SurplusGamer's Thought Limbo

18th February 2011

Post with 1 note

Radiohead. Thoughts.

I conclude after three listens, the new Radiohead album has nothing to do with why I got into Radiohead.

I don’t mean that in a facile ‘where are the guitars, they should go back to playing Creep, lol’ sense. I mean that their music used to be exciting to me. They had harmonies, rhythms and melodies that made me wish that I’d thought of them first, and they’ve kept on doing that even on the albums that haven’t impressed me so much (for the record, my favourites are OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows.) They could be a very exciting band to listen to.

The latest is NOT exciting. There are no bold melodies or chord changes. The rhythms are never particularly unpredictable. Yet it does have a nice sound to some of it. So if harmony, melody and rhythm are three-quarters of the musical puzzle, texture/timbre makes up the rest: and this is the only area in which the album really does anything interesting. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough. It’s like having a nice pair of curtains then opening them to find out, oops, they forgot to install a window.

You know, not having memorable tunes or hooks isn’t the worst thing in the world. If it was, I’d have given up on Radiohead a few times in the past. But it also doesn’t automatically mean that there’s a whole lot of substance to the music. In this case, pretty textures aside, there just isn’t.