Radiohead In Rainbows (JC) by: Joseph Coscarelli Mon:15-Oct-07 Label: Independent Year: 2007 WB rating 90 out of 100

To slight Radiohead over 10 years after their artistic and critical ascendance would not only be flagrantly contrarian, but also embarrassingly belated. The time for backlash has come and gone and it is no secret which side prevailed. Though periodically forgetting their role, Radiohead are one of the last vestiges of the Great Rock Band, concerned with the album, the art form and continuous progression, all in the truest sense.

That said, I've never been much of a fan.

Call me shamefully shallow, needy or even elitist, but Radiohead fail to invoke that special brand of intimacy. There has always been something far too egalitarian about it all. Bootlegs, b-sides and discussion boards aside, the thought of the harmony between meatheads cranking 'Creep' in their SUVs, vacuous teenagers feigning personal depth with 'Fake Plastic Trees' and obsessives scouring OK Computer for a coherent narrative has never sat well with me.

With the release of In Rainbows, the populous prevails again. By flipping the script, shredding the recording industry blueprint, and turning marketing norms on their collective ear (no advanced copies were distributed for reviewing), Radiohead has leveled the playing field. But they've also stripped the musical experience of individuality.

By releasing the album suddenly for download, the band has assured the singularity of the listening experience. There was no car ride home with plastic wrap thrown to the passengers seat or no anticipation for the first glimpse of the postman. Instead, we all enjoyed the same click, save, add new files, update device, et cetera, et cetera. Rumors have figures at 1.2 million downloads in the first two days. That is terrifying. Their scope is too broad, power too far reaching and range frightening -- a bit too Orwellian, too computerized. Fitter, happier.

But like everyone else, I haven't stopped listening to In Rainbows for days. It has left me like the vacant, inhabited vessel in 'Bodysnatchers,' bloody and pulverized by Jonny Greenwood's unrelenting buzz-saw gutiar revving like a possessed, blood-thirsty blade (something missing since The Bends). It has left me rattled by the tight pops and playground cheer of '15 Step', leaving me to ponder what happened between one and fourteen. Hearing Thom Yorke lob a sports cliche like "won't take my eyes off the ball again" only to follow it with a stale idiom – "did the cat get your tongue?" – somehow still sounds fresh, if only when picturing Yorke's manic, meta-smirk as he's daring you to charge pretension with lines like that.

Throughout, the album is wound as tightly as the bass in 'Nude', wrought with the precision of say, a 'House of Cards', almost rigid if not for the way the tracks crack and hiss, inflate then pop. Whether that is a result of the 160 kbps mp3 quality remains to be seen, but to the disgust of audiophiles, the breaks enhance the experience giving relatively straight songs the guise of dirty demos -- for a group like Radiohead, a tease at a personal experience between fan and band. The ballads in the key of 'Nude' – 'All I Need' and its cool build to careful cacophony, the 'Faust Arp' string section or 'Videotape' in its unsettling mortality -- rank among the band's finest, and most effortless, post-'Karma Police' softies.  

Yorke is as accessible as he has been in over a decade, forgetting the plight of rabbit disease and the "raindrops" that bogged Hail to the Thief, even feigning sexy to drop bombs like "I don't want to be your friend/ I just want to be your lover" on 'House of Cards'. If The Eraser sounded like it was missing something, it's because it was, and on In Rainbows, the band prevails with the small-scale symphony intact. Yorke floats and glides, intelligible in tone and word, over the most focused collection of instrumentals the band has placed in succession since they solidified their own mythology years ago.

And for that, In Rainbows will be assailed. It is safe, comprehensible and it is sentimental. But if the best working band had anything left to prove, it is that they are not the cold, well-oiled machine they appear -- not only leaps and bounds ahead of their contemporaries, but their fans. Were they too slick and too ambitious? Or tough for the sake of weird? Robots through the atypical motions. Thankfully, that is not the case. And most importantly, In Rainbows has a heartbeat.