by McDuffies on Sun Apr 17, 2011 3:13 pm
In Rainbows was pretty logical step after Hail to the Thief. Hail was for me kind of a triumph, an amalgam of all elements that they tinkered with so far, it's a long and epic album, sort of like when you climb at the top of the mountain and suddenly a view spreads in front of you. In Rainbows was then devoid of any neccessity to proove themselves, now everyone know that they could spend their lifetime writing cool and unusual songs in that mode for the rest of their life, which of course makes King of Limbs also logical because you already know that they're not the kind of band to settle down. Also I actually like when Radiohead does electronica.
I tend to naturally lean to experimental stuff, which is not to say that In Rainbows songs aren't such. Just trying to follow the rhythm of 15step or Weird Fishes is mind-boggling, and structures of the songs are usually more unrolling towards the end than verse/refrain. But when I listen to In Rainbows I often find myself amazed at how uncapable they are of writing anything that isn't sublimely beautiful. And since it's a sort of look-back album, it's fun to see which period which song draws from. Like, Bodysnatchers is completely Pablo Honey, Nude is Ok Computer, Jigsaw is Hail to the Thief etc. But I think that the greatest challenge about the album was writing very emotional songs, stuff like All I Need and House of Cards, it's something that wasn't present since Bends and I think that many people thought that Radiohead were always writing detached/cold/depressed songs. I think that as far as experimenting goes, that was their greatest challenge on In Rainbows.
King of Limbs has pretty beautiful songs too, more in ethereal mode - particularly Bloom, Codex, Lotus Flower, Separator... I tended to listen to it back to back with those singles released last year, Harry Parch and These are my Twisted Words which would have fit right in, particularly the second one would up the tempo of the album a bit, but I figure that the album is rather stripped and basic overall, and that short tracklist is in service of that.
Strokes - Room on Fire was to me a typically second-album-songs-that-didn't-fit-into-the-first-one affair, belonging to the same great creative string that brought Is This It, but all the greatest songs were picked for Is This It... there was still a lot of good and insanely catchy stuff, but lacked something to push it over to greatness.
Impressions of Planet Earth was a move in good direction - expanding the sound, managing to score a few great moments, they probably should have continued running with that idea instead of making such long pause.
I'm looking forward to a new TV on the Radio and I'm vaguely interested in new Fleet Foxes. I will probably also dutifully check new REM but the best I expect is that it isn't completely derivative of their earlier work.