Customer Reviews
Their Best Yet !!! - By: Timmy 2 Shooz, 30 Jul 2008 
This album is just brilliant.
I started off thinking that it was all a bit odd & that only "Weird Fishes" really stood out. However after several listenings all the tracks stand out, which despite being a tad illogical is true.
Further proofin my ever so humble opinion that Radiohead are the finest band since the Beatles, bar none. I also liked the way the album was sold. I received the cd as a present from a friend who had voluntarily paid for it.
In spite of the cynics who say that the idea of optional payment was just another marketing ploy or the indulgence of a rich band, I think that the fact that people continue to buy the record, & that at time of writing (july 31 2008)the album is at no.38in the Amazon music charts, even though it's available legally for free, says it all. This record is superb from start to finish, a rarity these days.
Good. Brilliant. But could do better. - By: O. Derwood, 26 Jul 2008 
Now that the dust has long since settled on In Rainbows, we're free to discuss it without also having to mention the Pay What You Want download. (Well, okay, it feels only right to mention it at least once. But everything's now been said about it, so we can leave it at that.)
As Radiohead's seventh album, then - not a marketting stunt, not a historically "important" piece of music - how does it fare? Pretty excellently, frankly: a collection of already strong songs have been beefed up, rejigged & given an intimate, edgier sound than you'd expect on an album produced by Nigel Godrich. Even when the album'sin a bit of a slump - & there is one, sorry to say - it all sounds so rich & beautiful that it's difficult to have a real problem with it. This is, quite simply, tight & beautiful music.
For the first four tracks, In Rainbows doesn't put a foot wrong. 15 Step is a bouncy delight, with its obsessively good drum loops, soulful vocals & occasional bursts of cheering children. It's a great opener. Then there's Bodysnatchers, a fuzzy rocker, which could be the coolest sound Radiohead have ever made; Thom has to compete over the wall of sound, but it's a delightful stand-off. (Pity it contains the worst lyric on the album, & one of Thom's worstin years. It concerns mouths, hands & bottoms.) Then there's Nude, the 2006 live version of which I had long since gone off, which fully won me over here & is my favourite song on the album. Succinct, seductive, beautiful: it's a work of art, & the wait (over ten years) was worth it. And then Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, which is slightly stubbornin that it's a more straightforward rock approach to the previously orchestral song, but after a while it grows on you immensely. The breakdown at the end is as gorgeous as anything on here. I'm not a fan of the indecisive & silly title - what, honestly, was wrong with "Arpeggi"? - but it's good enough not to be stuck on smallprint.
Then, the slump. There's nothing wrong with All I Need exactly, but it's too short, & just as it gets going it finishes. Apart from that, it's a brilliantly gloomy (and, like Nude, seductive) number, full of creepy lyrics & euphoria. Then Faust Arp, a plucky & small acoustic breather, that's immensely pretty. (No downside, then? Hmm. Get to thatin a minute.) Then Reckoner, once a ballsy rock song & now a dramatic & rhythmic falsetto, another soulful piece of music but no rockin sight. And finally House Of Cards, a song so sleepy & lethargic that it took a ton of listens for me to even get through it all the way. What makes all this a slump? Nothing much: individually, the songs are excellent. (Even House Of Cards, once you get used to it.) But putting one after another after the dramatic start is like hitting Snooze. It's the gentle, thoughtful arm of the album, kudos to them, but it's too much & it needs breaking up.
That's presumably the job of Jigsaw Falling Into Place, now an acoustic-led rock song, & although it's maddeningly danceable at the end, it still feels somehow subpar as a Radiohead song. (Perhaps I'm just not used to Thom Yorke writing lyrics about pub crawls.) It successfully wakes the album up, if only briefly.
Videotape has been the source of much debate, since it began life as a big, euphoric rock song (compared unfairly to Coldplay by some forumers), & now gutted into something that suggests Yorke's solo album, The Eraser. After many listens, I've grown to appreciate the song, & the quiet & soft approach is an appropriate way to end the album. But the song is still maddeningly imperfect. There's a bit halfway where Thom breathes at us, which goes on for at least two verses too long. And the drum machine at the end, although enough to make your head bob up & down, sounds rather like it was meant for The Eraser. Ultimately, the song fails to me not because it's been gutted, but because it *sounds like* it's been gutted. Fans will probably be haunted for ages by what it could have been. Oh well.
So, a strong album. Even when it hovers dangerously near skippable, the gorgeously vivid sound of the music is enough to keep my interest, along with the more-personal-than-usual lyrics. A four star album, at least, more awake than anything Radiohead have done for years. But perhaps not the best actual line-up they could have come up with.
They Reap What They Sow - By: fatsovonchubby, 24 Jul 2008 (Quick Recap first) After the slightly anxious Pablo Honey & the joyous stadium depression of The Bends, Radiohead gradually pushed their own musical boundaries outin earnest. Ok Computer was complex & deep, quite adventurous for a chart topping album & then, for a lot of people, the anticipated releases of Kid A & Amnesiac were a bit too far "out there" with some unfamiliar soundscapes & absence of good old fashioned guitars. Hail to the Thief returned to the realm of Ok Computer, but with a few ponderous & (pardon me) downright boring tracks.
A few more years further on, & the echoes & flavours of all that previous work is evident on In Rainbows. IN A GOOD WAY.
The album is a great collection of tracks. Beautiful chiming guitar work, *fantastic* vocal melodies & arrangements, all with a kind of 'organic' electronic undertone to most of the songs (I hope that makes sense). Each song has depth, progression, & a lot of emotion. Each one delivers something to the listener that makes you feel 'in' the music. Each one has small changes, subtle alterationsin instrumental or melody that gently grab you by the ears & make you think "yes - this is how great music is written".
It's rare that an album from a band as well known & well revered as Radiohead can sound so familiar, yet so fresh. I was absolutely delighted on first listen, & continue to be delighted with each recap further down the line. It's a culmination of years of skill & imagination from a bunch of brave musicians. All elements of the previous albums are harmoniously mixedin a kaleidascope of engaging & absorbing songs.
They sowed the seeds of invention a few years ago now. But now we are lucky to be reaping the rewards of all that hard work. Reviews probably don't get more arsey than that - but I genuinely love this album that much.
I think In Rainbows is Radiohead's finest work.
FVC
Masterpiece - By: pam, 13 Jul 2008 Hauntingly beautiful tracks that stickin your head - saw them recently & they were good live even without the string arrangements on many tracks. This album seems close & personal - enjoy
A distillation of the previous 6? - By: R. Davies, 03 Jul 2008 What were Radiohead to do? They can't please all the people all the time, can they?
So, were they too keep the Bendsphiles moaning about "pretentious, tuneless noises, blah blah blah" or turn their backs on Kid-A-philes "far-out experimental techno wizadry"?
Unbelievably, Radiohead seem, at least to this ear, to have kept both camps happy. Maybe I'm biased, short of Pablo Honey, I consider all the albums to be quite magnificentin their own ways, & this is no different.
Once the techno-ish intro of 15 Step has finished (where, I believe, many of the post-OK Computer refuseniks stopped listening to write a 1-star review), In Raibows delivers the accessibility of earlier albums without losing the soundscapes of the later ones. They even chuckin a few riffs.
For me, listening from Nude, through Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, All I Need, Faust Arp, Reckoner to House Of Cards, it is almost impossible to not to sit stunned, grinning at the amazing beauty of it all. Reckoner, incidentally, is irresistable. I can't even begin to describe it.
This is not to say the penultimate track, Jigsaw Falling Into Place, is poor. Of coarse it's not. It's just back to some frankly Bends-esque rock, before the achingly beautiful & coldy chilling Videotape plays us out. Marvellous stuff.
