Music Banter

My god, it’s cold out there. It’s like the norse Fimbulwinter, the legendary time when three winters came at once, and the Gods died. Ice covered everything, and even the trees themselves withered and died, leaving nought but a basted and empty wilderness, cold, barren and dead.

Still, never mind, eh? Chin up. Stop snivelling, you’re not out in the cold, you’re inside looking at a computer, the reassuring hum of central heating chuntering onwards, keeping you from having to do any REAL work to keep warm.

Now, sit back, and pop this album on. This is an album which changed the game, showed that bands really didn’t need a record company, promotion and all of that bullshit. If they were famous already, that is.

This album is Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows.’

Yes, yes, I know, the last one I did was a Radiohead album, but you know what? Get to fuck. This is how the list turned out, and it was compiled through a highly scientific process whereby I scribbled down the best albums I could definitively remember as having come from the Noughties (a distressingly hard task, for a thirty-one year-old with all his faculties still supposedly intact) and then agonised pointlessly for what felt like an eternity over the order I should rank them. And this is just about right.

First off, ‘In Rainbows’ was an Event, not just an album. It was announced that not only did Radiohead have a new album out, you weren’t going to be able to buy it in shops, which is fine because no-one buys music in shops any more, except the confused, the old, and the mentally ill. What was especially exciting, however, was that there wasn’t a set price. You could pay what you want for it. It became a talking point- how much do you think this album’s worth? Me, I was busy experiencing an intensely traumatic breakup with a psychotic Courtney-Love-a-like, and was a bit distracted, so I just got a mate to burn me a CD. HA! In your face, Thom Yorke! I WIN! I WIN!

Anyway, I could talk about the ramifications of this for the music industry, but frankly life’s too short and everyone else has done that already. What matters in the end is the music, always has done.

And ‘In Rainbows’ is a wonderful album. It’s also Radiohead’s most upbeat. Thom Yorke sounds almost content. Almost. On ‘Nude’ he warns you ‘Don’t get any big ideas/they’re not going to happen/you’ll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking.’

My fiancé tells me that it’s about the point in your relationship where you get bored and consider adultery, but I think she’s just trying keep me in my place. Relationship politics aside, ‘Nude’ is a wonderful song, possessed of a sort of medicated, drifting grace that recalls ‘No Surprises’ but is somehow more at peace with himself. It’s almost as if Thom’s found that a Pretty House with a Pretty Garden is actually quite a comfortable place to live, and has reined his expectations for life in a bit. Taken together, those two Radiohead songs are a demonstration of the maturation process that every over-sensitive and ambitious young adult goes through, from wanting the world, to accepting that if you just have a piece of it, and that you can make you and your loved ones happy within it, you’ll be a lot happier.

‘All I need’ is the same thing- a slow, calm meditation on contentment, an acceptance of one’s own turbulent nature, and the fact that sometimes you settle for what is enough. ‘I only stick with you/because there are no others’ is delivered as a romantic line, but god knows what Yorke’s girlfriend thinks of it. Still, never mind, next second he’s telling her ‘You’re all I need/I’m in the middle of your picture.’ He also describes himself as ‘a moth/who wants to share your light/just an insect trying to get out of the night.’ It’s a little clingy, a little frantic, but somehow, it’s all calm. The song ends with the alternating chant of ‘It’s all wrong/it’s all right’ which, for Thom Yorke, is as close to ‘Shiny Happy People’ as I suspect he’ll ever get.

Still, Valentine’s day must be a hoot round the Yorke household. I picture an endless sequence, year after year, of his girflriend opening Valentines cards with endlessly disturbing protestations of frantic, angst-tinged love which reassure and disturb in equal measure, occasionally daubed in blood. Woman must have the patience of a saint.

Imagine that, actually, a range of mass-produced cards using the lyrics of Thom Yorke’s songs as their special romantic message. Ironic hipsters would disembowel each other to get hold of those. Finally, I shall be rich with this scheme!

Lyrics aside, the band as a whole are playing fantastically well on this record. Radiohead have loosened up in recent years, playing faster, more groove-led songs. Witness the wonderful shimmering arpeggios of ‘Weird Fishes’ which sounds like the waves, like water flowing, and the musicians are prefectly in sync, crafting mood as much as song.

My favourite on this album for that is ‘Reckoner,’ a sweeping, orchestral kind of take on Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy.’ It’s lovely, sweeping, and delicious, and Phil Selway’s playing is fantastic, echoey and full of bounce and atmosphere. Anyone who doesn’t think drums are a proper instrument should listen to that song and think again. Over it all, Thom croons- yes, croons!- ‘you are not to blame’ like he’s absolving you of all your sins.

The whole album is like this, and I think that’s the reason for the muted reception it got critically- people don’t really expect Radiohead to sound so blissed out. Well, they are and they were, and this is lovely. So there.

You know who I’m talking about. Let me give you some clues, though.

I’m from Oxford. I grew up in a little town just outside those dreaming spires, walking along the Thames, enjoying the calm beauty of classic Middle England. If I wanted excitement, my friends and I would hop onto the bus and go drink and dance and see bands in Oxford’s Cowley Road, or at the Apollo. Sometimes we’d drive about just enjoying the quiet country roads. Often we’d end up on Boar’s Hill, overlooking the city. My best friend and I would sit and play guitar together, and dream of stardom.

At school that friend and I were in a band together, our closest friends making music on cheap instruments in a tiny little room. More enthusiasm than ability, I’m sure, but some of my most happy memories are from that place.

Of course, we didn’t become famous. We drifted off into life, and work, and money, and all those other things that get in the way of youthful dreams. That friend and I don’t see much of each other, these days. Neither do the rest of the band. We’re all scattered to the four winds. It’s a shame, but inevitable.

Why do I mention this? Well, by way of contrast, really. You see, a few years before we began to make our primitive, flailing noises in that little room, five other schoolfriends were doing the same thing, in Abingdon, a very similar place to the one we happened to live in. Those friends probably did a lot of the same things we did, drove the same Oxfordshire roads at night, drank wine together on the same summer hillsides. It’s true what they say about age, I do only remember the warm summer evenings. Maybe they do, too.

Their story is a little different to ours, however. They stayed together. They took on the world. I remember seeing a show they played, just before their second album came out, and thinking it was like being in on a secret. There were all these songs we didn’t know, which were just remarkable. I remember the thin, long-haired guitarist, whose name I didn’t know at the time (but you might by now), playing the keyboards on a track with the neck of his guitar, and being amazed. I remember their one hit (remember when that was their one big hit?) sounding amazing, but not as good as these songs. I knew they were going to conquer the world, and I was proud. These were people from the same place as me. My father met their drummer when he volunteered for the Samaritans. People in my sixth form had been babysat by their legendarily edgy, strange-eyed genius singer. I babysat for an old morris dancer (seriously!) who knew them because they came into his shop and bought sweets a lot. The singer was often found in the WhSmiths where my friend worked, looking awkward, like he both did and didn’t want someone to recognise him.

They were part of my world. And they were world-beaters.

And now, I love them still. They’re still that school band from long ago, that band I kid (A) myself that I and my friends could have been if things had been different, challenging each other, growing, :re-writing the rules with a friggin’ marching band behind them.

Breathtaking always.

Radiohead are STILL the best band in the world.