In Rainbows - Radiohead

In Rainbows

Radiohead
TBD Records.


SCQ Rating: 90%

When the new four-year-in-the-making Radiohead album was dropped last fall, we, as fans of Radiohead or music enthusiasts all, were also given some weighty questions to consider. How will major labels adapt and can they survive the internet age? Are the days of ten times platinum record sales behind us? Or, as Johnny Greenwood so succinctly put it in regards to Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want strategy, what is music worth to you? Whether it was intended or not, Radiohead’s refusal to dance with music executives became the topic of water-cooler ice-breakers, record shop debates, and independent economic reports. What was further thrilling about the whole experience was that when I raced to my computer to download In Rainbows on October 10th and listened for the first time, I was experiencing the anticipation and subsequent beauty that music critics and lovers alike were at that very moment. Although the almighty internet made it possible, we were thrown back to the midnight-madness, listening-party, heyday of recorded music’s glory years where blogs, leaks and torrents didn’t exist. Despite all these mind-boggling questions and epiphanies, my internal debate that night and through the following weeks was this one constant concern: is In Rainbows really this good or has its revolutionary release and subsequent celebration overshadowed the ten songs and 42 minutes.

A few months later, it’s still hard to divide the record from its presumptuous narration; that assorted group of eggheads, consumerists and anarchists who treat these ten songs like the new commandments. Likewise, the passing of fortnights has yet to dull what is easily Radiohead’s third most important album (which sounds middling but articulates just how valuable their catalogue is, musically and culturally); while 1997’s OK Computer earned them the royalty status to control their creative pursuits and 2000’s Kid A represented the result of that freedom and their disinterest in rock fame, In Rainbows proves that they hardly require a textbook to enjoy. Where the previous few albums explored a variety of otherworldly atmospheres and socio-political reflection, In Rainbows (a term that Yorke refers to as ‘speaking in rainbows’, meaning from the heart without reservation or consideration, in love or sadness) is their most accessible collection since The Bends. Each song - the raw onslaught of ‘Bodysnatchers’, the therapeutic release of ‘All I Need’ or ‘Videotape’s sundown elegy – wastes no time at affirming that Radiohead are at the peak of their creative powers; crafting muscular rock songs around a newfound romanticism to Yorke’s lyrics and the band’s lush production. Ten years after their ‘classic’ album, we’ve been blindsided by these five Brits who have only become stronger as a band, and more important as trailblazers.