Day 0972 - In Rainbows

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.

Day 0906 - Kid A

Radiohead "Kid A" (2000) – got it

 

An album where genius and arrogance meet.  The band completely changed their melodic alt-rock sound for a direction more influenced by electronic music (particularly the sounds of alt-electro artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre) and left it up to fans to follow them on the journey or get out of the way.

I’ve often wondered if this change in direction was a natural evolution decided on unanimously by the band.  Reading about it though, it sounds as though the push came primarily from singer Thom Yorke.  Yorke was convinced that guitar rock was a dying genre… at the risk of being a touch salty, he wasn’t the first slightly self-important rocker to come to this conclusion with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins having made similar declarations as he moved his band towards an electronic and acoustic sound for their 1998 album “Adore”.  

The other members of Radiohead had concerns about the change.  Concerns ranging from whether it was self-indulgent art rock for the sake of it, through to what (if anything) they’d personally be doing on each of the new songs.    Definitely this second point is a valid concern when you look at a song like “Idioteque” which is based around a drum machine part and a looped sample of an experimental 1960s piece of computer music with Yorke being the most prominent member featured.  Yet the album works.

The new sound is on display right from the off, with the warm bleepy synth and looped vocal opening of “Everything in its right place”, the synth and drum machine of the title track and the Krautrock vibe of “National Anthem”.  

Guitars start to make a reappearance around the middle of the album.  “How to Disappear Completely” (with its acoustic guitar, morose vocal and light live drums over a soupy drone) sounds like it could have easily been on “OK Computer”.   “Optimistic” and “In Limbo” also feature guitars but with the vocals seeming less like a narrative and more like a free-form chanted mantra.  The vocals across the album are treated with various effects and processing that often sees them buried in the mix rather than front and centre as you'd expect for a rock or pop album.

Even the promotion of the album mixes genius and arrogance.   Instead of doing music videos for 2 or 3 select tracks, the band did a series of short advert-length videos for each track on the album.  It was a smart move because it helped signpost the band’s change of direction and gave the public a passing familiarity with the whole album without getting them burnt out on any one song.  Of course though the band felt the need to couch it as a ‘comment’ on how music videos are commercials and blah blah blah, (to reference Frank Zappa) “SHUT UP ‘N PLAY YER GUITAR”.

Love this album.  With some bands that have made big stylistic changes, I've taken a bit of time to acclimatise to them, but I enjoyed this one from the start.

Day 0881 - Apple Venus vol.1

XTC "Apple Venus vol.1" (1999) - got it

It had been 7 years since the previous XTC album.  The band had been arguing with their record label Virgin and essentially went on strike until they were allowed the freedom to do things their way.   Eventually the band left the label and were able to move forward with their music.  

Songwriters Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding had amassed over 40 songs and at first had planned to release a double album, but changed this to release two volumes.   The second Apple Venus volume "Wasp Star" would consist of more straight ahead rock/guitar songs.    Volume one though is a masterpiece of baroque pop mostly consisting of orchestral instruments and acoustic guitars.   Due to budgetary restrictions the album's orchestral parts were all recorded in one day.

From the opening pizzicato strings and dripping sounds of "River of Orchids" that build to a swirl of strings and layered vocals, the album is a gorgeous journey with hints of Beatles, Bacharach and Beach Boys while still being totally XTC.   

 

There are a couple of more light-hearted tracks ("Frivolous Tonight" and "Fruit Nut") courtesy of Moulding, but the bulk of the album is Partridge's with a McCartney-eqsue upbeat acoustic track "I'd like that".  A bitter reflection on the end of his marriage with "Your Dictionary".   Album-closer "The Last Balloon" is an appropriately elegant melodic journey with its slow keys and strings with choirs building to booming percussive accents and sailing the album away on a mournful lilting trumpet solo.

XTC are one of those musical oversights for me.   I liked and bought this album when I first skimmed through the 1001 albums book and have since bought two other of their albums... but given they have 14, I could probably delve deeper.

Day 0838 - OK Computer

Radiohead "OK Computer" (1997) - got it

A couple of things I learned reading about 'OK Computer':

1. Most it was recorded with the band playing together, allowing for bleed through of the instruments into each other's feed and using minimal overdubs.  I find that kind of interesting, as I've always pictured the band meticulously layering overdubs and putting together the album piece by piece like that.
   
   
2. A couple of the songs were thrown together fairly quickly at outside requests.  Again, I find that surprising because I assumed the band were a group of perfectionists who would need/want to spend weeks or even months on any given track.

It was one of these quick turnaround songs "Lucky" that started off the writing for OK Computer.  Brian Eno had requested a composition from the band for a charity compilation and the song was recorded in five hours with Nigel Godrich, who had been an engineer on previous album "The Bends".   The band were happy with the experience and brought Godrich on to produce OK Computer, and eventually all subsequent Radiohead albums and Thom Yorke's solo material.

The album moves further away from the rock sound of "Pablo Honey" and "the Bends", with only "Electioneering" really feeling like a 'rock' song.  

The album starts off with an almost 'Bends-esque' track "Airbag", but then track two "Paranoid Android" comes crashing in taking you on a sonic odyssey and setting the scene for the album, from the simple acoustic guitar and vocal that swells to a dense arrangement mixing guitar noises and keyboards, with multiple vocals layered and playing against each other in a melancholic, almost unsettling atmosphere.  A similar approach is used on "Karma Police" and the brilliant "Exit Music (For a Film)" (written at request for the soundtrack to Baz Lurhmann's "Romeo and Juliet" film).

The lovely, delicate "No Suprises" offers a respite from the aural density.  

The album was a huge success, but Radiohead would not rest on their laurels, taking even bigger risks with their next release "Kid A" and flipping the script on their sound yet again.

Day 0797 - the Bends

Radiohead "The Bends" (1995) - got it

The heady days, before many Radiohead fans became insufferable snobs who crapped over the bands they perceived Radiohead to have influenced.  When Radiohead themselves were just "that band who sang Creep" with everyone waiting to see if they could follow up their 'hit'.

While the bleeps and bloops of "Kid A" are often pointed out as the big change in direction for Radiohead, arguably their first few albums all displayed fairly major stylistic shifts.   "The Bends" saw the band move away from their straight-ahead alt-rock to a more densely nuanced, melodically sophisticated sound, but still with more of a rock-guitar sound than follow-up "OK Computer" would have.

The band worked more collaboratively on songrwiting and arranging, instead of creating a wall of guitars, they played with arrangements that put together different parts for each of the three guitarists that worked together.  In some places the sound was still dense, like on single "Just" a bit of a favourite of mine, and something of a good middle point between their rock sound and their intelligent melodic directions.  Elsewhere, they stripped things back on songs like the acoustic, atmospheric "Bullet Proof... I wish I was" and album-closer "Street Spirit (Fade Out)".... damn, actually Radiohead always have the best album-closer tracks.

Most of the tracks start small and build their arrangements, as can be heard in songs like "Fake Plastic Trees", "My Iron Lung" and "Nice Dream".   

An argument could be made for this being the album where Radiohead really found their sound, with that more melodically sophisticated vein being mined; but you could also argue that Radiohead are another of those good bands who never quite fix on their sound and are constantly trying to forge new ground.

Day 0665 - En-tact

The Shamen "En-tact" (1990)

The Shamen started life as "Alone Again, Or" (named after the song by Love) recording psychedelic music.  They started to gravitate more towards the acid house movement as the dance scene rose in prominence.

This is the first Shamen album to feature vocalist/keyboardist Mr C and it picked out a clear path of danceable, but listenable electronica.  Founding member Will Synott died shortly after the release of the album, but his family encouraged the group to carry on making music after his death.

Day 0580 - Skylarking

XTC "Skylarking" (1986)

I'm always keen to check out more XTC.   I got into their album "Apples Venus vol.1" (I think through looking at the 1001 albums book back in 2009 or so) and I loved the lovely, lush, slightly 1960s-esque pop with it's orchestral touches here and there.

By the time this album came out, the band had largely become a studio-based project, following singer/songwriter Andy Partridge's breakdown and refusal to continue touring.  I do wonder if artists would be able to work as a solely studio-based unit nowadays with the majority of people not bothering to pay for recordings of music anymore.

This albums is typical of the other XTC albums I've heard before: excellent songcraft, some lush and interesting orchestrations, but with the occasional song that suits and utilises a more stripped-down approach.  The tracks range from baroque pop to faux jazz to eastern psychedelia.

Apparently lyrically it is supposed to be the journey from birth, school, marriage, kids through to death.  I picked up on bits and pieces of that, but for me it was largely just a musically enjoyable album.

Day 0380 - Pink Flag

Wire "Pink Flag" (1977)

This one sounded cool on paper: "Slightly older punks who squeezed 21 songs onto a 35 minute album.  Not always sticking to a verses-choruses structure, and occasionally just stopping songs when they felt they had run their course... or they were bored.  Intellectual lyrics that sound like mathematical equations or surrealist poetry."  On a less musical front, I really liked the album cover too. 

Unfortunately, the reality of the album wasn't something that appealed to me.

I listened to this 10 or so years ago when I made a small list from the '1001' albums book, and it didn't do much for me then either.  I've tried to give it a chance and listened to it 2 or 3 times, and it has grown on me a little, but much of the album just dissolves into aural wallpaper after a while.  Sometimes that can be a good thing, but not so much with an 'in-your-face' punk album.