Oh Sees Retrospective #23: An Odd Entrances

In the late 90s, if you'll pardon the cliché, it was the best of time and the worst of times to be a Radiohead fan. The best, because the Internet brought together us fans who obsessed over every obscure single, EP, and recording update on the band's official website. The worst, because after releasing OK Computer in Summer 1997, we would have to wait until October 2000 for the next album, Kid A. As if to placate their rabid fanbase, less than a year later Radiohead released Amnesiac, a companion album to Kid A, taken from the same recording sessions (well, other than 'Life In A Glasshouse'). You may be thinking I'm about to draw parallels to A Weird Exits and An Odd Entrances, though you'd be mistaken. To me the true Radiohead parallel is OK Computer and the North American-exclusive Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP. This mini-album, as it was labelled on the cover, serves as a companion piece to OK Computer, full of excellent tracks which either didn't make the cut or didn't flow well with the rest of the album. Despite repeating the song 'Airbag' from OK Computer, it's a release that can be judged on its own merits, just as An Odd Entrances can be despite repeating...well, alright, it doesn't technically repeat any songs, but we'll get to that a bit later.


Following A Weird Exits by a mere three months, An Odd Entrances (I'll be using the same single noun shorthand from the last retrospective hereafter) came out on November 18^th, 2016. Its arrival was somewhat clouded by the announcement two days prior from drummer Ryan Moutinho that he had quit the band mid-tour. Reading the interview with him I linked in the previous retrospective, you get the sense he left in order to pursue his own projects and to step out from the role of 'the drummer' that he had consistently been roped into. Oh Sees would briefly perform, once again, as a trio before Paul Quattrone joined sometime in early 2017. Anyway, in doing research about Odd I was surprised to learn that a couple of the limited edition vinyl versions came with a 7” Flexi-disc of previously unreleased track 'Classic Bananas.' It's a fantastic song that deserves more listens and awareness. Furthermore, it's strange that it wasn't included on either Weird or Odd. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say it's because it's a bit of a throwback to the mid-era sound and the production style doesn't quite match the albums. Also, this reminds me: where the hell is Singles Collection Volume 4 already?!


Clocking in at roughly ten minutes shorter than its predecessor, Odd is a strange beast indeed. It's not quite short enough to be an EP, in my opinion. It's described as an appendix on the Bandcamp page. Then there's Spotify, who have it under 'Singles'! I'm going to go with the Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP nomenclature and refer to it as a mini-album. The closest parallel I can think of in the Oh Sees discography is actually the Moon Sick EP. Both it and Odd contain a batch of great songs (mostly slower/weirder material), they can stand on their own, and they can be taken as supplements to their parent albums. In terms of standing on its own, Odd has plenty of delights that don't require knowledge of Weird to enjoy. It starts with 'You Will Find It Here', one of, if not the best, opening songs on any Oh Sees release. Whenever I make mixes to get other people into this band, it's always my go-to opener. 'The Poem' sounds like it could be on one of the 'solo' Oh Sees records, like Drop or Castlemania. Whimsical lyrics, the guitar sound, and the overall atmosphere make me think of The Beatles circa 1967 or the first Pink Floyd album (also 1967....huh). It's perhaps worth noting that a full half of the tracks on Odd are instrumentals, something the band would continue to sprinkle on future records. I must make quick note of 'Nervous Tech (Nah John)', which is a better version of what 'The Axis' turns into toward its end. However, it's still the weakest track on Odd, relatively speaking, and it goes on too long without enough development. Liner notes indicate it's “derived from 'Go Ahead John' by Miles Davis” which makes a ton of sense when you listen to them back to back. John Dwyer still isn't really soloing in the way that makes the lengthy Miles Davis track slightly more compelling (though I also think that song goes on too long and isn't one of the best from the fusion era Davis releases). It's more like his improv on 'Contraption' off of Live In San Francisco, which is enjoyable in small doses but not for eight minutes straight. If I learned anything from the feedback from the last retrospective, your mileage will vary.


Perhaps more interesting to discuss is how Odd complements/contrasts with Weird. Let's focus on the sibling tracks from both releases. I recommend making a playlist and listening to them “in order”; it's a fun experiment. 'Unwrap The Fiend Pt. 1', from Odd, is pretty straightforward, other than the self-destructing keyboard ending, and establishes the Fiend riff/motif. 'Unwrap The Fiend Pt. 2' is a bit slower/groovier and the guitar has a greater variety of textures. I love the churning/chugging “chorus” part, always makes me visualize machinery moving things around a factory or a sped-up overhead shot of cars driving through a city center. 'Jammed Entrance' is ironically on Exits and has a killer bassline and noodly keyboard/synth solos while Dwyer takes a break from guitar. The drummers are really getting down on this track, it's a feast for percussion lovers. 'Jammed Exit' is equally compelling, with a more simple bassline and a mix that places more emphasis on the keyboard/synth. Can't forget to mention Dwyer's flute soloing on 'Jammed Exit', something that I often forget is there if I'm using Odd as background music while I drive or play videogames. Sure, 'Jammed Exit' is more monotonous than 'Jammed Entrance' but eh, it still works.


As with the Moon Sick and Airbag/How Am I Driving? EPs, mini-album Odd is a worthy quick follow-up to its parent album, one that can stand on its own merits and that can also serve as a companion piece. Lost until the last minute in all of the discussion of these twin releases is the fact that Odd would be the last time the band would operate under the Thee Oh Sees moniker. Starting with Orc, they'd shorten it to Oh Sees, though whether this was a way of signaling a slight change in musical direction or to reflect the new lineup with Paul Quattrone on drums, we'll have to find out next time.

30 For 30: OK Computer by Radiohead

I turned 30 on February 18th. I want to celebrate this, and get myself back into writing, by spending a few weeks rambling about the 30 things that have meant the most to me over the years. These will be from music, movies, books, videogames, and maybe even art and other things for good measure. I feel like my life has been much more about the things I've experienced than it has the people I've known or the places I've traveled to, and these 30 things have helped to make my 30 years more than worth all the innumerable bad things. Expect heartfelt over-sharing and overly analytical explanations galore! In part 10, I talk about the thing that made all of this possible.

On my 30^th birthday, after spending part of the night drinking a couple beers with my Dad and watching the last 2/3 of The Two Towers, I decided to listen to OK Computer. This may not seem like a particularly rowdy way to inaugurate my third decade of existence, but then again, you don't really know me, and so you wouldn't know how important this album has been to my life. You also wouldn't know that I never listen to it anymore. Mainly because I don't need to listen to it anymore.


I guess I should explain.


For at least four nights a week for the entirety of my high school career, I used to fall asleep listening to OK Computer. Sure, this may be a gross exaggeration due to time and sentimentality warping my memory, but it's as “true” as anything else I remember from my youth. I can say with absolute certainty that during that time I really did fall asleep listening to some sort of music every night. On nights when I was feeling especially depressed or anxious, I always went with OK Computer. It was like a world I could go inside to escape everything in my life. Every song is like its own little story, its own atmosphere or idea of music, and somehow they all work together. OK Computer is a record I got lost inside of, over and over, in the same way other people remember getting lost inside the world of a book or movie they loved, over and over, when they were a kid. Those late night OK Computer experiences were like how I imagined drugs or love must feel, that total loss of pain, of doubt, and of the ego.


In a very real, non-hyperbolic way, OK Computer is the central point upon which my life pivots. There was the time before I heard it, when I thought music was just kind of OK, but not as good as action movies, the military, and guns. Then there was the time after I heard it—the only way to encapsulate it is to imagine a torrential, endless downpour of art, music, movies, books, love, poetry, drugs, and interesting people.


This, then, is my world now, and OK Computer was the portal I stepped through to get to it. I can't get back out now, and I don't want to. Perhaps this is why I don't listen to the album that much; it feels like going back to the beginning when I'm not even to the halfway point yet. However, something about turning 30 made me want to give the album a fresh listen, and surprise surprise, it's still amazing. But you knew that, right?


At this point, OK Computer has had its 10^th anniversary, and has long since entered the canon alongside past classics like Dark Side Of The Moon. As with Pink Floyd, I don't usually bother asking people if they've listened to Radiohead when I talk to them about music. It just seems like a basic assumption you can make about people who like music. Even if they can't stand, say, The Beatles or Radiohead, they've at least listened to them enough to form a coherent opinion. So it often feels a little silly to write about OK Computer because it's the music equivalent of telling someone “you know, I really like The Dark Knight.”


Not that I'm equating the two in any way, mind you. Though comparing the themes of OK Computer and The Dark Knight is the sort of headache inducing wank the 20 year old version of me would've been up for. But I digress.


I wish I could say that I have some fresh perspective or insight on OK Computer at age 30. As it happens, I still have the album all-but-memorized, to the point that I almost don't hear it when I listen to it. It's so much a part of my mind, drilled down deep into my subconscious by years of playing it incessantly, that listening to it is almost irrelevant. The only profound thought I had was, “wow, this is the first time I'm hearing OK Computer in my 30s and it still sounds as amazing as it did the first time heard it in my teens!”


So, yes, I don't need to listen to the record that changed my life anymore. I still do, sometimes, but it sort of feels like re-watching The Dark Knight for the umpteenth time and neglecting all the other great movies that are out there. OK Computer's lasting contribution to my life is as much the music itself as it is the very intimation implied by its existence, that of “hey, there's probably a bunch of other stuff like this in the world, stuff that will also make you feel incredible things. You can stay here, but wouldn't you rather go and discover?”



I suppose, then, the only thing left to say is that OK Computer led me to become who I am at age 30, and to be writing these words. Oh, sure, I was already kind of a weird kid who had an interest in writing before I heard the album. And sure, if it hadn't been OK Computer that did a number on me, turned my world from black-and-white to technicolor like the scene from The Wizard Of Oz, it would've been something else instead. Still, though: all these years later and OK Computer still means something to me. It might not mean everything like it once did, but it does make me want to keep going on. It inspires me to keep writing, to keep exploring what's out there, to experience new things, to think about the world in a different way...Just as it once started me on this path I'm on now, it's still around to serve as a reminder of how far I've come and how there's so much farther I want to go.

Animal Collective- Centipede Hz

There are so many factors going on with Centipede Hz that I could have spent the months since its release hitting one topic at a time and still not be out of talking points. It's an album that's worthy of an exhaustive, in-depth examination at some point, but this is not that time. I still don't have a complete grasp on everything about this album, and the mixed reviews it received from others only underscores my uncertainty. For instance, all and/or any of the following statements have felt true to me at one time or another:

1. Centipede Hz is neither a misunderstood masterpiece, nor is it an unmitigated disaster,
2. It has the most unique production style, songwriting, and overall structure of any Animal Collective album,
3. It has the most accurate cover art of any album in recent memory, because it sounds like it looks: a druggy, borderline-amateurish mess with way too many layers,
4. Centipede Hz is overlong, overproduced, and overwritten,
5. Some of these songs are almost as good as the band's past high water marks,
6. Most of these songs are muddled and forgettable

Centipede Hz frustrates me the most because it doesn't neatly fit into the usual slots. It's not great, it's not shit, and yet it's also not average or middling. It's a mess, and I don't mean that in a positive or negative way. It just is a mess. Perhaps the best explanation is that Centipede Hz feels like if a band made polished studio versions of formless demos without allowing themselves any editing or re-writing. In terms of overall sound, you can tell they spent a lot of time and effort making this record, but in terms of overall feel, it comes off like something thrown together over the course of a long weekend with too many drugs and not enough sleep. And then, in the end, they kind of gave up and put out whatever they had done without listening to it while sober and well-rested. For example, 'Wide Eyed', sung (badly) by guitarist Deakin, is like a joke of what someone imagines Merriweather Post Pavilion sounds like; clearer heads and more honest egos would have snipped it from the tracklisting. Yet the production details and transitions into and out of it from its neighboring songs are part of what makes Centipede Hz such an interesting record, and so in a sense it's one of the essential pieces of the Centipede mess.

Much has been made of the fact that this is Animal Collective returning to their experimental roots. On the surface that is true but it's also a lazy, ill-fitting conceit to explain what this record sounds like. After all, it's not the sound the band uses but what they shape that sound into that matters--adding some feedback to Loaded wouldn't make it White Light/White Heat. To put it another way, Feels and Strawberry Jam can be just as abrasive and “experimental” as their first few records, but the accessible framework that supports those sounds/textures makes the songs enjoyable. Centipede Hz tries to have it both ways and fails miserably. An experimental take on their modern sound without the noise and unexpected elements is boring, while enjoyable melodies without compelling, addictive songwriting is even more boring. Even the best tracks, 'Pulleys' and 'Today's Supernatural', sound like they're trying to cram all the sonic details and detritus of Strawberry Jam into four or five minutes and they're almost ruined as a result. Performed live, with layers stripped away, they could be classics.

So I have to ask: is Centipede Hz a live album trying to be a studio album? After all, the simplified hooks and melodies, planted inside a swampy electro-psychedelic production that does them only some favors, seem more fit for energetic performance and sing-a-longs than concentrated headphone listening. All of the songs run together and kind of sound the same, something Animal Collective have always purposefully done in concerts to make the transitions between old songs and newer material less jarring. As such, Centipede Hz is worth a listen just for how very dense the layers are, how the whole album's production gives it a unified flow, and how the songs play off each other. This focus on atmosphere, flow, and production reveals the band as being at a crossroads in their evolution. Having progressed as far as they could as songwriters and emotive vocalists, they're returning to the world of ideas and textures that they sprang from. The issue is that Centipede Hz didn't end up sounding very good when the ideas went from paper to product...which just goes to show you that while you can focus on ideas and textures, you can't use those tricks to make up for weak, half-finished songwriting.

After accusing them of that, it may seem strange to say that the songs of Centipede Hz are, if anything, overwritten. Wait, how can they be both half-finished and overwritten? Well, this comes down to one of the chief flaws of the record: the vocals. Not only have the band taken significant steps backward as songwriters, their vocals have suffered, too. Avey Tare still hasn't shaken the bummer vibes of his Down There album, and Panda Bear seems barely invested in the proceedings at all because (pick your favorite theory):

1. He used all his good ideas on Tomboy,

1. He forgot he was more than the drummer,

1. He was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome during the recording sessions. 

This is all compounded by the fact that there are constant vocals going on during every song. When there are breaks, as on 'Monkey Riches' or during the transitions between songs, all it does is remind you of similar, much better moments from the past. Anyway, adding in one or two 'breathing room' instrumentals would make a huge difference because Centipede Hz comes off as the album version of that friend you have who dominates every conversation. You know the one: he or she has so many ideas and thoughts that they can't say things fast enough, and they don't give you a chance to respond or process. But I digress.

Radiohead's King Of Limbs continually comes to mind when thinking about, but not listening to, Centipede Hz. It, too, is a confusing, half-finished-sounding record from a band with an otherwise excellent winning streak. It, too, is going to be that album in the band's discography that is talked about much more than listened to, by turns savaged and shrugged off by critics and fans alike. As with Limbs, Centipede Hz (regardless of its band's pedigree) is interesting enough to prevent an outright dismissal.

But just barely.

Radiohead- OK Computer Revisited

It's a little strange that I don't own OK Computer on vinyl, since I make it a point to get copies of all of my Favorite Albums Ever on vinyl. While I don't have all of them yet (due to rarity or price or their not having ever been pressed on vinyl) I do find something about the permanence of the format comforting. For instance, I have my Mom's vintage copy of The White Album and it still sounds great almost 45 years later. OK Computer is definitely the sort of thing I want any future daughters and/or sons to get from me as hand-me-downs, largely because it meant a lot to me in my youth but isn't as monolithic to me these days.

That isn't to say that I like OK Computer any less than I did when I first fell in love with it a few months after its release. If anything, I appreciate it even more now from a hardcore, knowledgeable music fan's standpoint because I'm intimately familiar with many of the record's acknowledged influences, like Can, Miles Davis's electric fusion era, and DJ Shadow. Sure, it doesn't sound as groundbreaking and fresh as when all its tricks and mysterious textures were mindblowing to my high school ears, but it's reached the stature and iconic status of many Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd albums. They always show up on lists of “best albums ever”, they have lots of great stories about the recording sessions (often collected in books), they have famous cover art, and seemingly as soon as they came out, you began to see all sorts of bands being accused of ripping them off.

The final quality they share in common is that they're all simultaneously overrated and underrated at the same time. I believe I saw this idea on Allmusic.com, but the basic gist is that a band like the Beatles is so beloved by the masses, so already covered to death, and so praised that they're kind of overrated. I mean, lots of other greats bands and music out there, folks! Yet that doesn't diminish either the impact they had during their release or their enduring influence and listenability.

Depending on your familiarity with music, you may take a few spins to warm up to OK Computer. I wouldn't say it's a matter of someone being too young or too old, or of the album being still-too-ahead-of-its-time. Moreso that not every song is rocking and/or catchy, by which I mean, I think it's fair to call OK Computer an art rock album. It sometimes rocks and it mostly arts. I don't think it's quite the instant classic, immediate favorite for most people like your Dark Side Of The Moon's or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's. You may take to it right away, or you may...take...to...it...eventually. My point is, by the time you're on the 300th or so listen, as I probably am by this point, you'll still find it a treat to listen to. 'Paranoid Android' may just be my most played song ever (the video is certainly my most watched video ever), and I love the way 'Subterranean Homesick Alien' pulls off the trick of using psychedelic sounds without seeming cheesy or dated.

Hmm, so what else? Well, imagine you found out Pink Floyd released an EP shortly after Dark Side Of The Moon, and it had b-sides and outtake material that was arguably as good as the album itself. Wouldn't that be awesome? Hey presto, Radiohead did just that with the Airbag EP. I think it's actually referred to as a “mini-album” on the U.S. version, but that isn't fair since it's not strictly new material and it includes a song from OK Computer. In fact it's the first song on both releases, so it's a little jarring when you listen to the EP and there isn't that little computer beep that segues into 'Paranoid Android' as on the album.

Lastly, any hardcore Radiohead fans out there who haven't watched the OK Computer-era documentary, Meeting People Is Easy, owe it to themselves to track down a copy. I have a well worn VHS tape of it that I paid way too much money for at Media Play (RIP) in 1999. I enjoy popping it in every now and then to remind myself of that desperate time period I spent listening to everything I could find by them, random website MP3s and sketchy Napster downloads my only sources, waiting for the next release. This was the time between the Airbag EP and Kid A's release in late 2000, which was only two years at the most but felt like eternity to an obsessive fan.

Where that obsessive fan went, I can't really say. Allow this, then: I still dig OK Computer. I wish I had it on vinyl. Or wax cylinder.

Essay: Low In The 00's Pt. 3

This is the final entry in an essay series on Low's albums from Trust to Drums and Guns. Look for a review of their new record, C'mon, sometime this weekend.

Drums and Guns

When a Low album starts off by proclaiming that soldiers, babies, poets, liars, and pretty people “are all gunna die”, you begin to wonder if some mistake has been made somewhere. Surely this must be another of Alan Sparhawk's sideprojects...? But, no, the cover clearly says Low on it. “Well, that was a strange opener, let's see how the next one goes,” you mutter to yourself.

Soon: “...what the hell is with all these loops? Where are the guitars and Mimi Parker's stark drumming? Boy, this is a weird one.”

As alluded to in the last essay, Drums and Guns is a very different sounding record from what Low had done before, even on the former big departure The Great Destroyer. Excepting 'Shots & Ladders' from Trust, some obscure split singles/collaborations, a remix records, and the underrated Songs For A Dead Pilot EP, Low had never explored this sort of musical territory before, doubly so on a main album. If The Great Destroyer could be accurately-but-lazily described as Low's rock album, then Drums and Guns could similarly be labelled their electronic album. Really, the nearest comparison I can think of is the sound of the more experimental/electronic/minimalist tracks from Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac. 'Take Your Time' is practically a Radiohead cover, so closely does the piano and tense atmosphere recall that band.

Whether Drum and Guns was a reaction to the second Gulf War (doubtful, since it was a couple years too late to be relevant) or the reception to The Great Destroyer (methinks no; they don't seem like the kind of band to do what they think people will like), Low were moved to craft songs which ooze along on currents of discrete loops, fractured guitar textures, and barely-there drumming. This record's closest kin is found in the less industrial and intense moments from Scott Walker's Tilt and The Drift, the parts where he sounds like he's brooding alone in abandoned cathedrals or muttering eulogies for civilization while the last television and computer screens in some kind of futuristic urban wasteland are flickering toward death, displaying only static or random colors. What I mean is, it may sound like Radiohead circa Kid A, but it feels more lime Scott Walker's recent work.

At the same time, the lyrics tend toward a more outward looking posture than I'm aware Low have had before or since. Even mid-album trifle 'The Hatchet', which helps relieve the tension of the rest of the album and calls back to the funner moments from The Great Destroyer, ostensibly is aimed at some other unnamed band. At any rate, without a doubt a theme of violence runs throughout the record; after all, underneath the olive branch of 'The Hatchet' is the copycat charge that the unnamed band's records “sound a lot like mine.” The brief 'Your Poison' could pass for a 60s political folk song, directly addressing the listener with the old fashioned terminology “good people.” And 'Murderer', if taken at face value, reads like a disturbing prayer from a fanatical/fundamentalist Christian, ready to give back violence in some kind of retribution or revenge against perceived worthy-of-punishment evil in the world.

Drums and Guns is the kind of record which sounds completely original and like a bolt-out-of-the-blue unless you are intimately familiar with the band it comes from and/or the album's influences. Even with reference points like modern day Scott Walker and '00-era Radiohead, though, this music is the most conceptually interesting and accomplished of Low's releases from the last decade. I would still waffle between this and Things We Lost In The Fire as best record from this time frame, but Drums and Guns is much more ambitious without its reach ever exceeding its grasp. If we can posit The Great Destroyer as a kind of shattering of any preconceived notions about who Low are and what kind of music they can make, then Drums and Guns is the sound of the aftermath, fragmented shards of sound that don't qualify as rock or 'slowcore.'

While this is certainly a dark and sometimes disturbing album ('Violent Past' alludes to some kind of strangulation taking place), it still manages to avoid the morose, melancholy, and leaden feel of Low's early music. This is partially thanks to Drums and Guns being the bands shortest album, though mostly it's thanks to the way the band never lets a song drag on too long or have too skeletal of a structure. How much of the indistinct sounds and loops which fill up the background are due to Dave Fridmann is hard to say, though I would imagine he had to have some input, since Drums and Guns sounds very little like the overdriven, raucous The Great Destroyer. In fact, despite the lyrics and droning, distorted organ, 'Violent Past' makes for an uplifting, optimistic sounding album closer.

This sense of optimism, along with a more immediate and melodic aesthetic, would serve the band well, after a four year break, on their 2011 release, C'mon. But that is something I'll be tackling in a forthcoming review...

Panda Bear- Tomboy

Panda Bear's Person Pitch wasn't just another album. It has that intangible special-ness that separates the great albums from the masterpieces, albums that not only make year end lists and 'best of decade' lists, but also—and perhaps most crucially—personal lists of favorite albums by both fans and critics.Panda Bear's much anticipated new album, Tomboy, will likely make many lists for best of 2011 even though I don't think it will be as beloved and embraced as Pitch was. I will still be thinking about, listening to, and recommending Person Pitch for decades to come; Tomboy, perhaps not as much.

Whereas Pitch felt like something special, one of those once in a lifetime records that will go down in history, Tomboy is, let's say, more of a 'normal' album. It's excellent music yet it lacks that utterly unique sound and special-ness that made Pitch such an immediate and lasting delight. First things first, though:Tomboy is not a sequel to Person Pitch. Secondly, you can rest assured that, even though all but one of the tracks he's released on 7” singles leading up toTomboy's release appear on it, too, they have different enough mixing, sonic elements either brought to the fore or pushed to the background, that you won't feel fleeced. They're the same songs following the same structure, true, but 'Surfer's Hymn', for instance, is much improved on the album, sounding less electronic and claustrophobic, the extra set of buried vocals excised entirely.

Lastly, Tomboy follows in the pattern of fellow Animal Collective member Avey Tare's 2010 solo release, Down There, in that it's a surprisingly dark record. Whereas Down There was going for a “hellish swamp” vibe according to Tare, following his divorce as it did, Tomboy feels more insular and inner-troubled. During the record's latter half, I get a mental image of Panda Bear sitting alone in a basement studio with no windows, particularly during 'Scheherezade' and its looming, cinematic piano chords. Hell, the extreme reverb he uses on his voice during this track makes it sound like he's stuck inside a well.

Or hiding in a cave. It seems the man who once admonished listeners that he didn't want us to take pills anymore may still be struggling with unnamed internal issues. In fact, the general theme of Tomboy seems to be about pulling back and focusing on yourself and the ones you love. Ironically, then,Tomboy is more listener friendly and inviting than Person Pitch. The melodies and hooks come frequently and in intriguing ways on the album's first half, including one of his most impressive vocals ever on the soaring 'Last Night At The Jetty.' As said before, this album is also more 'normal' than Person Pitchwhich further adds to the listener-friendly-ness, by which I mean, the songs are shorter and self-contained. Nothing here is as slow burn-y and trance inducing as Pitch centerpieces 'Bros' and 'Good Girl/Carrots', and nothing is as unique and indescribable as 'I'm Not' or 'Comfy In Nautica.' Yet for all the talk ofTomboy being a more guitar oriented album, this descriptor proved as accurate as Radiohead's claim that Amnesiac would be more of a guitar album than Kid A. It was, to a degree, but very little on this record sounds much like guitars as used by most rock bands, even by Radiohead in fact, other than the one on the title track. Rather the guitar is employed as another textural tool in Panda Bear's arsenal and ends up making the music sound more mechanical—that is to say, programmed and sampled and looped and tinkered with via computers—than the organic sounding Person Pitch.

With this in mind, the best touchstone for Tomboy is the stuff Bradford Cox of Deerhunter has been doing as Atlas Sound, that kind of “solo artist but using lots of guitar pedals and electronics to fill out his sound” sort of thing. Indeed, Panda Bear guested on the last Atlas Sound album, and if you took the vocals away, I could see Atlas Sound producing something like 'Alsatian Darn.' Still, only Panda Bear could pull off these vocals, and only he would have the guts to follow a buoyant pop song like 'Last Night At The Jetty' with what is ostensibly the album's most dissonant track, the aptly named 'Drone', which I recall being more abrasive on the 7” single version. Anyway, if Panda Bear wanted to shake the notion that he's the 'pop' member of Animal Collective while Avey Tare is the 'noise/experimental' guy, I guess he should've made an album more like Down There.

Or even Danse Manatee.

Not that I think he really cares about such a perception, since he's clearly too busy recording, touring, spending time with his family, and/or doing drugs to have time to worry about such things. What's more, whatever darkness crept into Tomboy isn't likely to last. Though not as special as Person Pitch, this record is a must-hear; though not as bright as Person Pitch, this record still ends with the impression of having come through darkness rather than leaving us still stuck in it. The final redemptive washes of 'Benfica' fade away like the pervasive crashing-waves sounds heard throughout the album, and Panda Bear gets up to leave his basement studio, ready to start the long wait til his next batch of music begins to form. What am I most looking forward to from him next? A new Jane album, obviously.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Radiohead- The King Of Limbs

I have to take this album very personally not because I was/am a huge Radiohead fan and so I take all of their stuff personally, but because they decided to release King Of Limbs on my birthday this year. I mean, come on. It was even originally scheduled for the 19th and they bumped it up a day. I don't believe in god, but that seems like divine providence or intervention or something.

Still, I took my time getting around to King Of Limbs. My passion for the band waned once they began to take too long between releases, not to mention I discovered hundreds of other bands I enjoyed just as much as them. King Of Limbs had gotten the usual load of good reviews, though a bit more mixed this time, and so I put off listening to it, assured that they wouldn't let me down. After all, I didn't jump on In Rainbows right away, and it had been a nice surprise: easily the briskest and most inviting record they had ever made. Yet King Of Limbs promised to be even more brisk than In Rainbows, and something about its borderline-whimsical release, announced out of the blue mere days before its release, and subsequent lack-of-hype made, me think it was going to be something it's not.

By now you've probably seen that I only gave this album three stars out of five. I want you to keep in mind what such a rating means, or should mean. Not that the music is bad or not worth hearing, just that it fails to excel or is kind of average. I want to stress this because what I'm about to say may sting: King Of Limbs is a lazy album from a band who arguably may be running out of steam, but who are inarguably coasting at this point in their career.

Realistically, neither Hail To The Thief nor In Rainbows were huge leaps for Radiohead in the way that their second, third, and fourth albums had been. So don't think that I dislike King Of Limbs because it failed to be Important-with-a-capital-i. Rather it's because the band hardly sounds like it's trying. They're still as gifted as ever at production details and always-perfect choice of instruments and mixing, particularly on the opener 'Bloom' and the menacing organ that builds throughout 'Feral.' But the songs are completely lacking this time out. It's as if they focused on ideas, textures, and tones while leaving melody and hooks at the door. I keep waiting for the songs to reach that peak or moment when everything finally clicks into place, yet at its best Limbs never manages to shake the impression that it was recorded in a hurry and with very little finesse. On a background-music, half-paying-attention kind of listen, Limbssucceeds, but as an album composed of discrete songs you focus on intently, it almost-fails. Certainly the more abstract moments of Kid A aren't as catchy as something from The Bends, but they were memorable and unique.

I think Limbs tries to combine In Rainbows with Kid A and it fails because the songs just aren't there. A band sounding like itself and not “going” or “progressing” anywhere is fine, as long as the songs are good. Hell, Amnesiac was taken from the same recording sessions as Kid A so it was “just Radiohead sounding like Radiohead”, too. However, it's an excellent album in its own right because the songs and ideas are there. Limbs may work for people who aren't overly familiar with Radiohead, but as soon as they go backwards in the band's discography, everything on this record is bested by the past.

The only song I can remember from King Of Limbs, 'Give Up The Ghost', sticks out to me because it sounds like something the Fleet Foxes might do on the album that will come after Helplessness Blues. Otherwise I can't imagine longtime fans finding a lot of new favorites on Limbs, and I would say that not even comparing this music to their past high water marks. Even on its own merits, it's strange how mediocre and slight it all sounds. Ultimately this is music that has only inspired further ambivalence about the band on my part. I can't shake the feeling that they were just kind of messing about in the studio for a year or so without giving it much thought or effort and decided to release the results out of sheer inertia. Let's just say, I can't imagine waiting four years for a new album from any other band and not being furious that it sounds so half-assed. I never thought I would say this, but I think Radiohead have reached that post-Abbey Road, post-The Wall phase of their career where they have nothing left to say and it may be time to hang it up or take more than four years off between releases.

3 Poorly Dran Stars Out Of 5

Album Of The Week/Primer Part 10: Radiohead- In Rainbows

There are two important threads running through In Rainbows that I feel are the key to appreciating it:

1) This is Radiohead's most human album, full of songs about love, worrying about death, and wondering how it all adds up.

2) This is Radiohead's most direct and concise album, full of songs that are road tested, tight, and immediately engaging.

Due to both of these, In Rainbows can initially strike a listener as being...too easy. Radiohead albums are supposed to be something that you struggle with and have to think a lot about, aren't they?? They're supposed to grow on you and open up new layers and meaning with time, aren't they??

In Rainbows commits the "crime" of being an accessible, immediately enjoyable Radiohead album. Patterned after the lean-and-mean classic rock albums of old that barely scraped the 35 minute mark, In Rainbows is the sound of a band accepting that they might not have any place left to go, any great experiments to undertake, aside from the least obvious one: to make a great pop album. Which is exactly what this album is. Lyrically and musically, it is Radiohead's pop album.

Though, to be fair, it's still really artsy and interesting, songs full of small delights and surprises.

If Hail To The Thief was a long, semi-sprawling album that collected and perfected all of the sounds that the band had explored up to that point, then In Rainbows is the band boiling down everything that makes them great until what's left in the bottom of the cooking pot is 40 minutes of perfection. What's most surprising about the music on In Rainbows is the revealing of the emotional, human heart that's been at the heart of Radiohead songs all along. Kid A was pretty abstract, but for music that was often criticized for being withdrawn, intellectual, and cold, using the Rosetta's Stone of In Rainbows it begins to make more sense. At any rate, Thom Yorke remarked that most of this album was his attempt at "seduction songs", which helps explain why In Rainbows sounds so romantic, (melo)dramatic, and beautiful-but-with-tinges-of-melancholy. Speaking of the latter, for my money, 'All I Need' is one of the best unrequited love songs ever.

Beyond all of this, though, In Rainbows is Radiohead's most listenable and downright fun album yet. Yorke's voice is at the heart of every song and carries the emotional heavy lifting while the rest of the band deliver on every level. The rock songs rock, the ballads tear at the heart strings, and the other stuff does whatever and sounds cool. I will admit right now that this may not be my favorite Radiohead album, but it's their most accessible and I-wanna-listen-to-it-over-and-over album. I simply can never get enough of it, its melodies, hooks, and sounds burrowing deep into the pop center of my music brain. I mean, I've had it for over a year and it still frequently floats around in my car for opportunistic listening. I chalk most of this up to how great the songs are. Radiohead were always an "ideas" and "sounds" sort of band, but who knew they were a "songs" sort of band, too?? I guess I always have but didn't realize it until now. Witness the clanging percussion and haunting chorus of voices on 'Reckoner', which produces an indescribable atmosphere that I'll never forget as long as I live. Witness 'Nude', finally completed after kicking around since the OK Computer era, and to these ears at least better than all of the previous versions I've heard. Witness the absolutely stunning 'Videotape', which is arguably the best closing song from a band with no lack of great closing songs. That it is the goodbye message of a dying man, ending with the line "today has been the most perfect day I have ever seen", gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. Pay attention to the way the drum loop slowly collapses in on itself over the course of the song...it's one of those perfect touches that you may not notice right away because hey, this is Radiohead's pop album and you don't have to listen close...but give this album another listen and those little details and sounds you've come to love Radiohead for will be there.

Certainly, touring these songs before finishing them, playing at American music festivals like the hippie-ish/classic rock-y Bonnaroo, and being free of their record contract contributed to the sound of In Rainbows. But I don't need to talk about those elements. Of all their albums, this is the one Radiohead release that doesn't need any kind of context or explanation to enjoy. It may not be their best album in my estimation, but we should be so lucky that other bands would release pop albums of such accessibility and enjoyment while still retaining an edge and depth.

Primer Part 9: Thom Yorke- The Eraser

No offense to the Mike D and Badly Drawn Boy fans out there, but I don't think anyone would disagree with the notion that 'Rabbit In Your Headlights' was the best track from UNKLE's Psyence Fiction album. It was a rare glimpse of one of the members of Radiohead working outside of the band and paired Thom Yorke with one of the influences on the sound of OK Computer, specifically lead track 'Airbag.' That is to say, DJ Shadow. At or before this same time, Yorke's fascination with electronic music grew by leaps and bounds until, during the Kid A/Amnesiac sessions, he had all but given up on guitar based music. 2003's Hail To The Thief ably recombined the acoustic/guitar and keyboard/drum machine/loops aspects of Radiohead's music, yet Yorke was left with the itch to pursue his fascination with electronic music. During the long downtime between Thief and the eventual In Rainbows, he did just that.

"I don't wanna hear that word solo" (emphasis added) Yorke insisted of The Eraser, but I'm not sure what else it should be called. If it was a side project or one-off lark, why use his name on it?? Why not stealth release it without his name?? Ultimately, though, the name doesn't matter because you know exactly what you're getting into with The Eraser: Thom Yorke letting his whims run free, producing a bedroom/laptop electronic album. Its ambition, scope, and palette are deliberately reduced from a proper Radiohead album, so those in the audience expecting some sort of secret masterpiece or new direction will be disappointed. The music on here is like Yorke continuining in the direction of tracks like 'Everything In Its Right Place, 'Kid A', and 'Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box.'

The Eraser's success or failure depends entirely on how much you like Thom Yorke's voice. Much as electronics are the brush he's painting with here, if you can't stand the guy's voice then you're going to hate this. As In Rainbows would bear out, during and after Hail To The Thief Yorke had begun to appreciate his voice again, to allow it to be the centerpiece of a song instead of, as during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions, using it as another element or texture, burying it in the mix from time to time. The lyrics in general are also much more verbose and deal with more specific and personal topics than they had in awhile (this, too, points the way to the borderline traditional and romantically inclined In Rainbows).

So, yes, this album is like being locked in a room with Thom Yorke and a healthy supply of samplers, loop machines, laptops, keyboards, drum machines, and a microphone. If that idea thrills you, then The Eraser is for you. The less experimental, hardcore, and noisy elements of influences like Aphex Twin and Autechre are prominent and the best hint of the sound here. The title track lurches to life with staggered piano chords and a minimalist drum machine backing. 'The Clock', appropriate to its title, sounds like a time piece malfunctioning, with glitches and cut-up loops creaking in and out, Yorke's voice sailing through the typhoon and giving us ground to stand on. 'Black Swan' apparently samples some recordings done by Radiohead and sounds the least "solo laptop electronic album" of the nine tracks, with what is probably a guitar(!!) laying down a sidewinding rhythm. Meanwhile, Yorke warns us that "you have tried your best to please everyone, but it just isn't happening."

Taking his own advice with this album?? You decide.

The Eraser is an odd bird because it's weirdly thrilling in a microcosmic way. Something about those sluggish keyboard chords on 'Atoms For Peace' sits in my head and won't go away. Every song has one or two things that will fire up the pleasure centers in your brain, but nothing about this album is majestic, anthemic, or stunning in the way Radiohead's albums are. Not to mention that there's a downside and an upside to having an album with a consistent 'sound': it's great, because the songs work well together and there isn't a dud in the bunch, but it's bad because none of them strike me as especially outstanding and this is the sort of music you have to be in the mood for. The Eraser demands headphones and quiet contemplation; though electronic, it isn't electronic in a dance music sort of way.

It was only recently that I got around to The Eraser and I suspect it will remain that way for Radiohead fans of the future. It's the sort of solo/side project release that you're aware of and eventually pick up, and you enjoy it a lot, but it doesn't fill you with the same sleepless fascination that full blown Radiohead albums do. It's a good little bedroom/laptop electronic album, in the end, and reminded me, at least, just how much I love Yorke's voice in any context: DJ Shadow collaboration, PJ Harvey and Bjork guest appearances, inside the Radiohead context, or on his own.

Video: Radiohead- Reckoner

We're drawing to a close with the Radiohead Primer entries, so here's a video to give me a bit more time to dig into Thom Yorke's solo album, The Eraser, and formulate a proper review. 'Reckoner' is a pretty good example of the excellence that In Rainbows has in store. This performance is taken from a webcast or something they did called 'Scotch Mist', so if you're wondering what that weird stuff is at the beginning, it's supposed to be there.

Album Of The Week/Primer Part 8: Radiohead- Hail To The Thief

As Radiohead had already released three albums by the end of 2002 (assuming you count the EP/mini-LP live album I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings), it was particularly surprising to me when Hail To The Thief came out in the summer of 2003. For a band with a reputation for being studio rats and perfectionists, it seemed to be a adjustment of the celestial order when the band took four years to deliver another album. I picture some winged creature bathed in light saying to itself, "ha ha, that'll teach those Oxford-ites for trying to keep up a Beatles-esque release rate!!" But let's set chronology and celestial beings aside for a moment and consider Hail To The Thief as a point in Radiohead's career that is important for almost every reason but its statement and musical experimentation. This was perhaps the first album in Radiohead's career that didn't seem to have some major artistic thesis, some major change or development to offer. I think some reviewers drug it over the coals for this; hey, Radiohead were supposed to make albums that changed the world, weren't they??

If Hail To The Thief sounds like a victory lap, a consolidation of everything that made the band great up 'til that point, than it's not a bad thing. During the sessions for this album, Radiohead were riding high on the good will from the Kid A and Amnesiac albums as well as what Ed O'Brien described as a "swagger" that the band developed on tour. Combine all of this with the fact that Hail To The Thief was recorded in a fairly short period of time (apparently, most of the songs were finished in two weeks), hardly the year or three birthing process of Radiohead of old. And the thing was recorded in a Los Angeles studio, of all places, hardly the sort of locale associated with the glowering English band.

So here's the score so far: an album that consolidates all of the strengths of the band; an album that was recorded coming off of successful tours during which the band had developed a "swagger"; an album that was recorded in sunny LA; an album that was recorded in a short amount of time. Would Radiohead go pop?? Would Radiohead return to the anthemic alt rock of The Bends??

Well, not so much. But kind of.

The immediate impression of Hail To The Thief is that it is both more of a guitar oriented album and more of a full band sound than the Kid A/Amnesiac recordings. This much is true, but the band have not forgotten the lessons of those albums. This album ably makes use of keyboards, loops, drum machines, and other experimental elements alongside the guitars and pianos of old. The difference is that Hail To The Thief has a more "live" sound to it. It is an immediate and sprawling album that leaves only a few details and secrets to pick up on subsequent listens. If and when there all those electronic elements, you get the impression they were played "live" in a room with the rest of the band. Which, apparently, is how it was done, at least according to the always dubious Wikipedia.

Forget the alternate song titles and oddly memorable signs-making-up-street-maps artwork and Hail To The Thief reveals itself as Radiohead's most self assured and effortless album. There is indeed a swagger about it, a drunken headlong rush that may not make for Radiohead's most accomplished or groundbreaking work but is still worthy to stand alongside their best.

That's because it was at this point in their career when they had many tools at their disposal and began to focus on making fantastic songs with a confidence and power that it always felt like the band never knew they had. This sense of swagger, confidence, and "focus on the songs" would be more prominent on 2007's In Rainbows but it is here, too. Hail To The Thief is Radiohead's longest album but there isn't a clunker here; frequently one is pleasantly surprised by interesting twists and unexpected turns, whether it's the towering drum intricacies of 'There There', the short-but-touching 'I Will'; the emphatic "raindrops" chant of 'Sit Down, Stand Up', the guitar led groove of 'Go To Sleep' which picks up where 'I Might Be Wrong' left off; 'We Suck Young Blood' with its absurd handclaps and a sneaky breakdown at the 2:51 mark; and finally 'Myxomatosis' with its thick, blaring dance club keyboards and Yorke's free floating vocal performance that winds in and out of the song. Trent Reznor's last two albums as Nine Inch Nails to date--Year Zero and The Slip--may not be as well known or surprising as The Downward Spiral, but there's a sense of confidence, swagger, and almost fun about them. The same goes for Radiohead's Hail To The Thief and In Rainbows.

Hail To The Thief is neither a revolution nor an evolution. Rather it is a kind of lateral step, the sound of Radiohead ceasing to fret about what they're doing and instead merely enjoying the simple process of making music together. It isn't as light hearted and lean as In Rainbows and it isn't as important/surprising as OK Computer and Kid A, but it is still a really great album.

Primer Part 7: Radiohead- I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings

Radiohead began this decade like a shot, releasing three things before 2002: Kid A in 2000 and Amnesiac as well as the live EP/mini-LP I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings both in 2001. My impression at the time was that this was a reminder to the fans that Radiohead were indeed still a rock band; even if their newest albums had been stripped down and experimental, they remained an awe inspiring live act. I saw Radiohead in the early Fall of 2003, after the release of Hail To The Thief, and I can tell you that the in-person-experience exceeds the slices presented on I Might Be Wrong. In thinking about that concert and returning to this live document over for the past few days, though, it's occurred to me how important the tours during the Kid A/Amnesiac era must have been for the band. If all of the members weren't always playing on every song on the albums, trying to present those songs live enabled them to change, add, or delete elements, giving every Radiohead member a chance to help shape the sound for an audience.

Radiohead are a great live band but they aren't a great live band in the way that Phish or Animal Collective are. They don't change the songs too greatly, they don't segue them together, and there is no true improvisation going on. What they have is an energy and power that is almost astonishing. The songs are played almost exactly as they are on the albums, so if you're going with the expectation of some musical journey or epiphany, someone has been lying to you. The songs from Kid A and Amnesiac are the most surprising and interesting ones to see live, in my opinion, because each member doesn't have the usual role to fulfill. I think of Radiohead as fundamentally a rock combo unit--singer, guitarists, bassist, drummer--but when they approach the songs of Kid A and Amnesiac this goes out the window. They couldn't reproduce all the elements of those albums live, and at times they need to add or change things as well. This is why I find I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings so fascinating, because it approximates what Radiohead would be like if they approached all of their songs in a live show with more of a liberal attitude.

'The National Anthem' begins this EP with scorched Earth throttling, noticeably faster and dirtier than the studio version. The bass is coated in fuzzy distortion, the drums a bit more breakneck, the horn section replaced by eerie and screechy electronics. 'I Might Be Wrong' is similarly faster and dirtier with more a pounding beat. 'Idioteque' is a true rave up, ending abruptly as if everyone collapsed from imitating Thom's seizure dancing. 'Everything In Its Right Place' sounds like a live remix; when I saw the band in 2003, they ended the show with it, the band members slowly leaving the stage one by one while Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien continued to fiddle with nobs, looping and distorting samples of Thom's voice and the sounds of the rest of the band. Of most interest to fans will be 'Like Spinning Plates', an acoustic piano take on the eerie backwards electronic experiment of the album version, as well as a performance of the unreleased ballad 'True Love Waits' (which is mostly unspectacular despite what most reviews say, though I do like the line "I'm not living/I'm just killing time.")

Like everything they've released after Pablo Honey, if you're a fan of Radiohead you'll want this live release in your collection. It does leave one desperately hoping for a full fledged live album or DVD (rumors are floating around of something along the lines of the latter, probably taken from their performance at Bonnaroo a couple years ago), but taken on its own terms this is an excellent release. It proved that Radiohead were still a band and also still a great rock band. Their next release would see the band letting this feel slip back into their studio work as well.

Primer Part 6: Radiohead- Amnesiac

With hindsight, it must be said that it's too bad that Radiohead didn't release Kid A and Amnesiac on the same day. Since the two albums are from the same sessions and the band had toyed with the idea of a double album, they should've shoved the two releases down the record company's collective throat. It would've changed a lot about the reception of both of these dense works, but I think it would have worked in Amnesiac's favor, spared it the fate of being known as "the leftovers from Kid A." Even today I wonder about people who are just getting into Radiohead, who might hear Amnesiac before Kid A, or at least hear them concurrently. For my part, it would be futile for me to pretend that I didn't experience the eight month wait between the releases, didn't hear them with that sense of separation and expectation.

With that in mind, if you're just here for the Consumer Report's angle, know that Amnesiac as a whole is not better than Kid A. It is, however, a very, very good album and expands on everything Kid A did. There was some talk after Kid A's release that the "next album" would be more of a return to the guitar based rock of previous Radiohead releases, but I think this was a miscommunication. When they said "next album" I think they meant the eventual Hail To The Thief and not Amnesiac, the latter of which has tracks that are more experimental as well as some that are more rocking/accessible than Kid A.

Amnesiac has the basic sound and techniques of Kid A--it is just as minimalist, stripped down, and experimental; that rock music but-not-with-the-typical-90s-alt-rock sound--but offers different results. It visits (revisits??) many of the same themes and sounds that Kid A offered..but it has a different atmosphere and feel, doesn't it?? Listen to them back to back. They feel similar but not identical. Well, as I said, that's because this one takes Kid A to both extremes. There are the experimental tracks which trump anything on Kid A for sheer bravery: the jittery machine funk nightmare lockstep of 'Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors' and the "Thom learned how to sing this backwards and then we reversed the tape of him singing backward to give it a surreal nature" electronic schizophrenia of 'Like Spinning Plates.' But there's also the borderline-dirty guitar groove of 'I Might Be Wrong' and the Smiths-esque jangly guitar rock of 'Knives Out.'

All of this variety comes at a price, however, because Amnesiac is the most disjointed and badly sequenced album in Radiohead's career. It's something you only notice when you compare it to their other works, because it simply doesn't have the same seemingly effortless flow and excellent pacing of a Kid A or The Bends. This, then, is partially responsible for why I don't prefer Amnesiac, but the other reason is two-fold: 'Hunting Bears' is probably the worst track Radiohead has made since Pablo Honey, an asinine and ineffectual guitar wank instrumental, while 'Morning Bell/Amnesiac' is a different version of 'Morning Bell' from Kid A. It's an interesting idea that ties together the two albums, but this one is inarguably inferior even if I still like it.

Which is how I feel about Amnesiac, actually. It's inferior to Kid A but I still like it. Any Radiohead fan needs it. And I can totally understand those who think it's their best work. But for me and the majority, it'll--unfairly or not--always be known as "the thing that came out after Kid A and was even from the same recording sessions but wasn't quite as good as Kid A."

Album Of The Week/Primer Part 5: Radiohead- Kid A

"I don't remember much time playing keyboards. It was more an obsession with sound, speakers, the whole artifice of recording. I see it like this: a voice into a microphone onto a tape, onto your CD, through your speakers is all as illusory and fake as any synthesizer - it doesn't put Thom in your front room - but one is perceived as 'real' the other, somehow 'unreal'... It was just freeing to discard the notion of acoustic sounds being truer."-Jonny Greenwood

In my relatively young life, Kid A was the first major release that felt like what the kids today call a "game changer." It was very different from the rest of the music I was listening to, even the things Radiohead had done before themselves. It was a difficult album in the sense that one had to struggle with it for a time before unraveling where it came from, where it was trying to go, and what, if anything, it accomplished. I had give some critical thought and consideration to music before Kid A, but it was the first album I can remember being so captivated by while still having a hard time getting my head around it.

In retrospect, Radiohead practically had to make this kind of music because with OK Computer they had taken guitar based rock music as far as it could go. The band admitted that they argued frequently and had a lot of trouble deciding on a direction to take during the various sessions that eventually birthed Kid A. Bizarrely enough, the "difficult" and "experimental" Kid A debuted at the top of the charts in America, a moment as surreal as any in history. All of this is kind of strange when you listen to the album now, with 9 years of history behind it, because it feels and sounds like such humble, stripped down, and minimalist creation. This album and its sister release, Amnesiac, are undoubtedly the most experimental and difficult stuff that Radiohead ever produced, but they achieved this not through embracing atonality, noise, or electronic music. Rather it was achieved through paring down songs to only the necessary elements, through allowing the lyrics to grow ever more abstract and minimalist, and through abandoning the dominant 'alternative' sound that had been the primary moving force of rock for over a decade. In allowing themselves to be influenced by the underground hip hop, experimental/ambient techno, modern/avant garde classical music, and then-growing post-rock scenes, Radiohead created an album that was still rock music but didn't have the power chords, distortion, and soloing that most associated with rock music, let alone what most associated with Radiohead. If they wanted to get any further away from 'Creep' than the title track to Kid A, they would have to become another band. With such a popular group breaking their music down and rebuilding from scratch, I would argue that Radiohead helped set the tone for this decade, musically, showing a generation of up-and-comers that you could do whatever you wanted and someone would understand and appreciate it.

Set all of these ideas and historical importances aside, though, because Kid A is a dizzying release bursting with exciting ideas and sounds. You won't even hear anything identifiable as a guitar until the fourth track, the post-modern drift of 'How To Disappear Completely.' And wow, how audacious it was to start the album with 'Everything In Its Right Place': it literally sounds like a remix of a song instead of the song itself, Yorke's voice thrown around in a blender in the background while keyboards build, peak, and peal off. Remember, there's no drums or guitars on this at all. Consider that the two most traditional sounding guitar tracks, 'Optimistic' and 'In Limbo', are joined by a little segue jam sort of thing and don't arrive until the mid-point of the album. Finally, remember that Kid A's most astonishing songs come in the last three, a varied bunch that demonstrate Radiohead's range and ability. First, the electronic throwdown 'Idioteque', which is an absolute beast live. Second, the underrated 'Morning Bell', with one of drummer Phil Selway's best performances supporting everything, a stuttering live-techno thump, not to mention that incredible moment around the 3:00 mark where Yorke starts scat-singing to the beat and the band builds to an electric freak-out. And finally, the beautiful 'Motion Picture Soundtrack', pump organ and all, which has always reminded me of the way The White Album ends with the similarly schmaltzy-but-in-a-good-way 'Good Night.'

It's hard to choose between OK Computer and Kid A. I think that OK Computer is better known and better loved, but Kid A is the more impressive and fascinating work of art in my book. It tries things and goes places that Radiohead had only hinted at before, never settling for an easy hook, melody, or chord change. Nothing is ever obvious about this album and that's what makes it such a rewarding, continually challenging and interesting release. You couldn't legitimately make a list of "best" or "most important" albums from this decade without it on there, and even if you don't like Radiohead, you can't deny the importance of something like Kid A, perhaps the most experimental and "out of left field" album to debut at the top of the American sales charts.

Album Of The Week/Primer Part 4: Radiohead- OK Computer

Kurt Vonnegut wrote five novels before Slaughterhouse-Five and eight after, yet it's the work he will be remembered for always. You may personally prefer other books of his (for me, Breakfast Of Champions is his best), critics may claim that other of his books are underrated and/or that Slaughterhouse-Five is overrated, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a novel that belongs to dictionary entries, short biographies, and lists of "best books ever" or some such thing. It belongs to eternity; it has been and will be taught in schools. Moreover, it was the book that made Kurt Vonnegut a household name, gaining him fame and, if not fortune, then a comfortable life.

Radiohead made two albums before OK Computer and four after, yet it's the work they will be remembered for always. You may personally prefer other albums of their's (for me, Kid A is their best), critics may claim that other of their albums are underrated and/or that OK Computer is overrated, but it doesn't change the fact that it's an album that belongs to dictionary entries, short biographies, and lists of "best albums ever" or some such thing. It belongs to eternity; it has been and will be enjoyed and studied extensively by music listeners and critics. Moreover, it was the album that made Radiohead a household name, giving them fame, semi-fortune, and an uncomfortable life (as evidence by the documentary Meeting People Is Easy and the direction of Kid A and Amnesiac).

I really don't think there's an original angle to approach OK Computer from, review-wise, unless you're just including healthy doses of your history with the album. Like other "best albums ever", such as those by The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan, it has been praised, torn down, re-appraised, overrated, underrated, and absorbed into the human psyche. Just as you can hear disparate influences in the music of OK Computer (the band have acknowledged Miles Davis's late 60s to mid 70s electronic phase, Can, The White Album, and Ennio Morricone), it would be difficult to imagine the development of popular and 'underground' music without this album. Arguably Kid A had more to do with inspiring artists to do whatever they felt like during this decade, to follow their inspiration even if it meant alienating fans and critics, but almost everyone has heard OK Computer and understands what it did and still does.

There is everything in the world to say about this album and yet nothing to say. I mean, I still use 'GregRadiohead' as a username online and I've probably listened to OK Computer more than anything else in my life; it'll always be with me, physically, mentally, and spiritually. So, while I could write thousands of words about this album--about its sounds, themes, ideas, what it makes me feel and imagine--I am paralyzed by the possibilities. Even to start with surface things like its perfect pacing and sequencing would carry me off into the verbose night. Anyway, that misses the point. Like I said, this album has been built up and knocked down time and again: rated, overrated, and underrated by all manner of people. It feels futile to pretend there's anything interesting, critically, to say about it.

Yet this, too, misses the point. I don't need an interesting critical thing to say, and you don't need to read it. The only thing you need to do with OK Computer in 2009 is listen to it. Forget all the debates and discourse. Try to hear this album with the freshest ears possible. Remember what makes it so good. Remember the incredible songs, sounds, ideas, and emotions, as powerful and lasting as any "committed to tape" (as the liner notes say) in the history of rock music. Remember that, yes, bands can keep getting artier and more experimental and yet get better at the same time.

If, as I suggested in another review, The Bends can be seen as Radiohead accepting their fate to be one of the best bands of all time, then OK Computer is them not only trying to live up to this but going all the way. To quote Charles Bukowski: "If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is..."

Video: Radiohead- Karma Police (live)

This would be the official video for this song, but it turns out that EMI/Capitol records are cocks and don't allow embedding of their videos. Oh well!! Since it's Easter I won't have time to get a full article written today, so enjoy this video instead and look for a review of OK Computer on Tuesday.

Album Of The Week/Primer Part 3: Radiohead- The Bends

I know it's really obvious what the moment is supposed to indicate, but one of my favorite scenes in all of film history has to be the part near the climax of Return Of The Jedi where Darth Vader looks back and forth between his dying son and his master of many years, Emperor Palpatine. Many other points in the development of this character are probably much more crucial to his story and destiny, but I really feel like this is the moment he's been living toward. There's something thrilling about the way he suddenly picks up the frail-but-deadly Emperor and tosses him down that shaft. It is a powerful moment in which a character holds the reins of fate in his hands: he could let his son die and evil would rule the galaxy, as it has been doing because of something he did, but he redeems himself instead. I don't know why, but Radiohead's The Bends reminds me of this. After their hit song 'Creep' had run its course, the band was left with a choice of their own: to try to repeat that success and do what the record company said, or to follow their muse and make the music they wanted to. In choosing the latter, they, like Anakin Skywalker, were redeemed.

We may as well face the fact that if Radiohead hadn't recorded The Bends they would've gone down in history as a lesser known version of Bush, another popular English band who aped the alt. rock sounds of America. There was no way to repeat the commercial success of 'Creep' and to follow the sounds of Pablo Honey would be just as pointless. Instead, Radiohead seized the moment--they would never top 'Creep' in terms of popularity, so why not make something artful and timeless instead?? I use those words--artful and timeless--very deliberately here because they're exactly what I think of when I listen to this album now. The Bends was the sound of Radiohead discovering that their destiny was for greater things, attempting to seize that destiny, and, finally, achieving it. Without OK Computer and then Kid A I don't think we could call Radiohead one of the most important bands of our time, but without The Bends they couldn't have made those albums and we wouldn't have cared.

It's exceedingly rare to listen to the result of a band realizing they can do so much more with music, stepping up their game in every conceivable area, but that's precisely what this album is. Literally everything about The Bends is better than Pablo Honey: the lyrics are scores more sophisticated and interesting, the guitar playing is more imaginative and at the same time more rocking, the music is more experimental and (for lack of a better word) cool, the cover is better (apparently, a medical dummy morphed together with Thom Yorke's face), and the artwork is better (The Bends marked the beginning of Stanley Donwood's collaborations with the band, an underrated element of Radiohead's mystique). So many things we would come to expect from Radiohead began here that it's dizzying. In fact, they would go so far from here that you effectively forget they were the ones who did 'Creep.' This is a product of them changing so much as to not even be the same band they were in 1992/1993. If you go to see them live and they happen to play 'Creep', it almost feels like a cover they're doing as a lark.

Any fan of rock music from the 90s onward probably owns a copy of this album so I suppose there isn't much sense in drawing this review out. I do want to point out that The Bends features the most extensive use of acoustic guitar of any Radiohead album. It's one of those subtle things I didn't notice until just recently, but it's true. Much as I love the throttling full force of songs like 'Just' and 'Bones', the lovely ballad 'Fake Plastic Trees' and dreamy, spacey 'Bullet Proof...I Wish I Was' show that Radiohead are every bit as good when embracing the acoustic spectrum of sounds. It really leaves you wishing they would let Thom loose on piano or acoustic guitar more often. Or, I suppose, that his solo album, The Eraser, wasn't electronic.

Now I want you to consider that the only criticism I can offer about The Bends is that it isn't even Radiohead's best album.

....uhm, you do own a copy of The Bends, don't you??