Radiohead “In Rainbows” (2007) – got it
Radiohead took a bit of a break following the tour for their previous
album “Hail to the Thief”. They’d completed the obligations of their
record contract, and arguably "Hail" wasn’t their finest hour. After the
steady evolution of Pablo Honey through to the Kid A/Amnesiac albums,
Hail felt like a bit of a backward step.
The band regrouped and tried to come up with some music but the sessions
proved difficult. The band tried working with different producers and
then went on tour. Finally they reunited with producer Nigel Godrich
who, Thom Yorke said, gave them a “walloping kick up the arse”. Work
picked up and the band ended up with 16 songs which they trimmed down to
just 10 tracks on the album, wanting to put forward a concise musical
statement.
The album is pleasingly defiant of overall categorisation, with opener “15 Step”
starting with a Kid A-esque electronic beat but overlaid with clean
guitar and coherent vocals. There’s a lot of clean guitar tones, for
instance with "Nude" and single “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” which sounds
to be a mix of acoustic and electric guitars. Nude has melodic
atmospheric guitar parts that swell and fade in the background along
with harmonised backing vocals.
"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi"
has a propulsive almost dance beat with a fairly clean start that
eventually builds to swirls of sound and at one point the music
underneath cuts down to just the beat and Yorke's vocal.
"All I Need" has a loping synthy bass but builds to a crescendo.
"House of Cards" almost has hints of later era U2 (not in a bad way) in
its earnest minimalism but still with some sonic experimentation.
Radiohead generally seem to pick great songs as their album closers, and “Videotape” is no exception, with it’s slow sombre piano and stuttering stabs of drums.
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