Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 4/5 Released: October 10, 2007 Reviewer: Trent McMartin |
It’s fitting that Radiohead would be the first significant mainstream act to completely bypass the record companies and retailers and release an album of entirely brand new songs online. The band has never really catered to the norm, any self-respecting “Radioheadite†can attest to this. And what’s even more revolutionary is that fans themselves can determine the album’s worth and pay whatever they want for the download.
Even before its official online release, much of the material on In Rainbows was already widely available in bootlegs and in live settings, albeit in early developmental stages. Here the songs are finalized, the end result of two years of constant tinkering and musical progression. ‘All I Need’ and ‘15 Step’ ride the familiar wave of electronic beats and blips; ‘Bodysnatchers’ rocks hard with the dual guitar attack of Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien; ‘Faust Arp’ is a nice little acoustic-orchestral number, while ‘Videotape’ evokes Kid A closer ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack,’ using minimalist conventional instrumentation in an unconventional way.
Four years ago Hail to the Thief was seen as an angry response to the world at large. Before that, the cold, electronically driven Kid A and Amnesiac were outright rejections of society. With Rainbows, the band seems to be embracing the present. Thom Yorke sounds less cynical here; his vocals aren’t as sneering as on previous releases, unless you count the beauty of a line from “All I Need,†the album’s best track: “I’m an animal trapped in your hot car / I am all the days you choose to ignore.†Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t Marvin Gaye or even Chris Martin belting out soothing, easy listening delights; but for Yorke, it’s as close as he’s come since 1995’s The Bends to sounding like a traditional rock singer.
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