In Rainbows opens with a fractured, skittering, convoluted drumbeat, part computer, part human, and wholly disorienting. The rhythm is next to impossible to discern until a lilting guitar hook drifts into the mix about a quarter of the way through the song.
From there, things build into a dizzying wash of sounds: reverberating vocals, children's shouts, ghostly buzzes and whirls. It’s almost exhausting trying to keep track of everything going on, and by the time the listener grasps what’s happening the song has ended and the process begins again on the next track.
Yet, despite this, the effect is equally exhilarating. Radiohead can be a difficult band to get into, but for the avid listener the rewards far outweigh the expenditures.
The Band, The Myth, The Legend
Having first gained notoriety in the early nineties with the awkward one-off hit “Creep,” Radiohead have spent the last decade-and-a-half building an empire out of alienation and perpetual reinvention.
From relatively generic rock debut (1993‘s Pablo Honey), to technophobic opera (1997‘s OK Computer), to beautifully bleak, electronic soundscapes (2000‘s Kid A; 2001‘s Amnesiac), few bands can boast such dramatic (and more important, effective and well-realized) artistic leaps.
Different as every one of their records are, Radiohead employs a distinct sound and style, especially on their past ten years’ output, from OK Computer to 2003’s Hail to the Thief. Songs are indirectly lovely, like the aural equivalent of a Pollock or Picasso painting.
The music circumvents immediate accessibility and is instead filtered through abstraction: bleeps and bloops, meter changes, and sonic glitches, oftentimes avoiding verse-chorus-verse progression in favor of slow, gradual builds to cathartic release, multi-act dramas, or anticlimax. As a result, songs end up fractured, obtuse, at times unrecognizable and difficult to listen to, but distinctly visceral and affecting.
New and Improved?
But on In Rainbows, Radiohead depends far less on such cinematic trickery, preferring to take a more natural approach. Traditional instrumentation (drums instead of beat machines, guitar and bass instead of synthesizer, piano instead of keyboard) is pushed to the forefront, giving the album a warm, organic sound.
“Reckoner” stands out, both for quality and as an example of this warmth. Drums pound out a beat that seems almost tactile while waves of guitar and piano capable of melting ice wash over the mix.
Singer Thom Yorke’s voice is left mostly unaltered proving, once more, as dynamic an instrument as the rest. His haunting falsetto is played to strained perfection on the gorgeous “House of Cards.” “Nude” opens with wailing strings and a haunting vocal melody before congealing into a plaintively funky torch song of sorts. Conversely, the howl and growl he employs on hard-rocker “Bodysnatchers” achieves the opposite effect just as well.
Besides being genuinely fantastic, the album benefits from a certain sense of nostalgia, one that permeates the songs on just about every level, and hearkens back to moments throughout the band's discography. Ultimately, In Rainbows sounds a lot like a greatest hits record composed of entirely new material.
It takes several full listens, but there comes a point just after the three minute mark on “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” amidst a deluge of delicate, intricate tones, like a moment of clarity, where the whole thing comes into focus: In Rainbows is something very special.
