Exploring the Other Side of the Rainbow: A Brief Profile of Radiohead

Music blog A Reminder astutely acknowledged that today marks the one-year anniversary of the biggest fuck-you moment any record label has ever had to endure; October 10th, 2007 was the day Radiohead released In Rainbows to the web, allowing fans and curious observers alike to name their own price. It was a brilliantly innovative thing to do, and it turned the internet upside down for about two weeks and got every music-based website to drop whatever else it might have been covering to pour on the praise every time Thom Yorke so much as covered his mouth when he coughed.

Radiohead - Reckoner [iTunes]

Those who've stuck with ¡Viva La Mainstream! for a while know that my first impression of In Rainbows was not a very good one. I thought it was the same pretentious, gratuitously artsy music I started this blog to rail against. After a couple listens and some encouragement from friends, I grew to truly enjoy In Rainbows and jumped on the Radiohead bandwagon after hearing their back catalog.

Myself and fellow music geeks Justin and Peter were discussing Radiohead's merits the other night, and Justin brought up something that just sort of sums up what can sometimes frustrate me about the band, and yet also always draws me in further; unlike other alt-rock bands which place emphasis on the lead singer and his presence, Thom Yorke treats his vocals as though they were another instrument in the band. You could listen to a Radiohead song and ingnore or flat out replace the lyrics with nonsense syllables, and you'd still have some damned good music. That's the fantastic part about it. What's frustrating is that Yorke's lyrics are so fucking great that the fact that they tend to be imcomprehensible when listening (unless you're listening while looking at the lyrics, a lesson I learned when I bought In Rainbows on CD) becomes a negative thing.

Another interesting schism as I continue listening: the band is constantly irritated by the fact that their music becomes what Thom Yorke calls "fridge buzz", which is to say ambient sound that just becomes background noise. And yet Radiohead's music is so atmospheric and lends itself to letting listeners' minds wander and just enter the world the band creates with their sound that there's a certain inevitability to the "fridge buzz" effect. I think the fact that the music has the potential to inspire me to drift into another place and time like that is a great thing. It shows a connection with the music that goes beyond just singing along to the words or something equally superficial.

Also, Radiohead albums aren't something you can listen to once and claim to have really heard. Not by a long shot. There are so many layers of meaning and substance that one listen carries with it so little that of course the average music listener (read: me this time a year ago) won't see the appeal. Peter pointed out that thematically Radiohead is brilliant; note that the beginning and ending of OK Computer are both about a car crash.

Radiohead - Airbag
Radiohead - The Tourist
OK Computer on iTunes

Again, showing that Radiohead are significantly more intelligent than so many of their contemporaries. I'm not certain I'd say their better musicians; I think that title gets tossed out too freely just becuase the band does things musically that others don't immediately think of. That's not good musicianship necessarily; that's innovation. And Radiohead has enough of that to spare.

Another interesting schism as I continue listening: the band is constantly irritated by the fact that their music becomes what Thom Yorke calls "fridge buzz", which is to say ambient sound that just becomes background noise. And yet Radiohead's music is so atmospheric and lends itself to letting listeners' minds wander and just enter the world the band creates with their sound that there's a certain inevitability to the "fridge buzz" effect. I think the fact that the music has the potential to inspire me to drift into another place and time like that is a great thing. It shows a connection with the music that goes beyond just singing along to the words or something equally superficial.

I'm trying to decide if it was fate or a clever accident that I listened to OK Computer while at work last night and came up with the idea to blog about them on the anniversary of In Rainbows. I'm not even sure if it's worth trying to explain away, so I'm just going to accept the way it was and offer one final thought. I like every single Radiohead album; even Pablo Honey. To those who claim the first two albums "aren't really Radiohead", I offer the following counterargument. Pablo Honey and The Bends needed to happen in order for the band to get to a point where they could write OK Computer and the subsequent albums. Radiohead's evolution has been a very natural one, and you can indeed sense the change in sound coming; without the early stages of that shift on The Bends, I don't think an album as great or influential as OK Computer could have existed. Metallica's James Hetfield recently said that the much-maligned St. Anger needed to happen before the far superior Death Magnetic could take shape. Same idea applies here. Sometimes you need to get the cliche and less inspired out of the way before you can do something extraordinary.

Radiohead - Anyone Can Play Guitar [iTunes]

That's all I've got.

Get all of Radiohead's albums and then some on iTunes

==TJ==