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Sometimes Radiohead‘s front man sounds like a whiny dweeb who needs a lozenge. Then again, sometimes he sings like a sweet, demented angel who’s come to save the universe.
Thankfully, the latter Thom Yorke prevails on the band’s latest offering, In Rainbows, which is available online for whatever amount you choose to pay for it. The British anti-rockers may hope to start a revolution by selling the album directly to listeners, but the songs here sound refreshingly like a band making music—not trying to make history.
Starting with Kid A in 2000, Radiohead charged into a brave new soundscape of warped guitars, stray beats and spirited electronica. That bold-but-overrated disc melded oddball anthems with self-indulgent nonsense. Its successors, Amnesiac (2001) and Hail to the Thief (2003), were choppy affairs, full of brilliance and cacophonous left turns.
 Radiohead has sprung a leak! The kings of dynamic rock ‘n’ roll distribute their colorful new album, In Rainbows, without labels or a price tag. from 1936 feature |
After years of pushing rock’s boundaries, Radiohead pulls back and surveys the new frontier on Rainbows. Nearly all of the 10 new songs are uncluttered, low on excess noise and loaded with the band’s signature sourness.
The opener, "15 Step," skips along to syncopated drums. Amid ghostly organs and a random chorus of children’s voices, Yorke rattles off questions: "You used to be all right/ What happened?" Next, the fuzzed-out and irresistibly spooky "Bodysnatchers" sounds like glam rock for Pod People.
Much of what follows is softer stuff. "Nude," with its soft-cymbal beat and glassy notes, echoes the vulnerability of its title. The mournful "Faust Arp" floats under orchestral strings, and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" builds to a shimmering crescendo (over talk of being eaten by worms and such).
Few bands can make doom sound as delicious as Radiohead does on the uptempo "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," though, occasionally, the band gets lost in its own sad navel. "Reckoner," for one, is as bland as it is morose.
Still, most of the tunes here click because the smart arrangements leave room for Yorke’s vocals. In "House of Cards," a gorgeous tune laced with synthesized strings and soft guitars, he sings: "I don’t want to be your friend/ I just want to be your lover/ No matter how it ends/ No matter how it starts." The line is more direct than most of the cryptic lyrics he has mumbled recently.
The words also ring clearly on "Videotape," the spare closer. Over a piano-and-drum dirge, our crooner imagines himself at the pearly gates, with nothing to leave behind but his own recorded image—an evocative riff on mortality in the digital age. A decade after OK Computer, Radiohead has again found the soul in the machine.