David Browne solves Radiohead's 'problem'

Or like a "Dirty Mind" rip-off.

They've made two albums since Kid A. How impatient can you get?

I don't think Radiohead really need to do anything. Whatever they make, it sounds like Radiohead music, and that's fine with me. I'd prefer more electronics, less guitars, but whatever. Thom could stand to drone his voice a little less.

Yes, even more boring than Amp's "Perceptions".

For a moment I thought he meant Lauryn and Fiona should join Radiohead to solve this (ahum) crisis. *ponders this* Not such a bad idea.

who are these guys that write for entertainment weekly? does anyone even respect what they say anymore? I feel the same way about any major publication that tries to comment on music (except for the New Yorker).

how's that for a new direction

(a) Stop being lazy cunts and write songs that actually develop (ie- either in a conventional song structure of verse/chorus etc, or build and ebb and flow) rather than just jamming something together and hoping it will do (it usually doesn't)

(b) Don't think that if after you've jammed together these half-tunes and take them on tour the fact tat the fanbase appears to love it is necessarily a sign of quality (its not) as they are in the main hideously uncritical

(c) Get a new producer who can actually have some input, and crucially to give a patina of sonic coherence to the whole album (ie- its fine to have lots of different styles, but in order to stop it from sounding like a bunch of half-arsed pastiches they need to at the very least have a common production aesthetic in terms of how you produce the vocals, levels of reverb etc- that will create a more coherent sense of an album...)

(d) Make some bold creative decisions and stick to them (Browne is kind of accurate here).

I read it as "Byrne"!

gekoppel, your criticisms are musically uninformed as they all flow from a faulty presence. Radiohead songs absolutely have structure to them; in fact, most of them are in standard verse/chorus form and the ones that aren't follow their own relatively obvious patterns.

http://opieblue.typepad.com/my_weblog/images/fratboy_capn_america_2_1.jpg

But really, is anyone else really sick of Radiohead?

The interesting note up there, to me, is this one:

(b) Don't think that if after you've jammed together these half-tunes and take them on tour the fact tat the fanbase appears to love it is necessarily a sign of quality (its not) as they are in the main hideously uncritical

Which is a weird psychological thing that happens, actually. This is a major band whose fan base believes in them as deliverers of sophisticated and "difficult" music, which is kind of a rare phenomenon these days (and part of why the band's big, I think). It's not just that the fanbase is sycophantic and uncritical, it's that they look to Radiohead as a kind of challenging educational experience, so even if they're not being directly satisfied, they're actually inclined to strive to get into it, to be impressed by the fact that the band isn't conventionally satisfying them (or at least to not want to be the guy who doesn't "get" Radiohead's alleged sophistication). This is really incredibly rare, for a band this big to have fans who are aspiring to understand them, rather than the other way around -- you could just call it the intimidation factor of a high-art reputation, but I think it's actually a good and nice thing to see. (Especially now, when the abundance of music available to us makes people as averse to figure out bands that don't immediately please them as we used to all accuse major labels of being, back in the "whatever happened to artist development" days.)

Even songs like "Creep" or "Pyramid Song" that use the same chord progression ad finitum contain pretty clear verse/chorus delineation via volume and/or melodic shifts ("Pyramid Song" becomes denser and denser as the song goes along and you've already put forward the loud/soft shifting on "Creep"; every single one of their songs except for things like "Treefingers" is pretty easy to decompose into sections if you're even slightly versed in music) (not that I want to start the "learn rudimentary music theory before you try to talk about music" argument again).

I don't see how you can credibly claim that Radiohead songs since OK Computer are sructureless in the face of "Drunken Punchup At A Wedding", "2+2=5", "We Suck Young Blood", "The Gloaming", "Go To Sleep", "Knives Out", "Packt Like Sardines...", "Morning Bell", "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors", "In Limbo", "Sit Down, Stand Up", "Where I End And You Begin", "Myxomatosis", "Optimistic", "Everything In Its Right Place", "Idioteque", "Life In A Glass House" etc etc etc unless you've either never actually heard the songs or you are musically illiterate.

"Everything In Its Right Place" has three distinct sections:

1) The "everything in its right place..." sequence which acts as a refrain
2) The verse section "yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon/There are two colors in my hair"
3) The coda

The verse in "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" is built off of a ten bar pattern that has an internal pattern of 4-3-2-1, intercut with a bridge that is either 4 or 8 bars, I can't remember off the top of my head without listening to the song.

"Go To Sleep" has a very explicit macro A section and macro B section, to the point of them being in different time signatures.

"Knives Out", "Optimistic", "In Limbo", "Morning Bell", "Drunken Punchup At A Wedding", "Life In A Glass House", "Where I End And You Begin" and "Packt Like Sardines..." all are standard verse/chorus songs; some of them also have bridges but there is nothing particularly unexpected in terms of pop song structure going on in any of these songs.

"2+2=5" and "Stand Up, Sit Down" are the most complicated songs because each section switches to something new, especially "2+2=5".

"The Gloaming" does a verse/chorus pattern with the melody line as opposed to the harmonic structure while "We Suck Young Blood" condenses the chorus into the instrumental breaks and splits up the vocal melody into verse/prechorus sections.

That said, I would like to see them 'branch out' and perhaps throw a few lengthier songs onto their next album; I'm absolutely intrigued to see how they'd approach them. No free-form jams, though, because as we know, that isn't what the band are about.

Largely though I think Dan is OTM.

As I get older I feel less and less bad about saying things like this: you need to listen to HTTT more than 3 times. No one got into in the first three listens, I don't think.

The part in bold is EXACTLY how Radiohead writes their songs; suggesting it as a way to improve their songwriting process makes you look really fucking stupid (as does agreeing with it).

That sounds like an oxymoron.

Sounds like you're actually unhappy about the lack of release? I.e. they don't rock out enough?

Dan, please point me to the "release" in that song! So far as I can tell, it arrives around the point where the horns come in on "National Anthem."

I don't know, you can get a whole lot done in five minutes.

gekoppel, I disagree about the lack of production aesthetic but I can completely understand the point your making there.

But geez, "Pyramid Song" when all the strings whang in (same in "You and Whose Army" and the end of "Sit Down Stand Up" and the end of "Wolf at the Door"--I mean, I guess there are more static songs in their post-OK discog than in their pre-, but that's still not very many, and there's so many movements toward climaxes that it just seems like a hard thing to deny. Maybe I'm just conveniently ignoring Kid A.