Oxfordshire supergroup Radiohead were formed in 1986. On 7th October they released their seventh studio album - In Rainbows - as an MP3 download and is scheduled to be released on 3rd December as a "discbox" with a second CD of additional material. The band are to finalise a record deal sometime in early October, and In Rainbows will most likely be released as a standard CD in January 2008.
Radiohead's In Rainbows: first review
By Robert Sandall
09/10/2007
The Telegraph
Robert Sandall finds that Radiohead do not put a foot wrong with their new album ‘In Rainbows’
Thom Yorke – vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, electronics
Jonny Greenwood - lead guitar, ondes martenot, keyboards, electronics, sound effects, percussion
Ed O'Brien – guitar, backing vocals, keyboards, percussion, effects pedals
Colin Greenwood – bass, synthesizers, electronics
Phil Selway – drums, percussion, live backing vocals
Not since 1998 when Oasis delivered Be Here Now, their feverishly anticipated sequel to What’s The Story (Morning Glory), has a rock album generated as much heat ahead of its release as Radiohead’s In Rainbows.
The fuss over the past week has centred on the band’s decision to offer it, in the first instance, as an MP3 download from their own website for which fans can choose to pay whatever they like. But this was only the last drama in a saga which has rumbled on for the best part of three years. Out of contract with their old label Parlophone in 2003 after finishing Hail To The Thief, and with only themselves now to please, Radiohead have dallied over In Rainbows like no other record in their 16 year career.
Radiohead: what are they worth?
On the face of it, this is not good news. Extended, unsupervised periods in the recording studio are notoriously bad for rock bands and tend to result in overblown stillborns like Fleetwood Mac’s cocaine opus, Tusk, and the inconsequential doodlings which dominate the Stone Roses’ sadly mistitled Second Coming.
But in Radiohead’s case, the delays and the false starts have had a happy ending.
Maybe it was a good thing that Jonny Greenwood, who was appointed the BBC Concert Orchestra’s composer in residence in 2004, was distracted by his first commission (Super Het Receiver) when the band began work on their seventh album in early 2005. Thom Yorke’s abrupt departure later that year to work on a solo album clearly didn’t do any harm either. Perhaps it was the very fact that their two most restlessly experimental members have been able to let off steam away from Radiohead that meant that when the band finally re-convened last year they set about recording their most straightforwardly enjoyable album since OK Computer.
Here, back at last, is the magic ingredient that has been lacking, or at least hiding on Radiohead records ever since a highly disgruntled Thom Yorke came off the road exhausted in 1999 and announced that he had "had it with melody". What a sad day that was, coming from the man who dreamed up Fake Plastic Trees and Karma Police, to name but two of the sublimely original tunes which turned Radiohead into a much loved, multi-million selling global draw. Say what you like about Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief – and there is much that can be said, for and against - none of the group’s 21st century offerings boasts a melody that can hold a candle, let alone a lofted cigarette lighter, to the best of Radiohead in the 1990s.
Though In Rainbows puts that to rights, it takes its time to show its full hand. The opening track Step 15 finds Yorke doing his impersonation of a ghostly choirboy over a mildly autistic, Kid A flavoured, hip-hop beat. Bodysnatchers continues in a vein familiar to fans of the band’s recent work, with a fuzzed guitar riff having a fight with a competing time signature from the rhythm section while Yorke wails over the top. Everything changes with track three, Nude, a song that sounds like a classic old soul ballad with some slightly strange sonic edges. This reminds you instantly of the wide screen, emotionally coloured splendour that Radiohead used to evoke on a regular basis before the urge to unsettle listeners usurped the desire to offer them something more cathartic.
In Rainbows doesn’t really put a foot wrong from then on in. The band can’t resist a dash of dissonance and random distortion here and there, but then again they wouldn’t still be Radiohead if they had edited that out of the mix; and for every nod to weirdness for its own sake there is a string arrangement that is more up George Martin’s street than Messaien’s.
Likewise a few of Thom Yorke’s lines still retain that truculently tetchy, undergraduate air, particularly when he starts bemoaning the "collapsing infrastructure" on House Of Cards; but Yorke has never written a more direct love song than the bell-strewn All I Need, or penned a catchier singalong anthem than Jigsaw Falling Into Place. Radiohead aren’t obviously trying to reclaim ground they surrendered after their world conquest with OK Computer: their guitar arrangements here tend to favour acoustic strums and delicate arpeggios rather than the thunderous twang of old. They’ve done epic, for the time being anyway.
For all that, their seventh album sits far closer to their third than it does to their sixth. With a less unconventional outfit you would have to call In Rainbows a return to form. With Radiohead it feels more like the band have finally solved a problem that only they would ever have thought needed solving in the first place.
Track listing
Radiohead's In Rainbows: first review
By Robert Sandall
09/10/2007
The Telegraph
Robert Sandall finds that Radiohead do not put a foot wrong with their new album ‘In Rainbows’
Thom Yorke – vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, electronics
Jonny Greenwood - lead guitar, ondes martenot, keyboards, electronics, sound effects, percussion
Ed O'Brien – guitar, backing vocals, keyboards, percussion, effects pedals
Colin Greenwood – bass, synthesizers, electronics
Phil Selway – drums, percussion, live backing vocals
Not since 1998 when Oasis delivered Be Here Now, their feverishly anticipated sequel to What’s The Story (Morning Glory), has a rock album generated as much heat ahead of its release as Radiohead’s In Rainbows.
The fuss over the past week has centred on the band’s decision to offer it, in the first instance, as an MP3 download from their own website for which fans can choose to pay whatever they like. But this was only the last drama in a saga which has rumbled on for the best part of three years. Out of contract with their old label Parlophone in 2003 after finishing Hail To The Thief, and with only themselves now to please, Radiohead have dallied over In Rainbows like no other record in their 16 year career.
Radiohead: what are they worth?
On the face of it, this is not good news. Extended, unsupervised periods in the recording studio are notoriously bad for rock bands and tend to result in overblown stillborns like Fleetwood Mac’s cocaine opus, Tusk, and the inconsequential doodlings which dominate the Stone Roses’ sadly mistitled Second Coming.
But in Radiohead’s case, the delays and the false starts have had a happy ending.
Maybe it was a good thing that Jonny Greenwood, who was appointed the BBC Concert Orchestra’s composer in residence in 2004, was distracted by his first commission (Super Het Receiver) when the band began work on their seventh album in early 2005. Thom Yorke’s abrupt departure later that year to work on a solo album clearly didn’t do any harm either. Perhaps it was the very fact that their two most restlessly experimental members have been able to let off steam away from Radiohead that meant that when the band finally re-convened last year they set about recording their most straightforwardly enjoyable album since OK Computer.
Here, back at last, is the magic ingredient that has been lacking, or at least hiding on Radiohead records ever since a highly disgruntled Thom Yorke came off the road exhausted in 1999 and announced that he had "had it with melody". What a sad day that was, coming from the man who dreamed up Fake Plastic Trees and Karma Police, to name but two of the sublimely original tunes which turned Radiohead into a much loved, multi-million selling global draw. Say what you like about Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief – and there is much that can be said, for and against - none of the group’s 21st century offerings boasts a melody that can hold a candle, let alone a lofted cigarette lighter, to the best of Radiohead in the 1990s.
Though In Rainbows puts that to rights, it takes its time to show its full hand. The opening track Step 15 finds Yorke doing his impersonation of a ghostly choirboy over a mildly autistic, Kid A flavoured, hip-hop beat. Bodysnatchers continues in a vein familiar to fans of the band’s recent work, with a fuzzed guitar riff having a fight with a competing time signature from the rhythm section while Yorke wails over the top. Everything changes with track three, Nude, a song that sounds like a classic old soul ballad with some slightly strange sonic edges. This reminds you instantly of the wide screen, emotionally coloured splendour that Radiohead used to evoke on a regular basis before the urge to unsettle listeners usurped the desire to offer them something more cathartic.
In Rainbows doesn’t really put a foot wrong from then on in. The band can’t resist a dash of dissonance and random distortion here and there, but then again they wouldn’t still be Radiohead if they had edited that out of the mix; and for every nod to weirdness for its own sake there is a string arrangement that is more up George Martin’s street than Messaien’s.
Likewise a few of Thom Yorke’s lines still retain that truculently tetchy, undergraduate air, particularly when he starts bemoaning the "collapsing infrastructure" on House Of Cards; but Yorke has never written a more direct love song than the bell-strewn All I Need, or penned a catchier singalong anthem than Jigsaw Falling Into Place. Radiohead aren’t obviously trying to reclaim ground they surrendered after their world conquest with OK Computer: their guitar arrangements here tend to favour acoustic strums and delicate arpeggios rather than the thunderous twang of old. They’ve done epic, for the time being anyway.
For all that, their seventh album sits far closer to their third than it does to their sixth. With a less unconventional outfit you would have to call In Rainbows a return to form. With Radiohead it feels more like the band have finally solved a problem that only they would ever have thought needed solving in the first place.
Track listing
- "15 Step" – 3:57
- "Bodysnatchers" – 4:02
- "Nude" – 4:15
- "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" – 5:18
- "All I Need" – 3:48
- "Faust Arp" – 2:09
- "Reckoner" – 4:50
- "House of Cards" – 5:28
- "Jigsaw Falling into Place" – 4:09
- "Videotape" – 4:39
- "MK 1"
- "Down Is the New Up"
- "Go Slowly"
- "MK 2"
- "Last Flowers"
- "Up on the Ladder"
- "Bangers and Mash"
- "4 Minute Warning"
