Pitchfork’s Guide to Radiohead’s In Rainbows
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Radiohead will today leak/sell their seventh studio album, In Rainbows, offering it as a digital download for your choice of payment. It’s a neat way to, as fellow Pitchforker Brian Howe has said, "devise a model where they meet the culture on its own terms, rather than trying to bully us back into an obsolete [one]."
It’s also a bit of a reverse bait-and-switch: The group is offering a pricy box set for release in December (charging £40, including shipping) as the only current consumer choice, and then giving away what many already get for free (the album’s actual music), but asking you whether you’d be willing to pay for the files. It’s as weirdly conservative as it is revolutionary, a convoluted pricing-and-release schedule that leans heavily on a high-end product rather than the music itself. Radiohead are asking you to value the presentation– the tangential and the tangible– instead of the sounds coming out of your speakers, in the process admitting what any teenager with a high-speed computer and a sense of entitlement will tell you these days: To a large subset of "consumers," music is no longer worth the price of the CDs it’s printed on.
When Kid A and Amnesiac were first leaked at the start of the decade, the devoted waited for 30, 40, 50 minutes at a time on dial-up trying to grab bits and pieces of the albums, an experience I’ve long felt unfairly negatively colored the opinion of Amnesiac, in particular: After 45 minutes of finger-tapping, some weren’t so pleased to learn they’d wound up with, say, "Hunting Bears"– never mind that the song sounds great in its proper context.
So LP7. Bits and bobs of what it sounds like have been floating around the internet, and wowing live audiences, for years, and this week we’ve been cataloging them to create a user’s guide to the record. This is merely a look at the public history of the tracks included on In Rainbows (a bonus disc will be included in the December box set), and is not at all intended to be a guess at what the record could, should, or would have sounded like. It’s instead a roadmap so you can glean a bit of insight into how they formed, and how this truly unique and rewarding band works.
Stay tuned for a proper review next week.
01. "15 Step"
On March 8, 2006, Radiohead’s Dead Air Space site posted a photo of bassist Colin Greenwood composing a list of unreleased songs under the banner "tour." Presumably, the 16 songs listed were to be rehearsed before the group’s then-upcoming trek throughout Europe and the U.S. Included among them was "15 Step", one of seven In Rainbows tracks listed (along with "Bodysnatchers", "Nude", "Arpeggi", "Reckoner", "House of Cards", "Videotape", and "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" (née "Open Pick").
Radiohead debuted "15 Step" less than two months later, in Copenhagen, at the opening stop of their 2006 tour. From there it was a fixture, earning the distinction of being the only song played on all 28 of the band’s 2006 dates. One of the more sensual tracks the band has ever done, it’s also virtually the closest they’ve come to toying with modern r&b sounds.
Key lyric: "How come I end up where I started/ How come I end up where I belong"
02. "Bodysnatchers"
One of many songs debuted live by either Thom Yorke solo or in combination with Jonny Greenwood, the pair of them first aired this in London in May 2006 at a show for The Big Ask Live; the band itself played it on the first night of its 2006 tour.
By that time, it was already known to Radiohead watchers, having not only been listed on Colin’s blackboard, but mentioned on Dead Air Space numerous times, with guitarist Ed O’Brien claiming they "may have got [it]" as early as October 2005. Alas, Jonny would grouse five months later: "We’re just finishing (Famous Last W’s) Bodysnatchers. Rather good so far….better not turn my guitar down."
Key lyric: "Has the light gone out for you?/ Cause the light’s gone for me"
03. "Nude"
This song is the oldest of the bunch, dating as far back as the late 1990s (please enjoy some lovely, glockenspiel-led internet evidence of that claim below), when it was debuted as a solo acoustic Thom Yorke track in Japan, then eventually folded into the band’s sets:
In the above clip, Yorke introduces this as a "new song that doesn’t have a title"– since then it’s had four: "Failure to Receive Repayment Will Put Your House at Risk" (as claimed by Yorke in the tour film Meeting People Is Easy), "Big Ideas", "(Don’t Get Any) Big Ideas", and now alas the far inferior "Nude". Suburban ennui, crushing boredom, unfulfilling go-nowhere lives– it’s like a graceful and sorrowful version of those sometimes sneering, knees-up Kinks/Blur character songs, or the inverse of "No Surprises".
"But dreams have a knack of just not coming true," the Smiths once moaned; "Don’t get any big ideas/ They’re not gonna happen," Radiohead claim here, but it’s largely too late, the protagonist seems stuck, having already tricked himself into holding out hope for too long.
Radiohead fans may have felt the same thing about the track, having been prepped to believe it would appear on Kid A (and being told that, in retrospect, it was considered for OK Computer) and teased with scattered appearances at shows over the past decade, before it was finally mentioned as one of the first batch of songs the group was working on in its intial LP7 sessions, in 2005.
Key lyric: "Now that you’ve found it, it’s gone/ Now that you feel it, you don’t"
04. "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi"
"Arpeggi" only seems to have debuted ages ago– it was the first hint of new material since 2003’s Hail to the Thief and among the first omg YouTube moments, an indication that this video site would now document every step and move our favorite musicians (and eventually politicians, classmates, family members) made.
The song debuted in March 2005 at London’s Ether Festival, with Yorke and Jonny Greenwood performing it amongst two of Greenwood’s own orchestral pieces. As David Raposa wrote at the time, "Greenwood plays the Ondes-Martenot, an electronic keyboarded [that] produces elegiac tones that sound like a cross between the warm buzz of a Rhodes piano and the resonant blare of a pipe organ. Such tones are perfect for Yorke’s tremulous voice and his equally tremulous words."
Once out on the road, "Arpeggi" became a fixture at their shows, appearing in three-quarters of the 2006 sets, making it one of the band’s most frequently played songs of the tour.
Key lyric: "Your eyes/ They turn me/ Why should I stay here?"
05. "All I Need"
In June 2006, producer Nigel Godrich posted to Dead Air Space a clip of various mixed songs, among which were "Jigsaw Falling Into Place", Weird Fishes/Arpeggi", eventual bonus disc tracks "Down Is the New Up" and "Bangers and Mash", and "All I Need". Debuted in late June 2006 in Chicago, this was the only new song performed on that tour not to be listed for rehearsal on Colin’s blackboard.
Key lyric: "I’m the next act/ Waiting in the wings"
06. "Faust ARP"
Nobody knows a thing about this one, leading to speculation that it’s another palatte-cleansing instrumental, á la Amnesiac’s "Hunting Bears" or Kid A’s "Treefingers". The second half of the title could refer to Address Resolution Protocol, a means of determining one’s ethernet address via an internet address. If the first half of the title refers to the krautrock band, that’s probably good news.
Key lyric: None that we know of. [Update: Oh, hey, lyrics! The guesswork was wrong after all.]
07. "Reckoner"
This song was only played once live– at the Gorge Ampitheatere, in 2001– and yet it’s on YouTube. Formerly known as "Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses", a half-decade ago this was aggressive and guitar-led, nearer to OK Computer’s "Electioneering" than anything the band has done since.
Key lyric: "Insect bites/ Machine-gun-cameras/ You’re not asleep/ You’re not dreaming"
08. "House of Cards"
In summer 2005, Yorke also performed "Reckoner" as part of a five-song solo acoustic benefit for the Trade Justice Rally. Making appearances in that set were four other unreleased songs– "Nude", "Arpeggi", "Last Flowers (Til Hospital)" (now "Up on the Ladder" and set to appear on the In Rainbows’ bonus disc), and "House of Cards". That performance, at London’s Methodist Central Hall, was the first airing of the track; the band itself would perform it the next year at three-quarters of its shows.
Unusual in the Radiohead catalog, it’s a direct song that addresses a could-be sexual relationship and, like the twitcher "15 Step", carries echoes of American soul. Because it’s such a departure, and so smooth and graceful, it could be a divisive song among Radiohead fans, which is frankly nuts– the live versions are gorgeous stuff.
Key lyric: "I don’t want to be your friend/ I just want to be your lover"
09. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place"
This is almost certainly the track formerly known as "Open Pick", since one of that song’s lyrics, you guessed it, "Jigsaws falling into place." A bit of an upbeat number, it comes off lyrically as a cautionary tale and, despite being written years later, a companion piece to "Nude", and despite seeming like a natural crowdpleaser was among the In Rainbows songs least-often performed live in 2006.
Key lyric: "As the magic disappears/ No longer wound up like a spring/ Before you’ve had too much/ Come back and focus again"
10. "Videotape"
A comedown in the mold of Kid A’s "Motion Picture Soundtrack", this was originally debuted on Nigel Godrich’s online show From the Basement:
Even with the full band in tow, live performances of the song have been piano-led and often solitary, making the song a favorite with some but a drag to others. In April 2006, Yorke posted the lyrics to the song on Dead Air Space, with his typical disregard for spelling and grammar: "when im at the pearly gates thisll be on my videotape when Mephistopholis is just beneath and he’s reaching up to grab me this is one for the good days and i have it all here in red blue green you are my centre when i spin away out of control on videotape."
Sadly, the Mephistopheles namecheck reminds us of Sting. Come to think of it, "I will turn your face to alabaster" sort of sounds like a Thom Yorke lyric as well.
Key lyric: "This is my way of saying goodbye/ Because I can’t do it face to face/ I’m talking to you after it’s too late"