monodrone
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Post by monodrone on Mar 4, 2019 10:40:30 GMT -5
"Go to Sleep." (Little Man being Erased.) - Pure acoustic guitar. Did System Of A Down rip this off for "Aerials"? I'm very reminded of the acoustic breakdowns in "Paranoid Android". Still, I'm here for the bass and light guitar flips. The System Of A Down fan has logged on to issue the following statement:
"Aerials was on Toxicity which came out 2 years before Hail To The Thief."
Thank you for your time.
I suppose I should say something about Radiohead while I'm here. I feel like I must have listened to this album somewhere along the line since I've been into the albums that preceded it for a while now but I have no memory of what it sounds like outside of There, There and 2+2=5 because they got plenty of mtv2 airplay in 2003/04. I didn't care for it at the time but then I was still a couple of years away from really having any understanding of Kid A/Amnesiac both of which I like a lot now. I don't have a particularly good reason for ignoring HTTT especially since I'm also big on In Rainbows (more on that story later).
The first few songs are pretty boring then the aforementioned Go To Sleep really grabbed me. Makes sense if you accept a similarity to the System of a Down song, I suppose, though it reminds me more of some of the acoustic guitar driven songs on the album Bring It On by Gomez. It's good either way.
We Suck Your Blood is showing only as "We Suck" on the tab I'm playing it on and on this song, yes. It's ponderous and I don't like the handclaps.
Good bleeps and hi-hat skitters to follow it up on The Gloaming.
The intro to There, There is a total rip of a much better song*, Bohemian Like You by The Dandy Warhols. Suck it, nerds.
Then there were some unremarkable songs.
Myxomatosis is great. Love that synth fart. Love the drum beat. Love that it has a bit of energy.
More songs I don't have anything to say about.
Ah the album's ok but Radiohead set high standards and this doesn't get close to hitting them for me. I'd rather be listening to System Of A Down.
*-not a sincerely held belief
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patbat
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Post by patbat on Mar 4, 2019 10:51:41 GMT -5
I worked in a record store at the time of Hail to the Thief's release, and I don't know how much this has remained in the popular memory, but all of the promotional material and interviews for the album said it was a "return to form" after the Kid A/ Amnesiac experiment, which of course turned out to be 100% a lie. As a result, there were a lllllllllllllllllllot of disappointed Bends fans returning this album to my store. In terms of sold units returned, the only thing that surpassed it during my time there was... St. Anger, barely. No joke. Anyway, I like a lot of the songs on this album individually, but I don't think it coheres very well and it would have benefited greatly if it were edited and resequenced as pantsgoblin suggests.
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Post by Some Kind of Munster on Mar 4, 2019 13:36:56 GMT -5
I worked in a record store at the time of Hail to the Thief's release, and I don't know how much this has remained in the popular memory, but all of the promotional material and interviews for the album said it was a "return to form" after the Kid A/ Amnesiac experiment, which of course turned out to be 100% a lie. As a result, there were a lllllllllllllllllllot of disappointed Bends fans returning this album to my store. In terms of sold units returned, the only thing that surpassed it during my time there was... St. Anger, barely. No joke. Anyway, I like a lot of the songs on this album individually, but I don't think it coheres very well and it would have benefited greatly if it were edited and resequenced as pantsgoblin suggests. Wait, you can return an album because it sucked? Fuck man, I thought that was just the gamble you took with every album you bought
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patbat
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Post by patbat on Mar 4, 2019 14:05:37 GMT -5
I worked in a record store at the time of Hail to the Thief's release, and I don't know how much this has remained in the popular memory, but all of the promotional material and interviews for the album said it was a "return to form" after the Kid A/ Amnesiac experiment, which of course turned out to be 100% a lie. As a result, there were a lllllllllllllllllllot of disappointed Bends fans returning this album to my store. In terms of sold units returned, the only thing that surpassed it during my time there was... St. Anger, barely. No joke. Anyway, I like a lot of the songs on this album individually, but I don't think it coheres very well and it would have benefited greatly if it were edited and resequenced as pantsgoblin suggests. Wait, you can return an album because it sucked? Fuck man, I thought that was just the gamble you took with every album you bought At my store you got 10 returns per year, no questions asked, as long as the album or CD wasn't so damaged we couldn't sell it as used.
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Invisible Goat
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Post by Invisible Goat on Mar 4, 2019 14:15:04 GMT -5
Yeah I remember someone hyping up HTTT to me by saying like "they're gonna play guitars again!" like there weren't any guitars on Kid A/Amnesiac. And then the first song kind of does sound like a return to rock or whatever before quickly going off in a different direction.
HTTT came out when I was 17 so I was just like oh new Radiohead album it's awesome but man it has not aged well at all. Reading ganews' track summaries I could barely even recall what some of them sounded like. "Wolf At the Door" is a real one though. Thankfully they rebounded on In Rainbows imo.
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Post by ganews on Mar 10, 2019 18:20:02 GMT -5
In Rainbows (2007) Pre-existing PrejudicesI'm kind of in the wilderness now; I don't know anything about the band's career at this point, I don't know what the conversation was. I was in grad school by the time this came out, and this is also right around the time I stopped listening to commercial radio entirely. The Wikipedia page I use to copy the song titles has links dedicated to many of these songs, so I'm sure I've heard at least some of these more than once. I also note that this was started with a different producer before Nigel Godrich came back, so I'm hoping for a different sound. Check that; not a different *sound* necessarily, the sound is usually pretty cool. I guess I'm hoping for a different *feeling*. Songs"15 Step" - Big electric thumps + static. Yorke is unintelligible. The band comes in. Why hasn't this group incorporated a theremin yet? I kind of like the production here, some samples of children yelling, some rips. This sounds familiar and it's not even a Wikipedia page song.
"Bodysnatchers" - Oh right, this song, I heard this a bunch on the radio. It's really good too, nice groove. The band rocks out a good bit more than of late, while Yorke almost yells more than wails. The instrumentation does the wailing. Nice break in there to acoustics plus synths, which grows more frantic. Yorke's vocals distort, the band keeps cranking. The ending is sudden without returning to a quiet point (there never was one), a great difference from Hail to the Thief. Top tier Radiohead song.
"Nude" - Can this band do a slow jam? Well it's certainly gotten slow, Colin's high bass is plucking along, and Yorke's voice is even higher. This doesn't feel like depression, more like a slow sweetness. I like the orchestral stuff in the back that is pure Nigel Godrich.
"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" - Drum taps to start, acoustic plucks, mid-tempo pace. I like Yorke's self-backup soarings. Then the song stops short, leaving only little taps and weird fishes, I guess, before jumping right back into drumbeats and heavy synths and other mystical sounds.
"All I Need" - Slowing down even further with these pseudo-cellos, but a drum beat and deep synth fart comes right in. Musical triangle and other chimes; were there really other producer hands on this besides Godrich? Anyway, things keep along until gradually until it's all big sound crescendo.
"Faust Arp" - Thom counts it off like he was a Beatle. Acoustics play plus more, just more Godrich production classics. Seriously, were they feeling guilty that they worked with someone else for 5 minutes. It's a quickie.
"Reckoner" - I dig this cacophonous percussion. Also I know this little acoustic picking anywhere, I've heard this plenty. The percussion becomes mostly tambourine, and later even that drops out in favor of Yorke mewling and orchestra backing.
"House of Cards" - Strums and electric hums on the edge of everything. It's an easygoing pace, and Yorke's "I don't wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover" is about as direct as this band gets. Echoes and vague sounds. It's nice.
"Jigsaw Falling into Place" - Little jam with acoustics and bass while Yorke hums along. It's good. I swear I'm not running out of things to write.
"Videotape" - Plunky piano, Yorke sings mournfully in multi-tracked stereo.
Summary: This is the most Nigel Godrich-produced album in years, just hilariously so. At the end I had to go and read the Wikipedia page a bit more and this controversy over producers is really funny to me. Like it has me thinking Godrich is some whip-cracking beast who demands The Nigel Godrich Sound. Anyway, the first three tracks had me doing fistpumps and gearing up to write "RETURN TO FORM". Then everything stayed at a pretty slow pace. In an effort not to be the critic who penalizes the content for not being what he would choose, I won't complain that it wasn't all "Bodysnatchers" (though that certainly scratched my itch some). It's certainly a big step up, though I confess I also find the back half of the album a bit same-y. At any rate, it has me excited to finish off this discography.
Favorite overall song: "Bodysnatchers", no contest. Favorite new-to-me song: "Nude", actually. It's like a very happy experiment. Bleep-bloop scale, zero to five: 1. It was a very consciously not bloopy, it seems to me.
Weirdness scale, zero to five: 1. Pretty subdued.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2019 13:13:58 GMT -5
Probably everyone who follows Radiohead at all remembers the "pay what you want" download release for In Rainbows, as it made headlines at the time. The Guardian reported a few weeks ago on the internal rifts behind this distribution strategy in case anybody is interested in the vagaries of the rock music industry ( cough). The other release tactic that the band employed, one that's become even more de rigueur for musicians, is recording in secret and only announcing their album days before it's dropped. Anyway, I love this album. Yorke's in particularly fine form on this record, with the dynamics of his voice providing two of my favorite Radiohead moments: the octave-drop in the last third of "Weird Fishes" and the yelp of "there is nothing to explain" on "Jigsaw...".
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Post by pairesta on Mar 12, 2019 8:06:32 GMT -5
To me Radiohead seems to consistently pick one of my least favorite songs on the album as their lone single. 15 Step is the case here. This album was a bit of a renaissance for them at the time and very definitely there was some "Return to form" word of mouth about it. It took me a while to come around on it, but I particularly love the back half of the album. What really sold it for me, oddly, was getting "In Rainbows, Disk 2" and listening to the whole thing together. Not sure if you'll be reviewing that one; I don't know if it's a formal release of theirs or not: they basically sent an email to fan club members a good year or two after IR came out offering this second disk, and I bit. The tour for this album is the only time I saw them live: in Houston. I came away fairly underwhelmed; they were technically on point together, but the setlist was clunky, and they'd often re-arrange the set after a song, do the song, then stop and re-arrange the set again for the next song, leading to stops in the show while the audience waited. And of course Thom's not gonna do any stage patter to move things along while people are waiting.
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monodrone
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Post by monodrone on Mar 12, 2019 9:24:08 GMT -5
Probably everyone who follows Radiohead at all remembers the "pay what you want" download release for In Rainbows, as it made headlines at the time. The Guardian reported a few weeks ago on the internal rifts behind this distribution strategy in case anybody is interested in the vagaries of the rock music industry ( cough). The other release tactic that the band employed, one that's become even more de rigueur for musicians, is recording in secret and only announcing their album days before it's dropped. Anyway, I love this album. Yorke's in particularly fine form on this record, with the dynamics of his voice providing two of my favorite Radiohead moments: the octave-drop in the last third of "Weird Fishes" and the yelp of "there is nothing to explain" on "Jigsaw...". "Guy Hands"
I felt he was unfortunate to go out to YourMajesty Lumpkins in the 2017 Name of the Year Tournament but in this story he was deservedly the loser. Fuck that Guy.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Mar 20, 2019 18:07:23 GMT -5
Probably everyone who follows Radiohead at all remembers the "pay what you want" download release for In Rainbows, as it made headlines at the time. The Guardian reported a few weeks ago on the internal rifts behind this distribution strategy in case anybody is interested in the vagaries of the rock music industry ( cough). The other release tactic that the band employed, one that's become even more de rigueur for musicians, is recording in secret and only announcing their album days before it's dropped. Anyway, I love this album. Yorke's in particularly fine form on this record, with the dynamics of his voice providing two of my favorite Radiohead moments: the octave-drop in the last third of "Weird Fishes" and the yelp of "there is nothing to explain" on "Jigsaw...". "Guy Hands"
I felt he was unfortunate to go out to YourMajesty Lumpkins in the 2017 Name of the Year Tournament but in this story he was deservedly the loser. Fuck that Guy. That Guardian piece is really something. I may have to check that book out. It is hard to overstate how much of an idiot and a jerk Hands looks like in that story.
For what it's worth, I bought "In Rainbows" directly from the band. I think I paid around $10? Maybe? Can't remember. But I definitely paid an actual dollar amount. Seemed great to me. Pay the band, not the label!
I also really like "In Rainbows". And yes, Bodysnatchers is a great song. I still prefer "Kid A" and "OK Computer", but I do really like this one.
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Post by ganews on Mar 30, 2019 15:05:52 GMT -5
The King of Limbs (2011) Pre-existing PrejudicesOK I said before that I didn't know what was to come, but now I really mean it. This has to be the one album where I won't recognize a single note. The last one was darn good and Godrich-ed as hard as possible. I assume this won't be a great revolution in styles from that, or there's a better chance I'd know about it. I do note that it's 37 minutes long, three under the ideal album length, so that's good. Songs
"Bloom" - A mixed-up sort of fade-in between piano, drums, and electronic stuff and whatnot. It has less presence than other Radiohead opening tracks.
"Morning Mr Magpie" - A delightful title and a little more excited tempo and guitar picking, even if it's still a lot of mix-up like "Bloom". Thom Yorke is directly addressing Mr Magpie, and I think this premise deserves six episodes on the BBC, or at least an SNL parody like Andy Samberg as Mark Wahlberg.
"Little by Little" - Well hello, now this is interesting. Junkyard percussion, OK Computer strums. I like this OK, but Yorke is doing his sleepy Yorkey thing like on the other tracks and I think I would like a little more gonzo.
"Feral" - Contrary to the song title, the is all drum and synth notes, the most electronic song on the album yet. Colin's bass peaks in, I would rather it stuck around. The buzzes and cuts make me feel like we're on a high precipice, but the song never jumps off.
"Lotus Flower" - The only song with its own Wikipedia page. More electronics, drum and bass, handclaps that I appreciate, and oh there's Yorke's vocals and I know this song pretty well after all. Yorke keeps it ethereal, but I like the echoing touches. And at least it has a regular bassline buzz.
"Codex" - Not that we're really rocking along, but if we were I'd say hit the brakes because here's the piano. Yorke's voice often doesn't sound sad, but again, piano. There's some fairly mournful horns too and a little orchestra action. Can bands stop putting superfluous bird chirps and silences tacked onto the ends of songs?
"Give Up the Ghost" - Acoustic guitar and echo-hall vocals all in your ears, some of said vocals being so distorted they sound like strings or something. I think this song and its mixing impresses me the most on this album from a technical perspective.
"Separator" - Drums, bass, more echoing vocals, and some sprinkley electric guitar picking that I quite like. It's a warm feeling.
Summary: The opener turned out to be more of a thesis statement than I thought, which doesn't reflect well on the album. It's...a very studio setlist, I guess. I can't imagine seeing this album performed live in concert, though I'm sure I could find examples of exactly that on YouTube. To be charitable, this is an easy-going listen. But much the same as last time except even more so, I just want the band to turn it up, to carry their interesting songs to a harder conclusion. That doesn't necessarily mean I want it fast, loud, and brash, but I want more and better. "Lotus Flower" is one of the few songs that feels fully formed to me.
Favorite overall song: "Lotus Flower", sort of by default. It is good, and it's hard to separate out the additive pleasantness of familiarity. Favorite new-to-me song: "Separator" was nice and easy, and I didn't wish it was more than it was. Bleep-bloop scale, zero to five: 2, rounding down. Used a bit more liberally here than before, but not uniformly.
Weirdness scale, zero to five: 1. Again subdued.
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Post by pairesta on Apr 1, 2019 6:50:13 GMT -5
King of Limbs is a frustratingly inert album; they seemed to be deliberately alienating now. Particularly when "Daily Mail" and "The Butcher", both more rockin' tunes, were left off the release. There was speculation at the time that "King of Limbs" was a reference to the album "growing" new songs later that they'd release piecmeal to graft on, hence how songs end with weird fragments and noises that would "fit" the later songs. Anyways. This is my least favorite Radiohead album, yes, even behind Pablo Honey. Love Codex/Give up the Ghost but that's about it.
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Post by ganews on Apr 9, 2019 22:52:45 GMT -5
A Moon Shaped Poll (2016) Pre-existing PrejudicesOnce again I ask, "where from here?" I only know one song by name, "True Love Waits", which was written years earlier and which I downloaded in college for a depressing music mix. I'm not optimistic that this is going to be any better than The King of Limbs. Songs
"Burn the Witch" - Queens of the Stone Age? No, orchestra strums and a trippy beat. Yorke's voice sounds smoother than on any previous album. Lots of orchestra, really; is this even a Radiohead track?
"Daydreaming" - Seriously, who was digging through crates in the 90s before producing this. Piano, tiny electronic chimes, washy vocal backing, very sleepytime. Pleasant though. A little aggressive viola or whatever, sounds like something a composition major would perform for their senior thesis.
"Decks Dark" - I'm going to have to come up with more synonyms for piano, soft singing, and trip beat. But this also gets a little actual drum and female choral backing, don't know that we've previously had the latter. I like the genuine guitar noodling near the end.
"Desert Island Disk" - Bold statement of a title isn't it? This is all acoustic strums with guitar neck squeaks so you know it's real, but there's a little light synthy wash too. It gives the song the most earnest sound from the band in like 20 years. A little jazzy percussion is just the right touch.
"Ful Stop" - Some elementary school lunchroom drummer is tapping on the wall, plus some electronic weirdness and electric flute or something. The tempo picks up halfway through, and Yorke wails about 25% strength. The band really seems to have a groove on.
"Glass Eyes" - More piano, synthy washes. Uh, not much else to say.
"Identikit" - A stronger beat, guitar pluckings and neck squeaks, Yorke's backing echoing down a hall. The synth organ is strong with this one. It's also a well-balanced groove.
"The Numbers" - Tinkly piano and maybe jinglebells all over, then some strums and snare, then your violins on top of Colin's bass. A bit more straight Godrich.
"Present Tense" - Strummy Radiohead and sandpaper percussion, which I always like. I like the line "As my world comes crashing down / I'll be dancing / Freaking out". Another easy groove. I like the bass drum heartbeat too.
"Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief" - Solid title, makes me think of the move and also "Cross-eyed Mary" by Jethro Tull. Super fuzzed out beat with electronic flops, Godrich strings later.
"True Love Waits" - This song is a bit of a relic from another era in the band, and I know the live version well, so how is it adapted here? With a lot of piano, Yorke in high register, and more electric effect than average for the other tracks. So it actually fits in well with the sound of the album, and though it sounds like a downer on a fairly mellow album (especially with Yorke's voice softly straining to almost crack), it's impossible for me to hear with totally fresh ears.
Summary: History will surely remember the first half of this album as the band's DJ Shadow phase. It's much less heavy on the Nigel Godrich, in inverse proportion to the amount of mellow trip sound going on, but still idiosyncratically Radiohead. I give the band credit, it actually is a different sound as opposed to treading In Rainbows water. Again, "mellow" is the stand-out descriptor. It's just enjoyable, not challenging but not boring either.
Favorite overall song: "Desert Island Disk" Favorite new-to-me song: "Desert Island Disk" Bleep-bloop scale, zero to five: 2, rounding up. There's plenty of synthy touches and washes and some beats, but much of it is almost self-consciously traditional instrumentation.
Weirdness scale, zero to five: 2, there's still a reasonable amount here that's not exactly commercial
That's it! I'll be back next time with the summary.
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Post by pairesta on Apr 10, 2019 6:14:14 GMT -5
This is a nice rebound from KOL, I thought. Yes, it's still more abstract, but it holds together better, and is buoyed by more assertive tracks like Ful Stop, my favorite. I had it on nonstop that whole spring, so this album is indelibly linked to that time when I listen to it again.
I hadn't heard True Love Waits enough in previous iterations to form an attachment to it. I really love this version. His voice cracking always chokes me up for some reason.
There's a note of finality to me about the album. I was convinced after it came out that this was their last, or last for a long time.
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Post by ganews on Apr 30, 2019 23:25:41 GMT -5
Well, gosh, this discography review sure did get neglected. Months of hiatus, more gaps...let's just get to the big finish.
Radiohead Album Ranking 1. The Bends (1995) 2. OK Computer (1997) 3. Kid A (2000) 4. Amnesiac (2001)
5. In Rainbows (2007) 6. Pablo Honey (1993) 7. A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)
8. Hail to the Thief (2003) 9. The King of Limbs (2011)
Once again, despite making an honest effort, I can't help but feel this rankings are a little slapdash. Top 4 and bottom 2 I'm quite confident in, the middle of the pack need re-listens to be sure and obviously I'm not spending time on that. But it gives us something to talk about.
Fun with graphs!
Much like my numerical rankings for Prince, this makes for a good graph. The first lesson is that experimentation really spiked in the middle of their career to date, and if you look at the rankings that produced good results. The second lesson is that the electronic quality of Radiohead's post-Bends output, the given reason so many people stopped paying attention, has been vastly overstated. Yes, there was a three-album run where electronics were used the most, but it certainly never rose to such a level that it became an electronic band, and they went back down to a more conventional sort of integrated sound. But you know what? While the albums that followed that period weren't terrible and were often even good, maybe they would have been even better if that spike had stayed level.
Well, that's it. The guy from the dorm, you know the one, was right: it's a truly great band.
Next time Actually I have a lot of work and a lot of traveling in the next three months, and I already took forever to complete a pretty short album list, so I'm not starting another review until August probably. So I'll keep the band to myself. But get ready to rewind to the 60s.
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Post by pairesta on May 1, 2019 6:30:19 GMT -5
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