My Radiohead In Rainbows Discbox and a Review of CD2
The wait is finally over: my Radiohead In Raibowns discbox arrived on Wednesday!
There are no surprises on CD1 but put CD2 into your PC and you’ll find 88 photos and 65 artworks taken/made during the making of In Rainbows. There’s even a note offering suggestions on what you could do with them:
1. use them as a screensaver.
2. make a slideshow of the photos or pictures. play the record at the same time. ?.
3. print them out massive, frame them and hang them above your bed.
4. admire the dynamic artistes at work, as they plunge flailing into middle age.
5. attempt to trace the arguably bizarre trajectory of donwood and tchock as they begin by doing urban landscapes and end up with work that even they cannot describe.
6. adapt or alter to your liking. it’s extraordinary what you can do with photoshop. or even scissors and glue.
7. turn an old tshirt inside-out. print something out on that iron-on transfer stuff and stick it on the tshirt.
8. actually thinking about it, just type ‘inkjet media’ into a search engine and see what the possibilities are.
9. for instance, you can print onto thin magnetic sheet and then stick it onto a vehicle or a fridge or something.
10. try to work out which photos we edited out, and why.
Since “11. post and share them on your blog” is missing from the list of suggestions, I made the photos and artworks into two miniature strips for your viewing pleasure, which are on either sides of this article.
Now to the music:
I downloaded CD1 the day it became available, and placed an order for the discbox the next day. I like the new album a lot more than the promising but ultimately under-delivering 2003 Hail to the Thief. My favorites are 15 Steps, Faust Arp and Videotape. It’s a great, solid album, and almost amazing too. But not quite…it’s like OK Computer with Paranoid Android missing… However, with the addition of CD2, the missing piece in a puzzle, everything is put into perspective. Clocked at some 26 minutes, it’s got some of the best works by Radiohead:
MK 1 finds Thom Yorke breathing and whispering, huuuuing and humming to a keyboard prelude (thought I heard the opening of Before Today by Everything But The Girl, but it’s probably just me hallucinating), which then disappears to Down is the New Up. Now, when you think about some of your favorite albums, there are bound to be one or two songs that especially speak to you. An album won’t be great merely because of one or two of these standouts, but they do seem to make an album complete and define what makes a band great. Down is the New Up is such a song. It gives me goose bumps…the bleak keyboard just keep turning more sinister, and the ominous Strings are awe inspiring. There are a couple Orwellian references, so think of it as a soundtrack to 1984? Go Slowly has so much synth it almost makes my ears ring.. I’d love to hear Radiohead go unplugged sometime. The second half has a guitar theme that’s similar to that in There There. The indescriptive, synthetic MK2 fades in less than 60 seconds. The minimalistic Last Flowers starts with Thom’s much more subdued falsetto accompanied by piano and sparing guitar. Again I can almost hear Karma Police in it, the melody, the structure. Last Flowers feels much more devastating though. I’ve read somewhere that the song is about Thom overwhelmed by the success of OK Computer and the ruthless media attention. But I keep having an image of someone staying by the deathbed of a loved one.”too much…too bright…too powerful”. Like Videotape, this one really gets me all choked up. Is Up on the Ladder about climbing up the corporate/political ladder? Can’t really relate to the song and it has a half-realized feel. Bangers + Mash is another one of those songs you have no idea what it’s about and you just love! I doubt it has anything to do with sausages and potatoes? Heavy on bass, electric guitar and drums, it’s the most distinctive song from the new album. Call it the Bodysnatchers of CD2, very infectious and danceable, although you would have some very particular moves! Love it. Now we’ve come to our last song in CD2, and Radiohead knows how to pick closers. 4 Minute Warning is a dirgeful hymn for the 21th century, a sonic version of No Country for Old Men, where the world is turning more uncomprehensible each day, where what we used to take for granted is rapidly slipping away. The Lyrics are uncomfortably somber and with the humming and choir at the background, 4 Minute Warning is probably the most disturbing and yet beautiful song Radiohead has ever produced.
Although conceptualized and originally planned as a double album, both Kid A and Amnesiac hold up on their own pretty well as an album. However without songs like Down is the New Up, Last Flowers, Bangers + Mash, and 4 Minute Warning, “In Rainbows I” now feels strangely incomplete.
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