387. Radiohead, "In Rainbows"

 


I'm going to have to ask my fellow Gen X white males to close their clunky Windows laptops and go outside, it's beautiful day.  Come back tomorrow.  It'll be better that way.

Are they gone?  OK, yeesh.  This album was famously released online with a pay-what-you-want model and, like most of the people who downloaded it, I would pay roughly zero dollars.  There are a few songs that seem like they have an idea - or at least a guitar ides - like "Bodysnatchers," but then there are some songs that sound like the band never bothered to finish them, like "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi."  The vocals on a lot of the songs sound like Thom Yorke is just fucking around and looking for a melody.  

And it's so cold!  It's freezing.  It sounds so sparse and open and empty.  Radiohead gets knocked a lot for being depressing and this doesn't help.  It sounds like looking out of a frosty window at a bleak snowscape.  Radiohead also gets knocked a lot for being self-important and pretentious, and this definitely doesn't help with that either.  

Don't get any big ideas
They're not gonna happen
You paint yourself white
And fill up with noise
But there'll be something missing

OK, dude.

Look, I know this album was critically beloved and maybe I'm just too musically unsophisticated to appreciate its brilliance but it really does not work for me.  And I'm saying this as someone who likes a lot of Radiohead!  Like, I think The Bends is a great album and of course OK Computer is fantastic and all that.  I'd put either one of those albums up against this one.  I am a simpleton.  Let's put on that Aretha Franklin album from yesterday again.

Comments

  1. GGApril 1, 2021 at 6:38 AM

    I feel about Radiohead the way I feel about bands like Phish: Their fans are so rabid and terrible that it colors how I can ever think about their music. “My Iron Lung” is a great song and I like “Karma Police” as much as the next idiot, but I have never put on an entire Radiohead album and listened to it all the way through, and this album was no different. P.S. I much prefer a PC but my new job is forcing me to use a Mac and I am very annoyed about it

    ReplyDelete
  2. TKApril 1, 2021 at 10:53 AM

    I've heard that about Radiohead fans (while not having a lot of contact with that fanbase personally). That can definitely be off-putting.

    ReplyDelete

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