Radiohead "In Rainbows"
By Lucas Salg
Wednesday. Oct 24, 1:04 AM
In one word: humans.

Humans. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind as I replay In Rainbows again and again. It sounds like it was actually made by humans. It’s warmer, brighter, easier to listen to, and it sounds – for the first time in ages – like a band, not Thom Yorke backed by clicks and whirs and emotionless blips. That’s the biggest and most rewarding thing about the terrific seventh album from Radiohead: that it finally sounds like music being made by five guys. Five guys with a pretty dead-on sense of rhythmic and melodic relationships; five ace musicians who are comfortable playing with each other and are actually enjoying it.

It’s mostly free of the paranoid hand-wringing, the claustrophobic arrangements, and maddening insecurities that have characterized Radiohead in the new century. It just sounds, I don’t know, comfortable. For a lot of fans, that mindset may be a real turn-off. In Rainbows has one speed and it pretty much sticks to its guns the whole 43 minutes. Even the heavy rockers like “Bodysnatchers” are slightly compressed, low-key, and content to rumble rather than explode. In Rainbows contains no breathtaking or groundbreaking highs, no dead-end lows, just 10 excellent Radiohead songs. For that reason, it’s a more satisfying beginning-to-end listen than anything since OK Computer.

The best thing about it is that it pretty much does away with the choking electronics to reveal that, yes, Radiohead are still very much a human rock and roll band, with piano and guitar supplying the lion’s share of melodies. The guitars, often overshadowed by other piled-on flourishes in recent Radiohead material, really pop on In Rainbows. But the best work is turned in by the seriously underrated rhythm section of Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway, whose interplay is creative, airtight, and rock solid. In Rainbows has serious rhythmic muscle and drive, even in its quieter moments, and man is it ever great to hear Selway’s drumming shine through again. You tend to forget listening to computer-heavy records like Amnesiac or Hail to the Thief just how good the guy really is. From the complicated prog-calypso stomp of “15 Step” to the propulsive, unerring backbone of “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” the rhythm section owns this record.

It’s just so awesome to finally hear Radiohead sounding like a real band again. Maybe it sacrifices some of the bounding creative leaps taken by their landmark albums, but it captures them sounding more focused and driven, more aware of just how good they sound all playing together, less preoccupied by mucking around with bells and whistles. It’s a record that doesn’t go out of its way to impress: it just offers up a batch of strong material, expertly arranged and produced (it doesn’t hurt that almost every track here packs a jaw-dropping finale, either). Underneath all the hype and clever marketing and talk of rewriting the industry rules, In Rainbows is merely a great Radiohead album. It’s exactly what we needed from them: a simple, clean, and gorgeous record.
www.radiohead.com
www.inrainbows.com

Lucas Salg

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