Before I go into the India experience, I wanted to say something about the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows.
It seems to me that new Radiohead albums are like alien viruses. At first they seem foreign, strange, uncomfortable. But as I listen to them, they work their way inside, rewriting my DNA until they seem like a part of me. This time it took five listens, and then it clicked for me. I couldn’t get the songs out of my head. Not in the way annoying 80s songs stick in your head, but the kind where they just seem to resonate.
My first impression of the album was that there was a lot of space there. A lot of emptiness in between the separate threads of music. While I might amend that assessment a bit, there still seems to be the sense that the music seems to be taking place in a kind of vaccum. For some reason Hail to the Thief brought to mind dark, moonlit forests, the aftermath of fairy tales when all the children have grown up. But In Rainbows seems to hover in indefinite space. There is no “setting” in my mind, which is unusual for an album.
“Nude” was the first stand-out for me, probably because I knew it before from a bootleg. But “Reckoner” soon became that song, the one that seems to connect with me directly. On Hail it was “Sit Down, Stand Up”. On Amnesiac it was “You and Whose Army”. But In Rainbows is a slippery beast. It didn’t take long for other songs to lay their claim on me. I’d wake up each morning in India, a different song from the album playing in my head.
The album will remind me of India now, of course. Radiohead albums have this habit of arriving at interesting times in my life. I first encountered them at a dynamic time in my past, catching all the way up to OK Computer in one go. Kid A will always remind me of my first time in Jamaica, listening to it at night, in the humid air, with the sound and smell of the ocean drifting through the open door. Amnesiac was released before 9/11, but it was only after it, at a particularly turbulent time in my life, when I really immersed myself in it. Hail to the Thief again grabbed me at a time when I was starting a new job, with a broken foot, and right before I got married.
In Rainbows shows signs of some experimentation on the band’s part, but mostly with arrangements and sounds. Thom Yorke seems to be using his voice in different ways. But it still sounds like Radiohead. Almost a little too much for my tastes. By that I mean that there are certain sounds, that we heard on previous albums, that resurface here. Bands have signature sounds, sure, but I would have liked a bit more of a departure.
But I’m hardly disappointed. It’s a good album, and there aren’t any stinkers on it. My only other criticism is that despite the fact that I’ve listened to it in order, it doesn’t feel like an album to me. It feels like a collection of songs. Which makes their argument against releasing it in stores like iTunes seem a little flaccid. Still, I will continue to listen to it like an album, so I suppose that says something.
All in all, it’s a worthy album and addition to their lineup. I’ll likely wear it out soon…