POLLD LIKE SARDINES IN A CRUSHD TIN BOX - ILM Artist Poll #56 - RADIOHEAD

brooding, not broody.

and i don't like the 'double opener' on HTTT very much; just feels disjointed.

Both good songs in their own right, but they are too structurally similar to belong right next to each other imo.

wow.... just going down this list is giving me MAJOR nostalgia pangs. Really feels like I'm polling the work of two entirely different bands though. How am I supposed to compare 'Faithless the Wonder Boy' to 'Give Up the Ghost' for example?

it would have been better to open the second side of HTTT with Sit Down Stand Up.

No tension in There There is quite a statement.

― Van Horn Street, Monday, August 25, 2014 10:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That might be my favorite song on the record, but not by much; that album sounds like a band doing an impression of Radiohead. In a way it reminds me of Richard Pryor's post-burn material: everything seems to be in place, and you want to like it, but there's some small element missing -- timing, maybe -- and it feels like the center is empty.

yeah it really dips in the middle for me, that album. i like many of the songs taken on their own but i never felt like it sat together so well, especially when an album like OK Computer is such a masterful example of sequencing.

I suppose HTTT is good on its own terms, roughly equal with TKOL, but for some reason it's an album I'm never able to hear except as a disappointment. I don't load TKOL with that same baggage.

I don't get the sense there's any kind of consensus, so I'm genuinely curious as to what's going to be up there

I am gonna vote for the whole of HTTT (minus We Suck Young Blood and Punchup At A Wedding because Thom OTM) and this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5JWH3dXYis

Seriously, I do get the hate for Pablo Honey, but this probably still one of my top 10 Radiohead tracks, 21+ years later or whatever.

I don't get the sense there's any kind of consensus, so I'm genuinely curious as to what's going to be up there

― Turtleneck Work Solutions (Nasty, Brutish & Short)

Yep. Though I've a hunch either Pyramid Song or Paranoid Android will be no 1.

I love Blow Out (similar chord formation to 'house of cards'?) and am fond of a number of songs on PH. Actually looking at my long-list of selections I think a good chunk of my choices will be pre-Kid A B-sides I used to have on a bootleg called Oxford's Angels and have neglected for a long time.

I think There There is in with a good chance of being top three.

"We Suck Young Blood" was the leaked song that made me buy Hail to the Thief the day it was released and is one of my favorite songs on the album.

yeah i feel that maybe a somewhat redone 'blow out' wouldn't sound too out of place on the last couple of albums

Reckoner maybe top 5?

I've told this story a million times but I'll tell it again: I was working in a record shop when Creep came out, and the video was constantly on the video screens. And my impression of them at the time was just "oh, third wave shoegazer grunge wannabees, whatever" until I put the promo album on, and heard Blow Out for the first time. I have been a fan ever since. That really was the song that convinced me they were more than just a one-hit wonder, and I do still hear echos what they would become in those jazzy chords.

i think i'm def going to vote for that one. just thinking about it is making me want to relive the indie nights at Hatfield Forum (they were pretty awful, but still)

i'm hoping someone else will join me in my quest to get either Fog or Permanent Daylight into the results

I like 'A Reminder' - such a slight piece.

Rock poll's got me wanting 100 votes for every poll now.

i think airbag will be #1
because how could you not vote for airbag?
it's not possible.

I am not voting for Airbag.

well there goes my theory then

I'm voting for it, but it won't make my top 10.

But then, "Fitter, Happier" will make my top 10, so don't listen to me.

Literally every single one of Airbag's B-sides is better than Airbag.

I love Airbag, it was about fourth on my list.

There are not many songs more thrilling than Airbag. It pulls me in (and into the album) every single time.

I like Airbag. There are 20+ other Radiohead songs I like more though.

the rest of Airbag/How am I Driving does very little for me. the tracks are either awkwardly sitting in between the bends and okc (well apart from polyethylene which sits there quite nicely) or else they're just kinda halfbaked.

lull will probably be the only okc b-side to make my ballot.

As long as we're repping for Pablo Honey cuts, allow me to point out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rag8gqdOBJ4

There are not many songs more thrilling than Airbag. It pulls me in (and into the album) every single time.

When I had OK Computer in heavy rotation, I started skipping "Airbag" after about two weeks and probably haven't heard it more than a handful of times since.

The jingle bells ruin Airbag in my opinion.

i often find myself doubting ok computer and am compelled to re-listen and re-evaluate. and everytime i do this, the drums kick in on airbag and i feel like a heathen for ever doubting it.

but then the album peters out with the last couple of tracks and i'm doomed to repeat this process forever

I'll often skip to SHA, which is (spoiler alert) the number one Radiohead song, and end up listening from there, but Airbag is indispensable.

The jingle bells ruin Airbag in my opinion.

― alanbatman (abanana)

Nah, I think they work.

Yeah love those bells.

9 ballots in and a few songs are showing themselves as frontrunners.

As long as we're repping for Pablo Honey cuts, allow me to point out literally the worst song on the album

Ok "You" is pretty bad too. I would say that almost every song on it has at least a faint echo of what they would go on to do, even if it's just of the "street spirit" coldplay's second cousin type rubbish. But "How Do You" just sounds like horrible splintery 90s guitars and adolescent yelping.

btw if High And Dry reaches the countdown I reserve the right to call y'all earless

I love High and Dry. That (by way of the music video) was definitely my first exposure to Radiohead. I was 11 or so. I remember because, not long later, at my cousin's house, I found his copy of The Bends, and really wanted to hear that song again. The CD actually in the case was Downward Spiral, so instead my virgin ears got to hear that God is dead and no one cares.

High and Dry more like coldplay's first cousin, sibling even.

sibling? it is coldplay's stone-cold benighted parent

and yet it's still better than every single song Coldplay did, largely by dint of having a competent rhythm section and a singer capable of singing

well yeah

jeez I'm gonna have to vote aren't I. ok, thinking cap on

even if it's just of the "street spirit" coldplay's second cousin type rubbish

oof, extremely harsh (on street spirit obviously, not the pablo honey rubbish)

just sent my ballot. oddly enough, i found it more difficult to rank the albums than the tracks. the ballot for the tracks is always kind of weird because they're not a true ranking of my favorites since i want to give more points to tracks that i think belong in the rundown but are unlikely to get many votes. so it ends up being a hodgepodge of a true ranking and a strategic vote.

albums are just my faves in order, though, and i'm still not sure about what i really think. i know that i like amnesiac more than hail to the thief, even though there are more songs on HTTT that made my ballot than amnesiac. amnesiac just flows better as an album for some reason (perhaps those talking about the need to cut the worst songs off of HTTT have a point, although no one can agree on what the worst songs are (personally i'd cut scatterbrain, backdrifts, sail to the moon, and replace the studio version of gloaming with a more recent live version, which kicks ass)).

i also think that the king of limbs deserves a spot. i think that, like HTTT, it will be more appreciated as time goes on. i think i got a little high once and wrote one of my worst posts ever (and that's saying a lot), but the From the Basement version of the TKOL songs really altered my opinion. i still prefer the basement versions (i described the studio versions, shittily, as "like an airbrushed senior yearbook photo of your friend where his acne is removed from the image using photoshop, where the live performance is like a candid Instagram shot of the same guy hanging out in your kitchen"), but now i hear control and maturity in TKOL where i only heard dullness before. i dunno. i had a similar progression over time with sonic youth's later albums.

are ppl bothering with the live album?

putting together a list, going through stuff I've not heard for years & quite charmed by nonsense like india rubber

'True Love Waits' will presumably pick up a vote or two.

I'd rather we waited another ten years or so to do this poll, as The Bends and OKC both still seem locked in a very specific time for me, both personally and 'objectively', so it's hard to listen to them as the me of 2014. More distance and I think I'll be able to put together a ballot.

might do a troll ballot that's just 'Pop is Dead' at #1 tho