Radiohead-in Rainbows

SlowFade

glasshouse wrote:

what i'm getting at : Radiohead's music is not conceptual genius. it's not a landmark in pop. it is great however (and i love it).

i don't think any of Radiohead's albums are more challenging than anything pearl jam have done (for example)

Have you heard Kid A and Amnesiac??? A fair bit more challenging than recycling some old who riffs. And they perform most of the songs live, and in most cases, better than the studio versions.

glasshouse

SlowFade wrote:

Have you heard Kid A and Amnesiac??? A fair bit more challenging than recycling some old who riffs. And they perform most of the songs live, and in most cases, better than the studio versions.

those are my two favorite radiohead albums, so yes i'm familiar (shall i say) with them. mixing elecronica and pop rock is not more challenging than what pearl jam delivers in Binaural. that's my opinion and i stand by it.

by the way

SlowFade wrote:

A fair bit more challenging than recycling some old who riffs

is a somewhat ignorant statement to say the least. Radiohead is a safe bet - the critics love them. nuff said.

pnjguy

glasshouse wrote:

those are my two favorite radiohead albums, so yes i'm familiar (shall i say) with them. mixing elecronica and pop rock is not more challenging than what pearl jam delivers in Binaural. that's my opinion and i stand by it.

by the way


is a somewhat ignorant statement to say the least. Radiohead is a safe bet - the critics love them. nuff said.

Its not about mixing genre, even though what they did was unbelievable in that regard. I mean, you go from your most famous album OK Computer, and then you have the balls to make a record like Kid A! And do it well? Pearl Jam did that to a degree with Binaural, but not to the magnitude of Kid A. Binaural was darker. Thats about it. That being said its my second favorite album of theirs. There is one song with a guitar on Kid A. That's just insane considering the band they were before that. A person who knows music in that regard, would not argue that. But at the same time, Pearl Jam is the best at what they do. And that is including riff based rock, with lyrical genius, and passion.

I play guitar, and can play every pearl jam song well. There are some Radiohead songs on guitar and still have trouble playing well, or even correctly. Thats not a knock on Pearl Jam, but thats just how it is. The real difference between the two is song structure, orchestration, and the arrangement of the songs. Radiohead exceeds in that regard.

blacknapkins

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003660154

bryanfury

i was playing the new album in my office all day yesterday. one person asked me if i was listening to christmas music. oen asked if i was eating acid, and one called it club music.

just goes to show you the range and complexity of their music. people don;t know what to make of it, other than it sounds great.

no disrespect to PJ, ilove them, but they play rock, period. its great, but there is no secret. nothing groundbreaking. just good rock.

PaulJam

I don't know how In Rainbows will stand up in the future. But right now it's my favourite album of all time. I tried listening to other music last night but couldn't enjoy any of it, knowing that I could be listening to this instead.

It's like a 'Best Of' Radiohead album.

Soupy

SlowFade wrote:

Have you heard Kid A and Amnesiac???

Erm yeah ripping off bands from The White Label and playing it to mainstream ignorant rock kids who claim it to be groundbreaking was a clever move by Radiohead.

Anyone who thinks Radiohead invented the wheel with Kiddy A and I Can't Sleep really knows nothing all about electronic music such as ambient techno, drum and bass, trip-hop, ambient dub. Radiohead just swapped genres and 99% of their fans being from a Rock (Guitar sound) background were hearing something for the first time.

go and check out FSOL (Future Sound Of London) if you want a tour de force of proper Electronical music.

glasshouse

Soupy wrote:

Erm yeah ripping off bands from The White Label and playing it to mainstream ignorant rock kids who claim it to be groundbreaking was a clever move by Radiohead.

amen

harmless_little_f***

Soupy wrote:

Erm yeah ripping off bands from The White Label and playing it to mainstream ignorant rock kids who claim it to be groundbreaking was a clever move by Radiohead.

Anyone who thinks Radiohead invented the wheel with Kiddy A and I Can't Sleep really knows nothing all about electronic music such as ambient techno, drum and bass, trip-hop, ambient dub. Radiohead just swapped genres and 99% of their fans being from a Rock (Guitar sound) background were hearing something for the first time.

go and check out FSOL (Future Sound Of London) if you want a tour de force of proper Electronical music.

Wow. I like Radiohead, and yet I haven't read anything so right in quite a while.

pnjguy

Soupy wrote:

Erm yeah ripping off bands from The White Label and playing it to mainstream ignorant rock kids who claim it to be groundbreaking was a clever move by Radiohead.

Anyone who thinks Radiohead invented the wheel with Kiddy A and I Can't Sleep really knows nothing all about electronic music such as ambient techno, drum and bass, trip-hop, ambient dub. Radiohead just swapped genres and 99% of their fans being from a Rock (Guitar sound) background were hearing something for the first time.

go and check out FSOL (Future Sound Of London) if you want a tour de force of proper Electronical music.

clever move? That move could have reuined their career. Ballsy move if you ask me. And no, i don't think anybody with a brain think that Radiohead reinvented anything. Nobody really does anymore. But what they did was challenge themselves and didn't take an easy route, something that rarely happens, and when it does, it should be commended.

PaulJam

Soupy wrote:

Erm yeah ripping off bands from The White Label and playing it to mainstream ignorant rock kids who claim it to be groundbreaking was a clever move by Radiohead.

Anyone who thinks Radiohead invented the wheel with Kiddy A and I Can't Sleep really knows nothing all about electronic music such as ambient techno, drum and bass, trip-hop, ambient dub. Radiohead just swapped genres and 99% of their fans being from a Rock (Guitar sound) background were hearing something for the first time.

go and check out FSOL (Future Sound Of London) if you want a tour de force of proper Electronical music.

Im really in to trip hop and Radiohead blows the sh*t out of that entire genre to the point where it's not even funny. Only Massive Attack and Portishead come close when at their very best (and trip hop is all they do, unlike the mighty Radiohead).

Future Sound of London are brilliant, but again, nothing on Radiohead. Radiohead are informed by every single type of music and it comes together to create something completely unique. There is nothing out there that sounds like Radiohead and the argument that they're just ripping off underground electronica just doesn't hold any water whatsoever. I am in to all those genres you mentioned that fall under the electronica umbrella and I know a number of people who are far more into that stuff than I am...DJ's, Mixers etc....and all of them adore Radiohead.

Nice try though.

PaulJam

pnjguy wrote:

clever move? That move could have reuined their career. Ballsy move if you ask me. And no, i don't think anybody with a brain think that Radiohead reinvented anything. Nobody really does anymore. But what they did was challenge themselves and didn't take an easy route, something that rarely happens, and when it does, it should be commended.

Bang on.

Soupy

pnjguy wrote:

clever move? That move could have reuined their career. Ballsy move if you ask me. And no, i don't think anybody with a brain think that Radiohead reinvented anything. Nobody really does anymore. But what they did was challenge themselves and didn't take an easy route, something that rarely happens, and when it does, it should be commended.

Clearly you have a valid point. But Radiohead were so over with the critics and public after Ok Computer - which is an amazing piece of work, that they could have released an album of sounds of animals making out and it would sell well and mostly likely get good reviews from NME

Oh and there are lots of people who think Kid A and the other one are groundbreaking, well I suppose you could claim it was groundbreaking for a guitar to go electronical, but the music on those albums itself isn't even close to groundbreaking - and bands on the underground White Label have been doing stuff like that for years and in a lot of cases much better.

pnjguy

Soupy wrote:

Clearly you have a valid point. But Radiohead were so over with the critics and public after Ok Computer - which is an amazing piece of work, that they could have released an album of sounds of animals making out and it would sell well and mostly likely get good reviews from NME

Oh and there are lots of people who think Kid A and the other one are groundbreaking, well I suppose you could claim it was groundbreaking for a guitar to go electronical, but the music on those albums itself isn't even close to groundbreaking - and bands on the underground White Label have been doing stuff like that for years and in a lot of cases much better.

Thats whats so amazing about it though. Their most famous album, OK Computer, it would be easy to rehash some of that stuff right after that, instead they make an album where one song has a guitar. Its just a real pleasure to see them progress.

People who say Radiohead reinvented this type of music are just blinded and ignorant.

Soupy

pnjguy wrote:

Thats whats so amazing about it though. Their most famous album, OK Computer, it would be easy to rehash some of that stuff right after that, instead they make an album where one song has a guitar. Its just a real pleasure to see them progress.

People who say Radiohead reinvented this type of music are just blinded and ignorant.

Which brings us to another interesting topic. Is it good when bands repackage/reinvent (and other words beginning with re-) their music so dramatically they actually shift genres.

I mean Radioheads first 3 albums are all pretty different but they are all rock albums, Ok Computer is more experimental than the previous albums but it still has all the hallmarks of a rock album. Would it have been such a bad thing if Radiohead hadn't been so 'brave' and actually rehashed (a harsh word) another sublime Rock album maybe progressing on from Ok Computer?
Would people have said yeah it's good but I wish they'd do something totally out there and completely different? I doubt it.

You can look at Pearl Jam's first 4 albums all different sounding yet all quintsential (sorry I can't spell that!) rock albums, yet all have a different sound and feeling, I wouldn't class that as simple lazy repackaging. Alot of bands that have been around for several years and have a big back catalogue of music such as Pearl Jam, REM, The Tragically Hip and U2 for example generally stick to what they know, are good at and obvisously music they enjoy making - I'd never call this lazy or boring. I like a band because of their sound if they suddenly change dramatically I may not like it. If I want to listen to electronic or ambient style music I would have a totally different album collection, but I'm a rock fan and I personally would swap the last 4 Radiohead album for another Ok, Computer - screw millionaires 'being brave' and 'progressing' - Plug in some guitars and write another album full of songs like Lucky, Karma Police, Creep, Black Hole & Let Down.

deadnote

it so cool the album is pick your price and i practically stole the fucking thing

great disc though

PaulJam

Radiohead are free to do whatever interests them. This is what interests them. Thom Yorke became bored of rock and roll and melody. Kid A and Amnesiac are difficult but they needed to go through that period to get to this.

In Rainbows is an amalgamation of their rock side and their electronic side. It's a vast improvement on Hail to the Thief. It doesn't feel like they're searching anymore on this record. It's just confident, coherent, sublime and moving. The vocals are r+b influences and his voice is better on this record than anything they've put out.

Just listen to Reckoner for confirmation of that.

glasshouse

PaulJam wrote:

Radiohead are informed by every single type of music and it comes together to create something completely unique. There is nothing out there that sounds like Radiohead .

newsflash: "There is nothing out there that sounds like"......
pearl jam
tom waits
flaming lips
mercury rev
white stripes
neil young
(the list goes on)

nice try though.

PaulJam

Err.

There is.

PaulJam

Errr, exactly. So I don't understand your point. You indirectly acknowledge that Radiohead have created their own unique sound, yet slate people for liking them for that reason. Clearly they didn't invent electronic. Is anyone claiming that? I don't think so.

They're just fucking incredible. This is the best argument for the death of rock and roll I've heard.