Review Summary: Facts For Whatever: A 15 Step Guide to In Rainbows
*clears throat*
Step 1 – Ignore the mythology.
Radiohead are pioneers of whatever.
Radiohead tore apart the fabric of the music industry.
Radiohead remind people that they’re too left-field (because of course people will say these things). Overlook it all, judge In Rainbows on its own merits.
Step 2 – Rid yourself of distractions. Sure, this album can function as a passive listening album, but these songs are both heavy with spirit and heavy of heart. Pay attention to them.
Step 3 – Make sure you’re alone. You have your company here, pay attention to it.
Step 4 – Let yourself be seduced. Thom Yorke has called these tracks “seduction songs” and they are. Less ugly than your National Anthems and kinder than your Climbing Up The Walls(es?).
Step 5 – Wear good headphones. Radiohead set loose interesting debris throughout In Rainbows, like the offhanded acoustic guitar that floats coyly behind the mix in Nude – a song that feels like the most urgent of daydreams, almost accidentally wandering into its own oh-*** moment. Be aware of these considerations when they present themselves. It is they that present the record for what it is: a thousand far-reaching, nothing moments (like insects trying to get out of the night), knitted together and magnified.
Step 6 – Consider it in the context of Radiohead’s discography. This record is insular and remarkably self-assured. Radiohead ventured into the wilderness exploring again, and so In Rainbows is no OK Computer, because it’s not paranoid, it’s comfortable. It’s no Kid A because it’s not cold enough and it’s no Amnesiac because it refuses to alienate. Yorke and company are less jaded here, and this is the Radiohead record that is easiest to embrace for it.
Step 7 – Do not impose yourself on it. The things you’ll enjoy most about this record will enter centre stage when (and only when) they feel it necessary. The cliff-hanger acquiescence of Weird Fishes as Yorke gets eaten by the worms, the ins and outs of the pirouetting falsetto in Nude, the rounded edges of Reckoner’s chord progressions – these sequences are comfortable where they are, and are favoured by your patience, thank you very much.
Step 8 – Do away with your understanding of song structure. Choruses on In Rainbows are of no consequence, relegated to a singular refrain in House of Cards, and forgone completely in Weird Fishes and Jigsaw Falling into Place. Ideas are felt, not explained with a punchy hook. The album is meta in its presentation. Welcoming and iconoclastic.
Step 9 – Be at peace with contrasting styles. If Phil Selway can let the CR78 into his heart, then so can you. If Colin Greenwood can contentedly play keyboard bass, you can contentedly listen to it. If Johnny Greenwood happily picks up an acoustic guitar for an interlude, you shall be equal parts surprised and serenaded.
Step 10 – Moreover, be at peace with contrasting genres. Bodysnatchers is a grimy Krautrock-inspired rabid dog of a song, leering and spitting its confusion. Elsewhere, House of Cards inches forward in its jazz bubble. Conflicting genres fit together like a Jigsaw on this record, and the finished product is equally as satisfying.
Step 11 – Understand that In Rainbows is bookended by death. The opener - a jittery, anxious number on the inevitability of death is contrasted by Videotape - a bittersweet and accepting meditation that sits at the gates of whatever afterlife you believe in. The rest of the record is just trying to make the most of its time.
Step 12 – Look behind the curtains. Production shines on this album, both literally and figuratively. I tried to describe In Rainbows to a friend the other day, and I found myself obsessively preaching its warmth. It’s not inaccurate, this thing glows until it’s time to dim the lights (see: Videotape, Faust Arp). Godrich earns his 6th member epithet.
Step 13 – Dance. Or, at the very least, convulse violently to the rhythm. Radiohead are percussive on this record. You should twitch and spiral with the arpeggios in Weird Fishes because, goddamit, life is short. Move before Mephistopheles reaches out to grab you. There are shuffling beats all over In Rainbows, and they should not be put to waste.
Step 14 – Contemplate the lyrics. Yorke has a flair for wringing profundity from simplicity. The way Yorke’s mantra “I’m not here/this isn’t happening” submitted to the wailing sirens in How To Disappear Completely is reshaped and repackaged on songs like Videotape (“today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen”) and All I Need (“it’s all wrong/it’s alright). Really though, this time around Yorke doesn’t submit to the music, he works with it.
Step 15 – Familiarize. In Rainbows is more ambiguous than the politically embittered Hail To The Thief and less concerned with prophesising than the turn-of-the-millennium pillars that made Radiohead reluctant figureheads of alt-rock. Mercifully, it follows that these songs can mean whatever you need them to mean, and when the listless whirlpooling of Videotape trails off, you’ll end up where you started, ready to begin again.
