You know, Radiohead, I was just about to go to sleep when I checked my email one last time. And lo and behold, the download code for your new CD, In Rainbows, popped up in my inbox. Sigh. I didn’t need sleep anyway.
Since the rest of the blogosphere is racing right now to review Rainbows, I figure I’d be a sheep and do the same thing. Let’s do a time-lapse chronicle of the proceedings. First listens, of course. While addled by fatigue. And I haven’t checked YouTube or bootleg sites for which of these songs have been released before, so excuse me if some of this is old news. (I saw Radiohead in a high school auditorium in 1997, so I have cred.)
12:30 a.m.: Link shows up. Among the technical mumbo jumbo is the phrase: WE HOPE YOU ENJOY ‘IN RAINBOWS’.
12:37 a.m. Zip file downloaded and unzipped. Fire up iTunes!
12:43 a.m. Fire up iTunes, take two. Had to get some carrots and water.
12:45 a.m. “15 Step” is the first song. Drum-n-bass beat that goes right into a curling guitar riff that’s very “Paranoid Android”-style minimalist. Thom Yorke’s sounding theatrical. Ooh, now his vocals feature some cool echoes soon after two minutes, things get very glitchy and staticky, but cinematic — like a staticky television. Children(?) are heard crying in the background, sorta like a muted Go! Team song. Spooky organ outro. Overall could be an outtake from Yorke’s solo record, and also very Amnesiac.
12:49 a.m. “Bodysnatchers.” Holy crap, it’s Sonic Youth. Super fuzzy, driving guitar and Yorke monotone singing, a la Thurston Moore. “I’ve no idea what I’m talking about,” Yorke howls, in his upper, Wayne Coyne-like register. Wordless howling, as the music bends and builds around him, with some corrugated riffs layered atop the driving noise. Oh man, I bet this song is insane live. …
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2007.