To be abrupt, the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, is really good. I paid nine dollars for it. You could've paid three, or 20, or 81, or you could have stolen it for some reason.
Regardless of what anyone paid for it, it's worth every single penny. It has been well documented that its pricing and distribution model did nothing short of turn the record industry on its head (although maybe just for a little while). Every music geek, blogophile, angry downloader and, of course, Radiohead fan and fans of good music everywhere, had an opinion on it.
More importantly, though, most people I know really wanted to hear it. I woke up Wednesday in anticipation. All I wanted was to listen to it, just for a fleeting morning.
Now, I can. In fact, I've listened to it three times before I have even thought about what's for supper. The beauty - and that is what it is, beautiful - of In Rainbows is that it's a profound album instilled with the sound and energy of a band that, believe it or not, is at the top of their game.
Exactly as the name suggests, this album is bright, lucid and dreamy. Thom is hollering, his voice has legs like it hasn't before, and the guitars are serious. It offers flashes of colour and bedazzle organized in a very specific and seemingly deliberate manner, with a result being something organic and totally out of place in any context.
And at the same time, it's pretty, like a rainbow. In Rainbows hums and screeches, and like good sex, it starts slow until it reaches an orchestral crescendo - only to descend again before it has to climb back. Everything about this album is a contradiction.
It makes me want to dance and it makes me want to melt into my bed and lay there. I still don't know what Thom Yorke is saying most of the time, but in "All I Need" he tells me that I'm all he needs and I believe it. People took notice before it was released, but take my word that more people are going to take notice after this becomes, hands down, lauded as one of the best of the year, if not decade.
Now, I hate to make you feel old, but OK Computer came out 10 years ago. In the meantime, Radiohead released three albums with critical and popular reception that fell at both ends of the spectrum. Not to forget Pablo Honey and The Bends, but it's a fair argument to say that OK Computer was a good enough album to let Radiohead coast somewhat willy-nilly experimenting (with great triumph and some near-failure) on the success of Pablo, The Bends and OK.
Was Radiohead spinning their wheels for a decade experimenting with pop music just waiting to release an album that, I hope we can all agree, is a perfect synthesis of one of what should be one the most important bands since, say, The Beatles? In Rainbows seems to support that notion, and does so with a subdued energy you totally expected but couldn't imagine in the least.
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