Radiohead- In RainbowsIt's here, and everybody is tossing out their half-baked-from-the-listening-party-last-night reviews. It's good, so the only debate is determining just how good it is. Yes, this is the same album that I had previously speculated would:
Cure the common cold, feed starving children, promote world peace, get you a job, enhance your sex life, make you faster, inspire you, and, most importantly, conquer the year end lists!Yet, so far, this album release has only resulted in my fourteen full listens, incessant browsing of message boards and pseudo-album art, debate and postponing of school work. After the initial announcement, I refused to listen to Radiohead until I heard the new album so as to cleanse my mind. Then, after the digital release, I continued my banning of Radiohead's previous output until just yesterday so I could assess this album on its own merit. Since it's good, and it's Radiohead, the next question is: is it perfect?
How do we quantify a perfect album? Prior to one of my fourteen listens, Carly and I were at Applebee's when she opted for the 'perfect margarita'. She didn't order the
Pablo Honey margarita (barely above average) or even the
Funeral margarita (so close to perfect, but I'm not sure I'd trust a margarita with 'funeral' as its adjectival calling card). No, this was billed as the
Kid A of margaritas. Since I'm not a margarita connoisseur, the only aspect I can legitimately compliment is the quantity of the drink. The tin-can allowed her to fill the glass four times until the point of satiation. After four listens to
In Rainbows, I wasn't ready to tag this album as perfect, but I was ready for four more listens.
There is some evidence to indicate the brilliance of
In Rainbows, even if it is merely conspiracy theories and fun finds. A few folks on the greenplastic.com message boards discovered that
In Rainbows has a moment akin to that of
Kid A. As with the electronic murmers of 'Kid A' at the start of "Everything in Its Right Place", you can hear the album title in the backing vocals of "Reckoner". At the 2 minute, 49 second marker, you can hear:
"In rain / in rain / in rainbows"To compliment this historic find, there is also talk of this moment beginning precisely at the album's golden section. Artists and architects since the Renaissance have proportioned their works to approximate this Golden Ratio, which appears at 1.618, or about 61.8% of the way through a work of art. The album length is 42:34, or 2554 seconds, in length. The Golden Section of
In Rainbows, then, is 2554s/1.6180339887 = 1578.45s, which as noted before is the 2:49 'In Rainbows' backing vocal found within "Reckoner".
What does this tell us? The only way we can grasp such an album is to depict the inherent experience of said-album. The entire album plays out like a disturbingly romantic tale to tell your kids. "Yay!" As with the children cheering amidst the churning gears and fuzzy textures of "15 Step", the opening two songs are an exciting introduction akin to someone screeching to a halt next to your rainy, late night walk in the city. You're pulled inside by a couple masked men and taken to a damp basement in the middle of town as the warm guitars of "Bodysnatchers" detail your drive through the night. You'd be frightened already if not for the fact that "15 Step" is the best album opener Radiohead has written since "2+2=5 (The Lukewarm.)". Oh, wait.
The rest of the album will haunt its way into your heart as "Nude" functions as your subdued response to the captors. And to think, you've been trying to say the same thing since the
OK Computer-era, but could never put it to tape as eloquently as now. Naturally, you respond to the mysterious men:
"You'll go to hell / for what your dirty mind is thinking"Your initial pensive retaliation is met with chains and bad dreams. "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" is your submission:
"I'd be crazy not to follow / follow where you lead / your eyes, they turn me". Yet, the real reasoning behind the obedience is found in the final lines of this piece of your story:
"I hit the bottom / hit the bottom and escape".Why fight it when you can feign obedience like
"an animal / trapped in your hot car"? The subsequent song, "All I Need", has an outro complete with piano and cymbals crashing that reminds you of the paranoid feeling of the walls symphonically closing in around you. How much longer can this take? When can you ever realistically hope to escape?
"Faust Arp" is the interlude that soundtracks the moment one of the captors wakes you from your upright, chained slumber with Franz Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" draining your conscious in the distance. As with this Radiohead melody, the 'unfinished' classical music is truncated. Your captor leans towards your ear with the eerily soothing line,
"wakey wakey rise and shine". You'd laugh if the situation permitted it.
As the golden section nears, "Reckoner" is your introspection. You begin to see shades of yourself in your captors' black masks. Is this a phase of Stockholm syndrome or do you merely miss your own reflection? You find comfort in the puddle on the cement floor from the heavy rain almost a week ago. Has it been that long? The light from the cracked door on the top of the steps reflects within the puddle, and you'd swear you could see a rainbow. There is hope.
"House of Cards" is the captor's response to your eternal pessimism and resolute ennui. As one of them seductively approaches your locked position, you close your eyes and imagine the outside world once more. You're back at the university. You're walking from the parking structure and staring upward towards the Renaissance-inspired architecture.
Denial. You're not there; this isn't happening. Whoop, wrong album.
"Words are a sawed-off shotgun", you used to think. Now, you're just trying to
"wish away the nightmare", but you've reached the end. "Jigsaw Falling into Place" is your last attempt, and oddly first real attempt, to escape. The rape of your former ego has found you desperate and alone.
The captors resolve that it isn't worth the effort to keep you alive much longer. "Videotape" will stand as your goodbye to everyone you once knew. The plunking piano chords are your memory. The drums tell you to speed things up. You haven't much longer before the last blow to the head. As with everything real you once knew, the drums dissolve into almost an indistinguishable form of their previous existence. Were they really drums, or was it the flapping film of a broken projector? You can hardly remember as you mouth the words:
"this is my way of saying goodbye / because I can't do it face-to-face". The only problem with your final goodbye, "Videotape", is that the rest of us are left wanting the rest of the story: the part we may never know. Due to this relatively weak, somber closing moment, it is very difficult to perceive
In Rainbows as a perfect album. It's a good thing, then, that there's still the discbox with eight extra songs coming in December.
If we did base perfection on the 'margarita principle' of more is better, then these eight extra songs would really boost the score. In this instance,
69 Love Songs would be beyond perfect and
In Rainbows would be just right. Since we don't define music on the quality measurement of margaritas, then here's the real rub of
In Rainbows and the rest of the Radiohead oeuvre, and the rest of you reviewers can just disagree to agree:
Kid A: 10
OK Computer: 9.8
In Rainbows: 9.4
Hail to the Thief: 9.2
Amnesiac: 8.9
The Bends: 8.5
Pablo Honey: 5.9
