No Alarms and No Surprises

My first exposure to Radiohead was probably the same as most people's first exposure to Radiohead, when "Creep" dominated the newly-"alternative" airwaves in the summer of 1993.  It just kind of meandered along until a seismic-crunch-leading-into-a-massive-chorus let me know that something else was going on.  Unfortunately, that was all that was going on.  The novelty of the surprise door-slam wasn't enough to carry the song.  As far as anyone knew, they were destined to be casually tossed into the mesh-metal wastebasket in the cubicle of an annoyingly precocious twentysomething PR person in a major label's "alternative" division.

A couple of years later I was flipping though an issue of Rolling Stone when I saw a three-star review for the new Radiohead album called The Bends.  I thought, "They couldn't finish a whole song, and they made an entire second album?!"  I laughed it off and promptly forgot about it.  Six months later my brother and I were talking on the phone about whatever new records we were listening to.  To my surprise, he mentioned The Bends, and urged me to check it out.

The problem with most current "rock" "criticism" isn't just that it's mostly done by people who skipped over the "writer" and "journalist" steps to get to "critic"; it's that they're holding on to this phantom ideal of what a band should be.  The basic (and, for all intents and purposes, outdated) guitar-bass-drums format is always the template, the jumping-off point; anything that deviates from that -- or throws it out altogether -- is either ignored, viewed with skepticism/suspicion, or written about confusingly and (more) amateurishly.  To put it another way, ignorance of entire genres like hip hop or dancehall is not a hinderance to getting a job as a critic; ignorance of the Pixies is.  Overstating the importance of a band comprised of four-to-five white guys with guitars -- while understating the importance of the indisputably dominant hip hop that is fast rendering those guitars obsolete -- is pretty much de rigeur for music "critics" today.  As much as I love most of Radiohead's work, their importance always seemed to be almost desperately overstated.

When I first listened to The Bends I felt a certain sense of relief: I expected tired clichés, and what I got was a band grappling with their attempts to do something vaguely fresh-sounding with the standard template (and it felt like the beginning of the last gasp of that kind of band).  The more the instruments were disguised, the fresher they sounded -- the appropriations from hip hop and other areas of electronic music were concealed in a clever enough way that they didn't sound the least bit clumsy or dilettantish.  Their next record, OK Computer, sounded like what I'd imagine a modern-day Faces would have sounded like, if the Faces had absorbed Luigi Nono's work (which, for all I know, the Faces did; maybe they just incorporated it differently).  When the arrangements used the traditional guitar-rock format the approach wasn't obviously unique, at least not on the surface, but they had managed to shape it into something distinctive in the way that bands like AC/DC or the Smiths are distinctive; every single band in the world can play those chords in those places, and none of them can possibly sound remotely like AC/DC or the Smiths (something which also applies to those bands themselves: when AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd was replaced by Chris Slade for a few years, the dynamics and drive of the rhythm section was completely altered -- more outwardly brash, but far less swinging.  And Morrissey's post-Smiths bands sound like the guitar-rock version of a Broadway pit orchestra attempting to play Smiths songs just right without the slightest indication that they're even trying to scratch the surface of music's essence).

I saw Radiohead in the summer of 1997, and it was something of a letdown.  There were small moments where sparks almost flew, but the band seemed to be sitting on the songs, or in some cases rushing through them perfunctorily, worried about the instrument switchover for the next song (most of the band members doubled on other instruments).  "Subterranean Homesick Alien" was particularly flat -- what should have been a shimmering chorus was reduced to drummer Phil Selway hacking away at his hi-hat vainly trying to keep the song moving.  I was the oldest person in the audience by about 8 years.

A few months later Radiohead took another swing through town, so I went to see them again.  This time it was in a larger theater, and in the intervening months the local adult-FM station had decided that the songs from OK Computer could sit politely enough with whatever hackneyed singer-songwriter blather was being pushed that year.  The show was an improvement over the previous time I'd seen them; they seemed much looser, much more confident, and actually excited about what they were doing.  This time I was the youngest person in the audience by about 8 years. 

The three years between OK Computer and Kid A built up my own expectations quite unrealistically.  I was hoping for a curveball -- an album-length "Fitter Happier" times ten.  I was disappointed on first listen, but knew there was more that I hadn't really heard.  "National Anthem" grabbed me right off, not just for its Mingus-esque horn chart, but for the distinctly Bill Dixon-inspired trumpet solo (so much so that I initially assumed they sampled a Dixon record).  And just as Miles Davis' influence was all over OK Computer, Charles Mingus' influence is felt on Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail To The Thief; his "Freedom" from the 1962 Town Hall Concert was a direct inspiration for "Pyramid Song" and "We Suck Young Blood."  Kid A managed to become my favorite record of theirs; it's certainly the most emotionally off-putting.  The apprehensive hopefulness of "Treefingers" and the speedup at the end of "Optimistic" showed a band that was deathly afraid of taking those particular chances, and took them anyway.  The follow-up, Amnesiac, was like a less-embarrassed-of-its-embarrassing-behavior, less-introverted version of Kid A.  It ignored the gently stern voice that said, "That's not appropriate."

Some accused Radiohead of "dumbing-down" the work of certain 20th century composers.  It's a pretty typical knee-jerk reaction: when a "popular music" band starts appropriating the techniques of...um...non-"popular" composers, it's automatically assumed the "popular music" band is "dumbing down" those techniques.  On the other hand, one could easily make the case that AMM's Keith Rowe dumbed-down the techniques of the Who's Pete Townshend and the Creation's Eddie Philips.  Or that Derek Bailey dumbed-down Bo Diddley's work (see Diddley's "Mumblin' Guitar").  You could make that case, but I won't right now.  Anyway, it's all about context.  Radiohead applied certain techniques of composers like Luigi Nono and Krzysztof Penderecki into a heretofore-thought-improbable context; Nono and Penderecki's work is not diminished by the association (nor are the appropriations slavish), and their work has always stood mightily on its own, so everyone wins.  In one instance they gave a solid context to work that is decidedly lacking and needs serious postmodern academic crutches to help justify itself.  The work of Bernhard Günter can barely stand on its own, and its supporters try in vain to prop it up with major theoretical crutches; but the Günter-like samples in "Packt Like Sardines" (and, in a more striking example, Snoop Dogg and Pharrell's "Drop It Like It's Hot") justify the existence of Günter's work by giving it a context that wasn't navel-gazing postmodern wankery.  Günter's work can't be dumbed-down -- there's no more dumbed-down for it to get -- but it can be given a context that, against the odds, gives it some vitality.

The last time I saw Radiohead was in August of 2001 at Suffolk Downs, a horse racing track in Boston that the Beatles had played in 1966.  They finally seemed relaxed enough to fuck with the arrangements -- previously they tried to stick as close as possible to the studio arrangements, which for me defeats the purpose of live performance.  If the bulk of your audience already knows the record (a safe assumption in Radiohead's case), why would they want to hear the exact same thing...um...louder?  And in a crowd?  I mean, if you're going to see a band whose music you're intimately familiar with, wouldn't you want to hear something different from what you already know?  Fortunately, the Suffolk Downs show provided many such challenges (particularly on the more electronics-based songs), and the venue's proximity to Logan runways added some eerily synchronized special effects (I can still see the 747 flying into the distance right at the start of the slow midsection of "Paranoid Android").

2003's Hail To The Thief was just a record of songs.  They'd seemingly found their comfort zone, and simply doubled back over familiar territory.  This isn't inherently a bad thing: we don't necessarily expect dramatic stylistic swerves each time out from a band like AC/DC.  We know what they do, and we just want to hear them do it more.  But Radiohead always seemed to make their best music when they were backed into a corner.  Thief sounds like they're just slouching in the middle of the room.  The performances aren't lifeless, but they're completely devoid of tension.  Even the weakest songs on their previous records had some sort of strain behind them; these were just excellently played songs, no more, no less.

Radiohead aren't usually coy about their politics, playing union benefits, holding up a "Vote Nader" sign on Saturday Night Live, and with songs like "Electioneering" and "You And Whose Army."  So when the opportunity arose for them to stick it to the man (my nephews' favorite catch phrase.  OK, I taught it to them), they pulled no punches in exposing the music industry for all its rampant uselessness.  As Alexander Billet wrote in Socialist Worker, "Fans have access to new music by one of the world's biggest and most popular bands, for as much or as little money as they desire, including nothing.  ...there are no parasitic record labels involved, no exorbitant CD prices.  Just a direct channel between artist and listener." 

Sad to say, the record is pretty seriously lacking; it's the sonic equivalent of a compromised contract after a hard-won strike.  For some reason I assumed that In Rainbows would contain some level of confoundment.  Sadly, it sounds like it could have been recorded during, or before, Hail To The Thief; there's nothing to indicate that they're engaging their fears.  To be sure, it's not lazy or half-assed.  Like Thief, it's expertly performed and arranged.  But even the outtakes from OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac were far beyond anything on In Rainbows in terms of that running-with-a-flashlight-through-a-cave quality that used to be their stock in trade -- the joy of discovery after confronting their fears head-on -- that now seems to have gone missing.  Even after the relative disappointment of Hail To The Thief I was surprised that they'd put out something so totally average.  Since I read a number of reviews to the contrary, I spend a day or two away from it before listening to it again last night.  It didn't strike me any differently than it did when I first listened to it.  The eerieness is gone from their music.

It's probably unfair to demand exciting confusion each time out, but this is what they prepared us for.  And this is why sticking with what they're comfortable with is so unsatisfying.  I once wondered if, since Bjork is essentially Nico-lite, does that make Radiohead Roxy Music-lite?  I didn't actually want an answer to that, and especially not in the affirmative.  But just for the man-sticking-it-to-ness of their distribution, I'll take it. 

Comments

[Scott B]

This is a really great piece, tarfumes.

I like In Rainbows, but need to listen to it another 20 times or so before I feel I can really write about it, other than right now saying the piano in "Videotape" might be the eeriest, scariest thing I have heard outside a horror flick score.

[Matt]

Thanks.

I'm gonna have to run back and listen to "Videotape" again right away.

[DaveX]

You're not the only one more than a little disappointed with "In Rainbows," but you're probably going to be one of a handful with chutzpah to say it.