|
Mickey Caulfield
Find Me On:
|
Comments
that’s exactly what I was getting at
both the super-short songs on Viva are pretty fantastic
Suedehead’s where it belongs
Maladjusted’s missing though
pretty confident Optimistic off Kid A is a take on Maladjusted
I think if you listen to Jonny’s solo work or even Ed’s old soundtrack work you’ll see that that lush, orchestrated/jazzy sonic element and those ethereal synth-guitar noises respectively that are notably absent from The Eraser and Amok are their doing rather than Thom’s. Ed has referenced in interviews that there actually is a slightly “rockist” member of Radiohead, but it’s not him, and it’s presumably not Thom or Jonny. I don’t remember Ed’s exact words, but it was something wonderful along the lines of “no, I’m a bit of a pothead so… I like the weird music.”
What’s this about all sounds and no melodies? Reverse Running (which could totally just be a Radiohead song) and Ingenue had me up out of my chair dancing and singing along the first time I heard them. I was singing the through-line of Unless at a man in the street five minutes after I got out of my car yesterday. I’m not joking when I say I’ve had the choruses of Default and What the Eyeballs Did stuck in my head for months. Like Lotus Flower, shit is straight-up pop, y’all mad. I love TKOL more than most (word to the wise: pepper the b-sides and non-album tracks from the period throughout, it really shines in the context of Twisted Words, Hearing Damage, Feeling Pulled Apart, Staircase, Butcher) but Amok’s songs are surely more immediate.
I just really never want Yorke & co. to repudiate Kid A by going less experimental. Luckily, they don’t seem to be in any danger of doing so. I wouldn’t mind a little wider-screen (I’d love a Radiohead album where the string and horn at the levels of Bloom and The National Anthem ran all the way through, though In Rainbows almost has that with strings), and deployed properly (a-la The Butcher), heavily-effected guitar is still Radiohead’s best secret weapon, but I’d be really disappointed if Yorke and any collaborators issued a largely guitar album at this point unless it was explicitly Twisted Words-style krautrock, or skeletal I Might Be Wrong/Reverse Running-style pieces, or exploring their slow-burn Talk Talk roots or something equally forward-thinking to his electronic stuff.
“Part of the reason [the album] is accessible is because we don’t try to go out of the box or be innovative. We just try to play music we like to hear.”
“If you give [listeners] a list of influences that come from everywhere and every genre, then there’s something for everyone and people seem more intrigued by you as a band.”
What’s wrong with either of those statements? Ignorance of Prince/dislike of the Smiths is a lot worse. I’m a medium fan of An Awesome Wave, it’s not as good as the opening couple tracks promise it might be, but that review struck me as an Ian Cohen-level hack job.
You could take the second quote super cynically, but what kind of artist today with eclectic tastes doesn’t actually have influences that come from everywhere and every genre? I read it more as not only referencing people that look like you or bands that superficially sound like you as your influences. You see plenty of other “indie” artists now referencing pop, hip-hop, electronic, outré and oldie influences and that’s what everybody I know listens to so I really don’t see it as cynical. And again, ∆’s NOT MY FAVORITE BAND OR ANYTHING. The Battles-esque major key fast elements can be grating to me.
Super on purpose!
This seems like a goofy way to evaluate a group like Radiohead that seems like it puts effort into ensuring some of its essential listening isn’t on its albums. Here’s some alternate tracklists that might improve the standings of some of their periods, especially the two lowest-ranking ones. If you’re a big Radiohead fan but consider their original tracklists sacrosanct, I’d point out that’s kind of counter to their ethos (there was so much acrimony over the HTTT tracklist that Thom posted his own). Besides, they’re not that different anyway.
THE KING OF LIMBS: Bloom / Morning Mr Magpie / Hearing Damage / These Are My Twisted Words / Little by Little / Feral / Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses / Lotus Flower / Codex / The Butcher / Staircase / Separator
IN RAINBOWS: 15 Step / Bodysnatchers / Nude / Weird Fishes / All I Need / Faust Arp / Reckoner / House of Cards / Down Is the New Up / Jigsaw Falling into Place / Go Slowly / Videotape / 4 Minute Warning
HAIL TO THE THIEF: 2+2=5 / Sail to the Moon / Sit down, Stand up / Backdrifts / I Am a Wicked Child / Go to Sleep / Where I End and You Begin / We Suck Young Blood / The Gloaming / Scatterbrain / There There / Paperbag Writer / Myxomatosis / A Wolf at the Door / Gagging Order
AMNESIAC: Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box / Pyramid Song / Fast-Track / You and Whose Army? / I Might Be Wrong / Trans-Atlantic Drawl / Cuttooth / Knives Out / The Amazing Sounds of Orgy / Dollars & Cents / Hunting Bears / Like Spinning Plates / Life in a Glasshouse
KID A: Great job!
OK COMPUTER: Airbag / Paranoid Android / Subterranean Homesick Alien / Exit Music for a Film / A Reminder / Karma Police / Meeting in the Aisle / Fitter Happier / Electioneering / Polyethylene, Parts 1 & 2 / Climbing up the Walls / No Surprises / Lucky / The Tourist
EARLY YEARS: Coke Babies / Creep / The Bends / Permanent Daylight / Talk Show Host / Nice Dream / Just / The Trickster / Lozenge of Love / Maquiladora / Sulk / Bishop’s Robes / Blow Out
Dig!?
is that clive anderson? bizarre collision
Not pretentious, interesting idea, good on him, etc. That said, people in the comments here suggesting anyone will or should learn how to play sheet music specifically for this are insane, as are people suggesting a bunch of amateur YouTube folks’ covers are going to measure up to a real Beck album.
the idiot in your picture couldn’t read sheet music during the beatles
I think it would be a good idea for stereogum to devote a comment thread to people posting and talking about their own and each other’s 2011 lists, because putting it on the comments for a post like this rightly feels like hijacking it, but errbody’s got their own no-less-legitimate list and I’m as interested in the taste of fellow readers than critics from magazines I don’t read.
THE SMITHS
given their campiness or image-centricity or whatever you want to call it at the outset, this is like the last band I would have expected to have artistic longevity but there you go. guess the same could probably be said of blur or radiohead or many british bands that ended up being great.
I haven’t listened to Helplessness Blues yet and I’m not making a comment on it with it.
People take what’s in fashion into account because if a style of music has really gone out of style, there’s usually a reason for it. Maybe it’s been done to death and there’s no room for originality within its confines, maybe something newer has made it feel less vital or relevant to the larger conversation, maybe artists that lack quality or authenticity have co-opted the sound and it now conjures negative associations. And if something’s particularly in vogue, sometimes it’s really just a hollow fad, but sometimes if there’s an explosion of a new, “cool” sound it’s because it’s unexplored territory without the weight of decades of music in that style to live up to, or maybe because that sound really speaks to what a lot of people are experiencing now.
Obviously just listening to what’s “cool” at the moment is a bad way to decide what music you like, but I don’t think quality and coolness are completely independent variables either. I imagine a lot of people who follow current music don’t do so just because they’ve explored every record made in human history so far and just need more material, but because they want to witness music as a conversation/exchange between a lot of different groups as it unfolds. To me, if there were only one band in the world, no matter how much quality their music had, it wouldn’t be very interesting because there wouldn’t be any context. And for something to consciously defy what’s in vogue is just as much an statement on what’s cool.
I don’t understand how many people there are who think there is such a thing as “bad” music … For example, let’s say I hate Angles and MBDTF and enjoy TKOL. You think I’m just objectively wrong and you’re just objectively right? Haven’t you ever changed your opinion on an album after hearing later in different context or something? If so, how can you think that “a bad album is a bad album is a bad album?”
You’re not required to like it, music is completely subjective and if it doesn’t resonate with you no one can tell you it should. But I really find the attitude of “I deserve better” revolting … Artists with credibility create art for themselves and hope that someone besides themselves like it, not the other way around.
And excluding Feral, which I like but I think could have gone a lot further into its groove, how are any of these songs unfinished? I’m curious, actually curious not trying to start a fight, as to what your favorite Radiohead songs are. Maybe a lot of this disagreement comes from the fact that a band with such a broad catalogue has sections of their fanbase that value completely different things about them.
I’ve been hearing that a lot and I actually don’t get it. If you listen to The Eraser, Bodysong, and Eureka Street back to back and tell me again that TKOL is mostly Thom. I think some people have a perception that Thom is the electronics and the other band members are rockists, but that’s not the case. I get the impression the atmospherics are Ed’s area (I think Meeting in the AIsle, Hunting Bears, and Treefingers were mostly Ed tracks) and a lot of the sounds that fill up the soundscape (ondes martenot, any orchestration) are Jonny. While The Eraser is minimal and made mostly of short loops, Bodysong is lush and haunting; a lot of that signature 20th century Radiohead vibe isn’t Thom at all. If it doesn’t move you as past Radiohead releases do I can’t really make a statement on that, but I think the perception that most Radiohead fans share this sentiment might be off-base. It’s not my favorite record of theirs but it didn’t let me down at all either. I do hope I get something that justifies the price tag for the vinyl, but I’d be more pretty surprised if I didn’t.
I also think it sounds just fine blaring in the car or on large speakers. To people wanting more length or more bite, I suggest plopping These Are My Twisted Words down between tracks two and three.
solid
excitement went from low to lower
the same as hail to the thief and in rainbows got from p4k interestingly
don’t you think this is a bigger departure from in rainbows than in rainbows was from hail to the thief? I don’t know about “revolutionary,” probably won’t leave as descendable a mark on other artists as the glory days did, but it’s certainly a bigger departure from in rainbows than in rainbows was from hail to the thief. the jittery, staccato guitars + motorik they’re using now is pretty new besides these are my twisted words (which is almost definitely from the same sessions).
+4 minute warning
just wait for the mars volta and das racist reunions