#2 Radiohead – In Rainbows

For all the notice Radiohead’s post-EMI record In Rainbows has been given (even in some of these blog posts) for its trailblazing “give it back to the fans” marketing technique, the fact is that many bands, if any, could have pulled it off besides them; as many have already said and will continue to say, the Oxford quartet seem to be lightyears ahead of other acts, and that’s the only reason anyone gave two shits about the free, pre-release download. That said, some may find it surprising I’m not endorsing Rainbows as my number one for ‘07, given the fact that Kid A is my favorite album of all time and OK Computer is everyone else’s; probably the only reason I’m reticent to do so is because, from the moment I unzipped my batch of mp3s from W.A.S.T.E., a good handful of the songs were already familiar to me in some form or another. Both “Nude” (aka. “Big Ideas”) and “Reckoner,” for instance, were staples on my catalogue of Radiohead b-sides that I devoured back in ‘05; while both songs have undergone major surgery since then – the latter almost an inversion of its original and the former revamped into one of the band’s most luminous acheivements – Rainbows felt slightly lived-in already. As most first meets often lose their significance, though, the album continued to sit with me and I steadily lost interest in the fact that it wasn’t the glorious left-field slap that their other work had been for me. “15 Step” opens furiously with barbed percussive loops and Thom Yorke’s singature wailings that always find the most enduring phrasings, often dangling from bar to bar like poetic orphans, then launches into Jonny Greenwood’s grizzlied riffs that introduce “Bodysnatchers,” a volatile throwback to the charged footwork of “Paranoid Android.” A few Rainbows originals like the fingerplucked “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” that snowballs with each, like its title suggests, ascending and descending scale into a billowing orchestral expression, and “Faust Arp” that explores Yorke’s newfound quick-syllable vocal rythm that surfaced on Hail To The Thief’s “Wolf At The Door” both lend to the album’s light ebb and flow. At first listen, “House of Cards” feels a little too relaxed, but when juxtaposed with the constrained angst of “Jigsaw Falling Into Place,” the pairing provides a needed balance before descending into the foreboding closer “Videotape.” Guided by slow-moving piano chops, the track’s drum loop eerily reminds of a film reel splashing against the projector when the spool reaches its end, which compliments Yorke’s last-goodbye account in the lyrics before plodding to its uneventful end. Though Rainbows may not offer anything groundbreaking for Radiohead, it doesn’t need to with music this good.