define their art and appreciate the way they defy consumer culture by delivering a product worth every penny.

So as you wade through the static of the ever present TV Eye, ignore the man behind the curtain and take a listen to In Rainbows. [fuck, sorry, I just wrote that then realized how lame a reference Oz was] My biggest complaint about this record, or rather digital release – no cover art! WTF?

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Synthesis of Classic Form

An air raid siren echoing off of glass and concrete as dust and debris filter from between the buildings to the streets below. So much skin. So much skin. Where does the mind end and the body begin? You are on perpetual display my dear. Your white skin and your blond hair and your long legs and trim figure are attractively relative. But not because you are the best choice for breeding. Your hips are much too small. You don’t eat enough. Or you must eat just enough to get by. What are you drinking? Vodka Tonic? No way! Vodka Cranberry. I can see from here when the tender lips touch the reddish-purple concentrate of the glass, filled with ice, garnish with lime. That guy over there is leering at your breasts. You’d call him a ‘creepy bastard’ if you caught him but you don’t notice and he zero’s in on another couple. I believe he enjoys their shape. But those aren’t real are they? They could pass but they don’t move quite right and your 5’4″ frame wouldn’t naturally support those shapes: that weight and its implications of alterations. Those strange looking objects that bring men pleasure because of their shape and their muscle memory in meaning. You can feed a child. But not really. Cause they’re full of saline and not the apparatus to sustain the life of your offspring.

Is this merely observation?

Is this social commentary?

Does it affect me?

Is it effective?

Grinderman Says, “I must above all things love myself.”

Social Insurgent pt. 1

I’m in a crowded room drenched in red, drowning in glare
Where every whispered assumption and every silent condemnation
Is testament to the bomb strapped to my chest.
One might say, “he commands the attention of a room.”
As the nitroglycerin is kissed by cellular trigger.
Ring, ring, ring.

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Government of the Mind

Outsourcing torture.
Can you outrun the government of the mind? It’s all in the head, the diplomatic approach to talking yourself out of things. The kind of bravado reserved for youth and narcissistic types, who, at some point in the life cycle will put enough red tape into the daily affirmation of self-conscious behavior to sum up a personal coup.

That’s the distance put in place where your eyes see nothing but the self. Id is deleted. And where does the fight begin? It begs the question; what am I without my own backdrop, red carpet, limo chartered lifestyle? And is it set in place by the television, the media, the radio and Internet and advertisements that push skin? Its time to redirect our values, to move the congress of thought into a new paradigm. The one where fear is the reality of boredom.

You come home and turn on the lights after an hour long commute, listening to all the exposition on the radio or the ‘art’ of the music to your life’s soundtrack is based around. You identify – a thing that helps your justification of certain decisions like, ‘What would Calvin Kline do?’

Or, “Does this shirt make me look fat?”

Who decides and when does the order come down from the top administration officials?
How do you measure success?
You can’t outrun time! You only continue on a path that is wrought with danger and self-deprecation. And in the half-light of the evening, that blue glow of cathode rays from the television pulpit dictates your pattern(s).
A.) What to wear.
B.) What to eat
C.) When to wear it
D.) When to ingest it.

It’s a ritual based on culture – the culture of the corporation that has taken over your internal government. What will your peers think? What motivates their thought? You are insignificant so you compensate by posturing yourself to be amicable in all situations. Like a dog at your heels with a nose of shit, licking the hand that feeds in an attempt at intimacy.

We are the duplicates. Made of atoms, whispering individuality as a stage play based on someone else’s idea of what life is supposed to be. We are the lost. Emasculated by our mothers and wives.

Cut from the cloth of indifference.

Scavengers feeding on apathy. With a hidden agenda that makes us detainees of our own prison.

The gentle is our ghost of feigned chivalry…

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From the Sons to the Sun – monkeys running things down here…

Bleak:
Some mountain top village, a villain peering from a tower down at the ant sized humans below. The all seeing eye burns, a magnifying glass in the hand of a giant, snuffing out lives for entertainment.

“Deadliest attack by insurgents since the fall of Fallujah.” Those lines leak into the system, cross the wires, disseminate their data into the farthest regions to be cast aside and remembered in the late hours, before complete system shut down. Flash of body parts, smell of diesel and burnt asphalt in desert sun. Oil skimmed off the top of the Euphrates, that artery of the Fertile Crescent, pumping more than blood from an ambushed convoy into those verdant hills and outlying fields.

Count the stars. Kiss the solar system. 98 million miles and one new planet discovered, or moon.

and those ceramic heat tiles on the shuttle; “it’s a clunker, piece of shit car,” in orbit, sent up by baboons and rhesus monkeys in starch white short sleeved button up and collared dress shirts, coffee stains, no more smoking in the control room.
It signifies our lack of importance.
It signifies our obsession with god.
To shoot the distance, close the gap to heaven and escape our earthly vessel to feel complete. And then it becomes clear for just a second through the haze – a cylinder of sun – that nucleus of us – shines down into a swath of land, half burned by incendiaries, the other half covered in elephant grass that sways in the low breeze.
It’s the Oreo effect.
It is this wishful thinking that will do us in.

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