Radiohead In Rainbows (JP) by: Justin Pearsall Mon:15-Oct-07 Label: Independent Year: 2007 WB rating 90 out of 100

Whilst Radiohead’s legacy as the most definitive act of the late 90s-early 00s is assured, the less than rapturous response to Hail to the Thief and the four year wait for In Rainbows have the band perched on an ominous artistic precipice. It’s a precipice largely self created, one driven by a consistent ability to surprise listeners and a desire to constantly advance their artistic ambition. Pushing the boundaries of what rock music is supposedly able to achieve, Radiohead, more than any other modern band, had the distinct Darwinian talent to mutate whilst leaving only faint footprints of the past.

However these days seem gone. While Hail to the Thief had a number of inspired moments (tracks like ‘2 + 2 = 5’, ‘There There’ and ‘Where I End and You Begin’), the album’s ‘problems’ stemmed from its status as an OK Computer/Kid A hybrid – a three-year-late missing link between these records. For the first time since making the ascension from Pablo Honey it appeared Radiohead had wavered, if not faltered. And while the record itself was still among the best of 2003, its reliance on past glories lefts whiffs of a ‘well’s run dry’ scenario which the band seemed previously impervious to.

Potentially In Rainbows should suffer from similar criticisms, many of its tracks tap into past work and it lacks the cohesiveness of a Kid A or OK Computer. But still it sounds undeniably fresh – not just avoiding contemporary comparisons but somehow adding a new coat to their past. In fact, similar to the Kid A period, Radiohead are back to defying expectations. Except now, instead of this innovation being driven by a changing instrumental focus (keyboards replacing guitars and samples usurping drums) their growth lies in more natural qualities: sparsity and emotion.

For a band synonymous with technological paranoia, scepticism and dystopian gloom, In Rainbows is predominately a positivist work, one engrained with a hopefulness largely lost since The Bends. In sound these changes are reflected with an open production that contrasts the huge soundscapes of recent efforts – this in turn is punctuated by a number of major-sounding songs seemingly forgotten after the band’s second release. These sections of positivity are essential to the album’s momentum, allowing an emotive continuity to pervade the record and making the inevitable deviations in sentiment and tone less jarring. More importantly these flickers of hope silence the obvious challenges of the band’s back catalogue, making instances of self-referencing seem more like footnoting than the bulky obstacles that restricted HTT.

It is a curious trick of the record that this newly remembered positivity is central to the album’s success, yet the standout tracks are those that resonant most with the foreboding sound so typical of the band’s latter work. ‘Bodysnatchers’ is Radiohead at their most aggressive. Existing in the framework of ‘Paranoid Android’s violent bridge and the raucous frustration of ‘2 + 2 = 5’, the song’s industrial-sounding riff and punk beat are well met by Yorke’s livid delivery. Album opener ‘15 Steps’ is a similar reappraisal, this time evoking the gloomy nature of Amnesiac. The song’s frenetic drum beat steers a rhythmic vocal line, the interplay of natural and digital instrumentation and voices at the heart of the track’s appeal.

However these highlights could easily have frazzled in a Hail to the Thief like simmer over – where songs seem to miss the crucial interplay needed to form a great record. Thankfully though the softer, more fragile side of In Rainbows ensures this does not occur. ‘Nude’, a song originally touted as a possible inclusion on OK Computer, warms with a heart raking intimacy, a vulnerability reminiscent of ‘How to Disappear Completely’. Yet it is more than a simple 2.0 update, it’s graceful in a manner unlike anything Radiohead has previously delivered, Yorke’s wordless enunciations in the song’s conclusion and the floating cadence of the strings somehow echoing the uncertainty of life’s larger questions.

In rainbows there is little, just sunlight through rain drops, colour melding with gloom. Despite its initial sugary impression, it’s a fitting metaphor for Radiohead’s latest; one that combines two seemingly disparate elements, the band’s light and dark sides. As sounds slowly crystallize and subtleties become more apparent the listener is drawn into something beautiful, something weightless. And even though In Rainbows still bears the aggression and darkness that defines Radiohead’s sound, it’s now the band’s bright side that’s the most illuminating.