Everybody knows by now that you can download this album for as much money as you want to offer from the band website starting from today....
Only for that this record should be rated 10 out of 10, but let's forget about all the things that make Radiohead such an amazing band of special people doing extraordinary things and let's concentrate on the music.
When opening track "15 Step" begins you'll think - "oh no, another "Kid A"!!!" - that is because of the electronic drums that recalls "Idioteque", but 40 seconds later a beautiful jazzy guitar refrain takes you straight to that Radiohead sky where you feel safe and secure. Second song "Bodysnatchers" is the rockiest of the lot, a sharp distorted guitar and fast paced drumming take no prisoners, it's gonna be massive when played live...When "Nude" starts you'll probably be in tears by the line "now that you have found it, it's gone, now that you feel it, you don't", what come out from these new songs is a sense of Thom Yorke being more "human' than we thought, in "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" he claims "why should i stay" and later "i'll be crazy not to fall", words that welcome a vulnerable man not afraid to show his feelings. "All I Need" is another mellow beautiful song with lyrics like "You're all i need, you're all i need, i'm in the middle of this picture..." sang over piano till the last minute crescendo of cymbals and Thom last request for (!?) love...
The pace of "In Rainbows" is the mid tempo, generally songs begin slowly to build into layers of intruments and vocals to reach a very atmospheric finale but the presence of guitars, bass and real drums is prominent; "Faust Arp" is a lovely Nick Drake-ish piece of music with acoustic guitar picking and strings arrangement, "Reckoner" at first reminded me of "Knives Out", which is no bad thing... "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" starts with acoustic guitar than move into "Paranoid Android" territory with a pulsing bass and catchy rhythm (something that our men were avoiding for quite a while...)
The first impression, even after only one play, is that Radiohead have grown into a wonderful band that needed to go through "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" in order to reach levels of songwriting this high, the apparent simple structures of the new songs is the result of combining elements from everything they have released in the past - oh by the way, there's a word to describe that process - experience.
The album closes with a piano led track called "Videotape" where Thom's voice chillingly sings "when i'm at the pearly gate will still be on my videotape?"
The sadness and the tension of the song are similar to his work on "The Eraser", a great way to end an album with a message - will you still be there, listening, when i'll be gone, when we'll be gone?
We will be listening, be it here on this earth, or there, up there, in rainbows.
9/10
