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The first bits and pieces from Radiohead's upcoming album were just released, in the form of a blurry Youtube video from the studio. If you heard any of the bootlegs from last year's tour, you should be able to recognize which songs most of the new snippets come from. "All I Need" is sounding gorgeously lush, while the new strings in "Down Is The New Up" give it a really haunting feel. And "Bangers and Mash" is crazier than ever, with skittering guitar that sounds almost like System of a Down.
I am stoked. This album cannot come fast enough.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I'm so pissed I missed Radiohead last year. I've been wanting to see them forever and they have no tour dates on the horizon. Hopefully that'll change soon.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I don't think I recognized 'House of Cards' in there. Man... I love that song so much. I hope they don't drop it the way they've dropped past great songs like 'I Promise' or 'Lift'.
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Yeah, "House of Cards" isn't in the video. But I wouldn't worry- they played it at every single show last year, and IIRC Thom said that it was his favorite of the new songs.
Personally, as long as "Arpeggi" makes it with those lovely background vocals intact, I'll be happy.
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I got to see Radiohead in Toronto when "Kid A" came out. We won tickets and were flown up, had a nice pre-party, front row tickets, hotel. Now, any follow-up performance by them will always be a disappointment.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Yay! So excited. Radiohead is one very few current bands that consistently wow me.
The live show when they played Grant Park in Chicago is still the best show I've ever seen. Of course being sunburnt (90 degrees, show started at 7pm, got there at 1 am to be one of the first in line), delirious (one hot dog for food), exhausted (no sleep), soaking wet (crazy people with fire hoses), and twenty feet from Johnny Greenwood may have influenced my reaction somewhat. Oh, and the mindblowing music. Yeah, that probably had something to do with it. Posts: 511 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I say this as a staunch Radiohead fan. But I think they sound better on their recorded stuff. Thom isn't always in tune live. And he always strikes me as a spoiled rich British kid. But they do make such good music. Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Thom can be a little shakey on pitch when he sings live, but his voice is still a truly unique instrument, and one that has incredible power when you hear him perform in person. I was lucky enough to hear Radiohead play "Creep" during their 2003 tour, and the he belted the "She's running out" part of the song like it was 1993. Better, even- he held the last "ruuuuuuuuuns" for a solid ten seconds, perfectly on key. The rest of the band actually stopped playing for a while so he could finish the note. Completely blew my mind.
I also generally tend to view Radiohead-on-record and Radiohead-live as two very different animals. One is meticulous and rewards obsession to detail, pulling emotion out of the most subtle background sounds, while the other is almost jazz-like in its improvisation. This is especially true of the "Kid A" era songs- compare the album version of "Everything In Its Right Place," which is subdued and sparse, with only the slightest hint of percussion, with the live version, an effects-laden soundscape, backed by an insistent drum beat and a silky bassline, while Thom's voice is sampled, cut to bits, and reassembled in real time.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I haven't really heard very much Radiohead. What do you think would be a good song/album to start with if one is interested in listening to their music?
On a side note, the new Project 86 CD came out today. And it rocks my world.
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I started with The Bends and then worked my way forward from there. Then I went back and listened to their first album, Pablo Honey. It's much rougher than the rest, though there are a few gems on it. But I think The Bends is a great place to start.
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I think OK Computer is the one to start with. It's won all kinds of "best album of all time" awards. It's the one I started with. I'm excited about the new cd.
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Maybe OK Computer is a better album (I've never really made up my mind), but I think it's a little harder to get into.
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If you like The Bends you will probably like OK Computer. Once you get to Kid A and beyond however you have to open your mind all over again to Radiohead. The difference in style/sound is very striking.
It has been very hard for me to embrace this new direction, but I have ALOT of respect for Radiohead for trying this direction out.
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"The Bends," "OK Computer," and "Kid A" are the holy trinity of music. I can't think of any other band that released three consecutive albums that are so stylistically dissimilar and yet equally brilliant.
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People liken to the content in OK Computer better than they do to the earlier two albums. That's basically why it was so successful. It's my favorite album from them, and one of my favorite albums ever. (Favorite rock album though.)
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A have at different times all been my favorite album. I wouldn't even know which one I would pick now. I've actually been listening to Amnesiac a little more recently. But even more than that I've been listening to Thom Yorke's solo album and loving that.
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: "The Bends," "OK Computer," and "Kid A" are the holy trinity of music. I can't think of any other band that released three consecutive albums that are so stylistically dissimilar and yet equally brilliant.
Songs to Burn Your Bridges By, ...And the Rest Will Follow, and Rival Factions by Project 86 fit that bill pretty well too.
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I would say The Bends is my favorite Radiohead album. But OK Computer and specifically the "Paranoid Android" video on MTV is what got me hooked on Radiohead in the first place.
Amnesiac is a dark horse for most people, but I like it better than Kid A.
And I actually really like Hail to the Thief. Nobody seems to talk about that one. It's just what Jonny Greenwood said about it--a great listening album.
I can't get into Thom's Eraser. There are some really interesting rhythms, which is par for the course for Thom, but it's like listening to mono radio. The rest of the band really fill out the sound when they're putting their heads together to make songs.
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Both "Amnesiac" and "Hail to the Thief" have some really stellar songs, but there's some significant filler in both albums ("Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," "I Will"), and they don't cohere as albums quite as well as the three records that preceded them.
That being said, "Pyramid Song" and "A Wolf at the Door" are worth the price of admission for each album by themselves. And what I consider "filler" for a Radiohead album is still light-years ahead of the best work most other bands produce.
"The Eraser" took me a while to get into, even longer than "Kid A" did, but it eventually clicked, aided significantly by the haunting, beautiful live renditions of Analyse ("There's no tiiiiiiiiiiiiime...") and Cymbal Rush. That's when I realized that under the layers of electronics, these were songs as lovely as anything Thom has ever penned. I do wish that the entire album had been done with the sparse arrangements he uses live, but again- there's that difference between Radiohead in studio and Radiohead in performance.
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I have yet to really get into Hail to the Thief. I like individual songs from it, but I tend to listen to Radiohead chronologically, starting at The Bends. I mean to move on to Hail to the Thief, but I often get something from one of the earlier albums stuck in my head and I have to jump back again.
I started buying EPs and singles to help tide me over until the next album lands and I've found that their b-sides are often just as good as the material that makes it onto the disk. Makes for a bit of fun hunting, too, since it can be a tad difficult to find some of them.
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quote:"The Eraser" took me a while to get into, even longer than "Kid A" did, but it eventually clicked,
huh, I think the first time I heard Kid A i was absolutely hooked, right off the bat from 'Everything in it's Right Place'. But The Eraser did take me a bit. I thought it was pretty cool after the first listen, but didn't think I'd really give it much continued play time. A few weeks later I was getting an irresistible urge to listen to it almost every day. 'Harrowdown Hill' started out as my favorite track on that album, but 'Skip Divided' has very slowly crept up on it.
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Tarrsk, I just checked out those links. Awesome. I didn't think Thom would be able to pull off Analyse with just a piano, but he was magnificent.
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I think backdrifters is the best track on HTTT. It's really awesome. I can't listen to it without moving around. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: Tarrsk, I just checked out those links. Awesome. I didn't think Thom would be able to pull off Analyse with just a piano, but he was magnificent.
Yeah. A similar version of "Analyse" from the Henry Rollins live session (I think) is my favorite... it's virtually identical, except that Thom plays the song on his Rhodes. I think the loud percussion in the album version actually hurts the song- it's one of those songs where being able to track every downbeat without thinking draws away from its haunting quality. The focus of "Analyse" should be on Thom's vocals, accompanied by the barest minimum of arrangement to suggest the backing chords.
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hmmm...I gotta disagree with you here too Tarrsk. I actually like everything else going on in the album version. And what's more, the album version seems to build and crescendo which adds to the emotion for me, whereas that live version stays more steady(even if a solo piano performance has more innate emotion).
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See, I find that the album version lacks the dynamic range of the live performance. The electronic blips and beats kick the song off on maximum volume to start with, and it maintains a fairly steady loudness throughout. The synth strings do add some intensity in the second verse and bridge, but because the song started out loud, they don't really have that much space to crescendo. The percussion maintains exactly the same dynamics throughout the song, and IMO removes the immediacy and "organic" feel of the live versions.
In the live version, Thom starts the song very softly, gradually builds up for each of the choruses ("There's no time/ to analyse"), and then brings it back down for the bridge, before a final brief vocal crescendo in the coda. Thom's vocal performance on the album track is also inexplicably weaker than those on the live versions of the song, in which he uses his voice to modulate the dynamics more than anything else. He also subtly alters the tempo throughout the performance, drawing out certain notes when appropriate- something impossible in the click-tracked album version.
Now, this is all more true of the Rhodes version than the Mercury Awards piano version that I originally posted. Unfortunately, I can't find a link for that recording, and I lost my own mp3 when my hard drive died last week.
Edit: And a few minutes of Google-fu reveals that the Rhodes version of "Analyse" comes from an XFM performance/interview Thom did last year, and can be downloaded here (though the quality of this mp3 isn't as good as the one I had before).
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Oh my gosh that is the greatest song, that version of Analyse! I can't stop listening to it. It's so sad!
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: "The Bends," "OK Computer," and "Kid A" are the holy trinity of music. I can't think of any other band that released three consecutive albums that are so stylistically dissimilar and yet equally brilliant.
Songs to Burn Your Bridges By, ...And the Rest Will Follow, and Rival Factions by Project 86 fit that bill pretty well too.
Or how about Document, Green, and Out of Time, by REM?
(Or my personal triumvirate of theirs, Fables..., Life's Rich Pageant, and Document.
Oh, and Radiohead rocks, and I haven't been disappointed by their newer stuff. I was hooked on Kid A from "Everything..." too.
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Those are all great albums, but I don't think REM's style changed nearly as drastically as Radiohead's did. If it wasn't for Thom Yorke's distinctive voice, one probably wouldn't be able to tell that the same band recorded "The Bends" and "Kid A," at first listen.
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