Two disclaimers: First, I can’t say anything about this record that hasn’t been said already. Second, I can’t take anything that’s already been said about it and say it better.
In Rainbows is the year’s best, biggest, and most significant release. Rarely do those three things intersect.
This is the album of 2007. We don’t need the rest of October or any of November or December to settle this. Every year there comes a moment when you realize that you’re listening to the best those 365 days have to offer. Last year, this happened for me at the end of April, as I sat on my suite’s couch, liner notes in hand, attention fixed on the new Pearl Jam album that had gloriously decided to arrive in my mailbox the Friday before it was due. After the beginning of the album kicked the shit out of me, I sat breathless as Eddie Vedder and Co. won me over with the stunningly beautiful “Come Back.” Two of my suitemates poked their heads into the room to tell me that they liked it, too. 2006 was officially over.
This year, I had to wait until October for the “It’s over” moment. I listened to the record two and a half times before finally stepping away the day it came out. The next day, I tried to listen to something that wasn’t Radiohead. I couldn’t do it. It was over. I’ve since been forcing myself to listen to other things in order to keep from killing the album and to delay some of its gratification. The problem is that everything has paled in comparison since I first heard In Rainbows. As I listen to other music, I am constantly catching myself thinking, “This is good, but why haven’t I listened to ‘Nude’ in the last fifteen minutes?”
“Nude,” perhaps the most beautiful vocal from Thom Yorke since “Fake Plastic Trees,” is a standout in an album chock full of standouts. The beautiful thing about this album is that the songs not only fit together beautifully into a cohesive album – in large part to the ever present but not overpowering sea of strings – but also make superb listens on their own, a quality that isn’t always present on even the finest of albums (Honestly, how many times have you listened to “Fitter Happier” when it hasn’t been sandwiched between “Karma Police” and “Electioneering?”). As beautifully as “Faust Arp” fits between “All I Need” – which invokes “You and Whose Army?” as the piano jumps in with just over a minute left – and “Reckoner” – a brilliant showcase of Thom’s falsetto – it stands fine on its own, perfect for those times when you’d love to hear lovely finger picked Beatles ditty that’s, you know, not by the Beatles. Even the one track that I don’t yet love, “House of Cards,” slows things down so as to make the opening guitar and bass of “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” feel all the more urgent, only to set up the closer “Videotape,” the only song on the album where the rest of the band finally indulge Thom and allow some Eraser-esque glitchiness to emerge over repeated fragile piano chords.
Not only are the songs on In Rainbows great, but they feel like they belong together. Maybe this is why the band let some of these songs sit unreleased for so long; they were simply waiting for the right group to put them with. The end result is a Radiohead album that is more immediately gratifying than anything else they’ve released. I loved Kid A for “The National Anthem,” but it wasn’t until few years later that I fell in love with “Motion Picture Soundtrack.” Many of my other favorites, like “Let Down” and “You and Whose Army?” were delayed discoveries, tracks that didn’t truly engage me for quite some time after I first gave them a spin. Even “Paranoid Android” didn’t grab me (at least not as much as it does now) the first time around. Aside from The Bends, Radiohead albums have tended to be growers and not showers. Such is not the case with In Rainbows. I’m tempted to say that this is the most accessible of Radiohead’s albums, but accessibility generally refers to people who aren’t fans; I haven’t known for years what it’s like to not be a Radiohead fan. What I do know is that, at least from the perspective of this fan, In Rainbows takes no time at all to love.
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