18 great songs of In Rainbows - have their fans failed Radiohead? I sure looks like it if 2 years later 98% of Radiohead fans are not familiar with the strongest song of In Rainbows.

This Radiohead album presents me with the most attractive balance of their various styles (providing I am able to consider all 18 songs). In Rainbows brings me back some beauty and simplicity of The Bands and mixes it with the ambient experimental layers of Radiohead, which by now are really becoming of a Brian Eno meets Zoviet France level. However, I have to say honestly that the 10 song album most of us know would feel incomplete to me. I ended up paying $80 for the original package with 2 cds and 2 records at 45 rpm (only 10 songs on vinyl but was it the trick in their test?) when it first came out. I took the 2nd cd first and listened to it about 20 times over and over before I ever listened to the main cd. A few things came out of that experience. First of all, some of my favorite songs of Radiohead were released on that bonus cd. Secondly, those bonus songs are so great that I really feel like it was as much a part of a grand marketing strategy to keep these songs hidden from view as selling 10 main digital files for whatever fans where ready to pay for them. Did that strategy overestimate us? Have we failed the test of the game of hide and seek? You know the rules of that game, right? Most of Radiohead music abides by its rules and songs need to be listened to over and over to be...uncovered. Please, look over all the reviews on Amazon or anywhere else. A few people mention the other bonus cd in a delicate way. Most of us don't even know it exists. Why? Not only are Go Slowly and Last Flowers both gorgeous, but the addition of some of the other songs, like Down Is The New Up and Up On The Ladder to me adds more continuity of what Radiohead has been developing for such a long time now. I guess we are just so spoiled rotten by them now, that a few awesome songs can be completely omitted and disregarded. If I was to put my own 10 song cd out of the 18 songs I was given, I would use 4 songs from the bonus cd. Well, it is 2 years later now, and if you are waiting for the Radiohead's new release, it is within your reach...

It is possible that no other present rock band gained more respect form their fans that Radiohead. Regardless if we started listening to them back in 1993 or in 2003, most likely we consider them our band and we cherish their success. I did not get to know them until 1997 when they came up with OK Computer and I loved that album right away. To me that album, next to Porcupine Tree's The Sky Moves Sideways has become an ultimate rock album of the late 1990s. It was ambitious, and the way that great songs where mixed with interesting passages and delivered great rock music to us again, on scale of some of my favorite 1970s music, but updated. Reaching back for their prior releases I didn't care that much for Pablo Honey (1993) aside from the song which made them famous in the first place. However, I was completely blown away by the beauty and simplicity of The Bends (1995), and by the fact that I missed its existence. Every next album Radiohead released since then has been spectacular and that fact showered them with our respect. Here is a band that has nothing to prove any more besides its greatness. And they are proving it over again and again. The sound of Kid A (2000) became more distorted abstract and ambient. It was music to my ears because I am pretty obsessed by atmospheric landscapes and I could feel them flowing through that music. They also took me back into my childhood with songs like The National Anthem which made me feel like I was listening to some early King Crimson albums with their great saxophone and jazzy feel to the rock music. How To Disappear Completely expressed it all. Kid A became my favorite album of Radiohead until i heard Amnesiac (2001) for the first time. To me that whole album was the recollection of a drowning experience which I also went through in my childhood (in the river as well). The Pyramid Song seems to me like a valid record of a life after life but the music of the entire Amnesiac is slightly...underwater for me. The whirlpool of loops and sounds and echoes is in itself a revolving door to the unconscious. The repeat of a Morning Bell already introduced on Kid A reinforces the album's title. To me to compare the textures of both Morning Bells is a good way to notice differences between Kid A and Amnesiac. I did not mind the increased strangeness and remoteness of the experience. It was a daring move on the part of this great band, which could alienate some of its followers, but it was moving into this abstract territory many artists end up at. Then came Hail To The Thief (2003). Did George Bush ever thank them for congratulating his presidential win? Never mind. This was Radiohead's cry for us to wake up. Did we not realize it was our world we where living in? The sound started uniting all their previous grounds and breaking them violently at times by strange guitar riffs and other means. I was listening to that album a while back and someone has interrupted me complaining that the music of Radiohead is dark and depressing. I don't agree with that assessment. I feel like their music simply covers and connects the entire territory, our waking awareness and that which is hidden from sight but nevertheless here, affecting us in our sleep and throughout our lives...without our knowledge.

And the title of this album In Rainbows could stand for it all. This band has turned a full circle around its own greatness.

We do start our 10 songs with the 15 Step texture of distortion and experimentation which fooled me and made me believe we would be traveling into the Amnesiac techno-grounds. Bodysnatchers just reinforced that feeling because here again we have that strange climate repeated. If you like these 2 songs than you absolutely have to get the bonus cd with the additional 8 songs. 2 or 3 of those 8 songs you will love completely and as a bonus you will get another 2 songs, floating in the nude/videotape territory. Nude might be the most beautiful ballad of these 10 but definitely not of the 18 songs of In Rainbows. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi could be my favorite song of the album and it probably is but... let's agree to use it as a tribute to Paul Buchanan. It is absolutely gorgeous but its main part is sort of an echo from Blue Nile's Hats, a beautiful album you should definitely listen to if you do like Thom's vocal here. It progresses into its 2nd stage which might be the strongest 2 minutes of In Rainbows to my ears, because I do miss the layered distorted landscape of Amnesiac. Keep in mind that to be able to appreciate fully these textured moments you do need high quality stereo equipment. Listening to Radiohead in my old truck with a scary system is such a waste of time. Just play Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen instead in such situations. All I Need is another flower which needs some time to grow. The progression of this song and a few others of this album and their ending moments are where Radiohead's new treasures are hidden. Faust Arp would probably survive listening in that old truck of mine. It is almost like a mixture of Radiohead's own wolf at the door and something else. It has a bit of Nick Drake's atmosphere to it, which is great. However, the following song, Reckoner is spreading over an amazing sound landscape. Thom's vocal appears out of some acoustic noise procession which fades when melodic beauty takes over and comes back again. The sound production of this album is superb. Once again, the underlying sombient texture of the House Of Cards relates In Rainbows to their preceding 3 albums and personally I do cherish that connection. If anything, I almost need the bonus cd and the additional 8 tracks to bind it all a little stronger. If I miss anything else In Rainbows it is the national anthems or lives in the glasshouses. I wish to be taken back to that early climate of the early 1970s King Crimson's heavy saxophone, jazzy feeling rock, because Radiohead does it so well. Jigsaw Falling Into Place could be the most energetic song of this album and it is followed by the very intriguing one. I do hope that Videotape is just a song and not the prophecy. It is one of my 2 favorite songs of these 10 songs here, next to Weird Fishes/Arpeggi. The noises of Videotape are all over Zoviet France again and I really wonder which one of you gentlemen shares on of my favorite background climates?

And them we start listening to MK1, which is basically an echo following the Videotape. Following it, Down Is The New Up comes back and revisits some of the Kid A - Amnesiac territory and I am so thankful for that. We do not want to leave behind the superb complexity of their stranger songs just because our army of admirers is growing. Next come my... fake plastic trees here, a pair of them actually. Go Slowly comes and if you have not heard it yet and are willing to listen to it 7 times over and over you will have tears in your eyes, and will love this great band even more. A short Mk2 passage takes you to Last Flowers and I guess it depends more on your personal taste, but to me this again is one of the best songs of this 18 song collection. Following song, Up On The Ladder is extremely powerful although it could be more disturbing to some. To me it is a great Radiohead song with one of the melodies flowing back and forth and introducing the Rapoon, Zoviet France-like character which really becomes alive in Bangers + Mash. Now...this is definitely some of the more experimental Radiohead all over again and then... we are given 4 Minutes Warning at the very end, which is a great idea. So, all of you Radiohead lovers, please reach for your copies of In Rainbows bonus disc #2, because life is too short to live without it... You don't have to wait to the release of their next album...it is within your reach.

Back in 2004 I put together my favorite songs of Radiohead, and obviously I had to revise it later on. So, here is my
Radiohead Star:

1. Fake Plastic Trees
2. How To Disappear Completely
3. Go Slowly
4. Pyramid Song
5. Weird Fishes / Arpeggi
6. The Tourist
7. Street Spirit
8. Everything In Its Right Place
9. Last Flowers
10. Creep (acoustic)
11. Life In A Glasshouse (full length version)
12. Bullet Proof...I Wish I Was
13. Sail To The Moon
14. Dollars & Cents
15. Exit Music (For A Film)
16. Videotape
17. (Nice Dream)


To all the people who can't understand what others find in the music of Radiohead... here is your secret. Most of their music cannot be appreciated upon the first listening, by almost no one. Pick up one song and listen to it at least 7 times over and over. These strange sounds and noises you hear at first become a background to the beautiful melodies which are playing a game of hide and seek with your mind and your soul. Engage in their game and you are...one of us.

enfin le retour du vrai radiohead un album à avoir chez soit.
il est enorme c'est un cd à acheter et à passer en boucle.

ce disque est magnifique. son son est exceptionnel et fera sonner merveilleusement votre chaîne hifi. Il rivalise selon moi avec ok computer

Radiohead nous livre ici un album aux compositions très épurées, aux morceaux simples mais prenants. L'ensemble est très cohérent et le disque mérite d'être écouté en entier. Le son est également très bon.
De plus, bien que cela ne soit pas primordial, le packaging est classe et l'artwork très beau. Au prix où il est vendu, cet album est un achat indispensable !

Cela fait déjà un moment que Radiohead a arrêté les tentatives et autres excès passés dans l'électro à tout va. C'était sans doute un passage obligé afin de n'en retenir que le meilleur. Ainsi, 'Hail to the Thief' avait déjà amorcé un premier retour à des choses plus modérées. 'In Rainbows' marque sans doute définitivement le retour du groupe à des grands titres pour un grand disque. Si 'OK Computer' est souvent cité (à juste titre) comme l'album de référence, je ne suis pas loin de penser que ce 'In Rainbows' là est ce qui s'en rapproche le plus, tout en sonnant très actuel. Et ça fait vraiment plaisir de les retrouver là.