RAdiohead

I found that strummy track ("Free In The Knowledge" I guess?) quite annoying, but a lot of the rest is really great. I will need to settle into it with a few more spins soon.

Now listening for that, KM

Agree with the praise, "Open The Floodgates" is my early fave. I hear a ton of cosmic music flourishes throughout. Is this a side project or has Radiohead disbanded?

I love “free in the knowledge” but the production is a saturared mess tbh

it's a side project that exists because the others weren't available to make music during the height of the pandemic

(Arranger) Hugh Brunt the MVP of this album. Greenwood is amazing but it’s so interesting to hear another approach

Also considering how ambivalent I am about Yorke’s lyrics and singing on Radiohead albums (more a comment on my own fatigue than his craft) I am adoring his voice on this

His voice sounds younger somewhat in this. In modern Radiohead albums he uses the falsetto more discreetly and it sounds a bit whiny. In here he almost sounds as good as he sounded in The Bends.

Maybe not stressing his voice on tour helped.

also lot of meandering grooves in weird time signatures

Okay, I'm sold!

Meandering grooves in weird time signatures is how I’d describe most of Radiohead post OKC tbh

In Rainbows would like a word

Yeah In Rainbows is them proving they can still nail “normal rock song structures” if they want to. It’s still the most accesible album they’ve released in 20 years as a band.

I’d argue there’s still plenty of meandering in weird time signatures even there.

Not a bad thing in my book, it’s what makes them one of the few active rock bands I care about.

it's only really this & httt that emphasise weird time signatures, there's only the occasional track elsewhere

both otm

there was that hidden weird time signature in Videotape even...

syncopation is a different thing

You’re really going to make me check this… let’s go.

HTTT has 4 out of 14 songs with weird (non 4/4) time signatures: 2+2=5, Sail to the Moon and Wolf at the Door, Go to Sleep.
28%

Kid A: 4 out of 10. EIIRP, HTDC, In Limbo, Morning Bell.
40%

Amnesiac: 0%

In Rainbows: 3 out of 10. 15 Step, Nude, Faust Arp
30%

TKOL: 1 out of 8. Codex
12.5%

AMSP: 5 out of 14. Daydreaming, Decks Dark, Desert Island Disk, Ful Stop, Present Tense.
35%

Source: https://pastebin.com/Hf04Q6Ym

Curiously Amnesiac and TKOL are usually considered their most experimental/inaccesible albums and they’re the ones without weird time signatures.

HTTT is a record that would be much improved by being 2-4 songs shorter, though I’m not sure which songs.

my definition of 'weird' definitely does not include things like 3/4 or 6/8 etc., those are pretty standard. i was thinking more specifically of complex time signatures that arise when you throw a 5 or 7 or some higher prime than 3 into the mix, or anything that's heavily shifting between time signatures

so what i was thinking of was just:
the one bit of "paranoid android" that has bars in 7/8
"everything in its right place", "morning bell"
"2+2=5", "sail to the moon", "go to sleep" (which starts off alternating between two bars of 6/8 and one of 4/4 which could be mashed into one bar of 10/4 if you wanted to make it ugly)
"15 step", "faust arp"

had forgotten that "desert island disk" was in 7/4, and that "codex" has two bars of 5/4 in its bridge - that one's a little marginal

"present tense" definitely does not count just for having a stray beat at the very start of the song, it's entirely in 4/4 beyond that.

also had not paid enough attention to realise "decks dark" slips in a bar of 2/4 occasionally - unusual but not complex. 6/4 on "ful stop" and the "in limbo" verse i'd also classify the same way

on the smile album i have:
"the same" - this feels like it has some weird shifts but i don't feel like counting it out
"you will never work in television again" - 5/4
"pana-vision" - verse is 7/4, chorus is 7/8
"thin thing" - mostly 6/8 or 12/8? but i think there's some shifts?
"waving a white flag" - this feels like it's 7/8 or something similarly odd but again i don't feel like counting
"skrting on the surface" - 11/8

"the opposite" is just a heavily syncopated 4/4 or maybe 12/8?

pretty heavily their proggiest album in that sense

I know it's technically 4/4 but NOT citing Pyramid Song as having a weird time signature feels bogus somehow.

it's just heavily syncopated & full of triplets, so you could write it as 12/8 instead

White Flag is 11/8

The whole album is really interesting rhythmically. I guess having an actual jazz drummer opened a new level of complexity for them.

syncopation is a different thing
right you are, was just thinking there was also something funny going on rhythmically on Rainbows

the most intricate drumming (apart from the new one) is prob to be found on TKOL even though per Moka's research only 1 jam is out of 4/4? I guess I'm more interested in fun drumming than weird time signatures

Thin Thing is definitely weird. Drums are 6/4 for the most part but go into 6/8 at the final section, but gets disorienting because Jonny is playing mostly in 3/4 and 5/8 in the bridge.

At least that how I’m hearing it.

Xpost: was surprised about that too! TKOL feels like a very groovy and rhythmic album for the most part, but it’s not complex it’s mostly them doing syncopation (like the handclaps on Lotus Flower) that fool you into thinking the songs are not actually in 4/4.

On "The Opposite" Tom does a very tasty Tony Allen type thing, that's the standout for me so far.

yeah I keep thinking of Tony Allen listening to this

heh, listening to “The Hairdryer” I was thinking “well I guess this is one of the complex time sigs” but nope, it’s in four

"Hairdryer" is interesting, it's like Skinner is emulating exactly the sort of skittery beat Thom likes to program on drum machines. I think "Open the Floodgates" is my favorite thing here so far but there's lots to like.

I'll give this new one a listen but I'm not holding out much hope because I'm one of those boring rockists who is of the opinion that Radiohead never bettered OKC and is patiently waiting for them to make another album in that vein even though I know it's never going to happen. The way I see it, it was OKC, not Kid A, that was Radiohead's big creative leap forward. Every album since OKC has betokened a fatal shrivelling of Radiohead's worldview. Can someone please make a playlist of the most OKC-like tracks from Kid A thru AMSP so that I don't have to wade through the dross.

in rainbows was their another album in that vein though

it even has some songs they wrote back in the okc era like nude and reckoner

thanks, I wasn't too aware of that, I'll listen to that one again.

In Rainbows is most definitely their "back 2 roots" sort of album.

xpost: this isn't the same "Reckoner" that was around the OKC era. They used the same title but this was a new song. The other Reckoner from OKC ended up with the title "feeling pulled apart by horses" and was released as a solo track by Thom.

Time signatures are not the sole or even most telling measure of how proggy an album is imo. That would be modularity - progressions themselves. How much verse-chorus and how much...not. HTTT is averse to simple verse-chorus - will be interesting to see if this is too

Myself I kinda associate "progginess" (Genesis, Henry Cow, King Crimson, Rush, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", Dirty Projectors) with a particular thing when bands make decisions to complicate things to confuse the ears of the listeners. It's a different thing entirely when complicating decisions are made to challenge the band as performers and composers but the results are not-especially-confusing to a listener (This Heat, Radiohead, Talk Talk, things like Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean" I guess). I don't really associate "a weird time signature made to sound natural" (or its cousin, "a standard time signature made to sound weird") with "progginess", for some reason

How are listeners more confused by Queen and Rush than by This Heat? Not sure I follow.

yeah i dont see how e.g. "Limelight" isnt the same situation as "The Ocean" its just a normal rock song that happens to change meter between verse and chorus. most of Rush's 'progginess' stops there

or mid-verse rather but it still sounds natural

Is there a term that would refer to a tendency (whether in progressive rock, jazz, electronic music, or elsewhere) where you can practically hear the players counting off the unusual signature in their heads, oriented around "chops" and feeling thus totally choppy?

As opposed to the innumerable performances also in "unusual" time signatures where it flows and lives, and the players (and yourself as the listener) don't seem hung up on it, and the signature just adds a certain feeling (emotional or musical) you wouldn't get as readily without it?

Radiohead feels about 50/50 on those, when engaging weird time signatures.

That said, I haven't been able to get through more than a few tracks of this at a go, so far. Feels like it's mostly good, if a bit grab-bag, but just doesn't sustain interest so far.

I say that as someone who was an obsessive Radiohead listener circa 1995-2001 (as a teenager/early 20s), then hated 'Hail To the Thief' and felt like I'd rather listen to what Radiohead were listening to than their interpretations of it for the next few albums. But who then really loved 'A Moon Shaped Pool,' probably my favorite album of theirs.

At least a couple tracks on this make me think Yorke et al have been listening to Sault, and some Total Refreshnent Centre groups. Not a bad thing...

Yeah Soundslike that's exactly what I mean!

@ Sund4r when I said Rush I meant like... 2112 more than Moving Pictures I guess. As for This Heat, I guess I was thinking about the bizarre chord choices and time signatures that function more like Can grooves than like Yes cartwheels... second part of "Paper Hats" for example is in 11/8 and sounds exactly like Radiohead at their chilliest. It's not that This Heat aren't confusing, it's just not chops chops chops like their Canterburian older brothers

I see, maybe it's something to do with choppiness vs groove? Math rock exemplifies the former, perhaps?

I would say HTTT is the post OKC album most similar to OKC

yep

In Rainbows is absolutely nothing like OKC, its colours are so muted in comparison

Yeah, it's wild to compare OKC to IR. OKC is the career-defining guitar epic. IR is the "we're gonna start to mellow with age" album and marks the start of the arc that continued with TKOL and AMSP.

Zach's Taxonomy of Radiohead Eras:

Pablo Honey - OK Computer: "We're a rock band. Scratch that--we're the MOST IMPORTANT ROCK BAND OF OUR TIME."

Kid A - HTTT: "We have reinvented ourselves! But we're still kind of a rock band."

In Rainbows - AMSP: "Starting to feel old. What if we just kinda...chilled out and jammed?"