Radiohead – In Rainbows

Your eyes, they turn me. I’ll be honest when I first heard this album back in 2007 it was like a ton of bricks had fallen on me. I was fortunate enough to get the heralded discbox and it was an album that arrived during that fall to very sensitive minds and hearts. It’s hard to believe we’re nearly five years removed from this album, it’s hard to believe just how amazing of an album it really is -- just another bona fide classic from Radiohead.

I remember loving the way it vastly improved from what Hail to the Thief left to be desired (flow and songwriting to name a few) and how it was ten stellar songs. It’s still an album people love with highest regards for Radiohead’s ability at combining amazing words about love and life, with amazing sounds and well, Thom Yorke’s absolutely flawless voice. Flawless in how it’s mesmerizing and uncannily always on pitch and through all the aesthetic value – his cadence, his delivery, his spectral tone – it’s a flawlessly perfect voice for this band. It’s a much different album from The King of Limbs, sure, but both are dissimilar beyond comparison; yet, heavy heavy listening experiences. Anyways, here’s my probable two favorite songs off this album.

On “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” the band truly reigns in on their forceful musicianship with a song that is both a complex discussion on song structure in the 21^st century and how the enveloping nature of words is like poetry for some of the best. At the heart of the album lies many of the album’s strongest looks and that isn’t to say it’s not naturally bookended with outstanding songs like every single Radiohead album, but to have this song, back-to-back with “All I Need,” still floors me every time. Well on this song, they take the Arpeggi and spread it throughout all the instruments, even the drums if you can take me seriously ha. An Arpeggi is plural for arpeggio and an arpeggio is the notes of a chord, spread out and played one at a time, instead of altogether. So maybe on this song it would be something like D-F#-A in succession into the five chord (A-C#-E) and probably some sevenths (G) for contrast and color and they basically circulate that into one massively growing ball of layers and sound. There’s, as always, lots of imagery here with the bottom of the sea, seeing her eyes and how the music prevails this underwater feel; the way it all comes together at the end is so great. 

Then there’s “All I Need,” which is basically, your perfect pop song in the 21^st century. Perhaps I’d be too confident in saying this, but we should save this album and use it to teach music to our kids when they’re old enough because very simply, this might be as good as it gets. Here they enter with a chilly entrance of overtones, before the kick drum and snare appear and then suddenly, boom, there’s that looping bass. It’s all about feel and composure and on this song, they sound entirely in control. But it’s the lyrics, (I’m an animal, trapped in your hot car) that make all the wild difference; by the time you get to “You’re All I Need” and singing it together, it’s sublime quality. There’s sadness in the music and a realistic defining moment in it all, “I only stick with you, because there are no others.” So even when he’s depressed as hell, “I am all the days that you choose to ignore,” he eventually realizes that he’s just as much in control of his infatuation with her as she is in control of him. I think by the time he sings the chorus the whole bottom just lets out and the ending chaos with the clashing cymbals and Yorke’s vocal yelps are downright everything you could ask for. Powerful music for sure. ---  Bryan