By Carl Cullinane
*****At an impromptu Trade Justice Movement gig in 2005 local musician Thom Yorke sang “Gimme fair price, gimme fair price” during a new song called ‘Reckoner’. That line, along with almost everything else from that version, is gone. But the sentiment has been transposed from political commentary to a concept at the centre of an album release that has sent shockwaves through the music industry. While the voluntary donation method of exchange is not new, Radiohead have surely created the biggest honesty box ever seen. After 10 days of industry self-flagellation and debate on the value of music, could the album handle the expectation once download codes for In Rainbows had rained down on our inboxes?
The answer has been a glorious affirmative. In Rainbows has the swagger of a band sure of both their vision and their identity. The band’s last album, Hail to the Thief, was considered by many to be a half-baked disappointment that lacked the cohesiveness of their best work. Contrastingly, In Rainbows has been a tortuous 3 year labour-of-love and with the crucial return of Jonny Greenwood’s gorgeous string arrangements, a disparate set of songs has become a confident organic whole. Prefigured by the title, the music is prettier than anything Radiohead have ever done. But while freed of Yorke’s recent clunky political pronouncements, the lyrics are as darkly personal as ever, exploring themes of relationship breakdown and personal frustration.
Opener ‘15 Step’ brings the funk, and a playfulness characterised by the punctuation of exuberant children’s shouts. It’s difficult not to smile, and with that the battle is half won. The spectral orchestrated intro of ‘Nude’ paves the way for a sparse arrangement of building, aching beauty allied to lyrics of unrelenting bleakness; “Just when you’ve found it, it’s gone”. ‘Arpeggi’ soars from a humble finger-picked opening, before a vintage Colin Greenwood bassline takes it somewhere else entirely. But it is with the immense heart-exploding climax of ‘All I Need’ that the album places itself definitively towards the sweet end of bittersweet.
After the baroque Beatlesy ‘Faust Arp’, the aforementioned ‘Reckoner’ is an album highlight. Stunningly gorgeous, it features Liars-esque multi-tracked vocals over a simple repetitive melody, culminating in a stately string-drenched finale. Only the closer ‘Videotape’ falls short of the skyscraping beauty of its live incarnation, while still offering their most heartbreaking lyric since Pyramid Song.
In an album of strange beauty, ‘House of Cards’ provides the most incongruous moment: Yorke, swathed in reverb, purring “I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover” over a laid-back reggae groove. It’s the sexiest song they’ve written. This embodies the shift at the heart of In Rainbows: innovation as a subjective rather than objective concept. Radiohead continue to push themselves forward, to places we never thought we would see them go.
