Official RADIOHEAD thread

Started by Duck Sauce, January 11, 2003, 05:54:58 PM

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European Son

Atlanta Oct 6 for me. Sucks that Radiohead is playing these ampitheaters though.

Sleuth

When was the last time they DIDN'T play them though
I like to hug dogs

modage

when they did the american tour for Kid A (all of TWO dates in ny and la, those pricks), and before that okcomputer in 1997.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Sleuth

That's surprising.  I thought they had been doing them since at least Kid A, and most likely OKC
I like to hug dogs

sexterossa

is the hollywood bowl worth driving down from san francisco in order to avoid the shoreline amplitheater?
I dream of birds and sometimes they land and burst into flames. And I dream my teeth are rotting. And when I am awake, I dream of you.

Pozer

I love it. but if your seats are too far back, then maybe not. but it's an open arena with lazer lights zooming everywhere, cool silhouettes on the wall in the back ground. but the best thing ever is when the band comes on, the sun starts to go down and the darkness/fog kicks in fading out the Hollywood sign on the hill in the bg. It's like you all of sudden entered this magical world and everything surrounding becomes irrelevant for two hours.
at least that's what happened when I saw them there last year.

SoNowThen

so I now officially love the new album as much as the others.

It took until the 5th listen to fully sink in. A wonderful thing of music.

Happy SoNowThen  8)
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

modage

The Gloaming + Myxomatosis= doo doo.  the album would be alot better, if i didnt have to keep skipping these stupid things.  dont they know what b-sides are?  also, while i am on my radiohead rant, how DARE thom say THIS album is "okcomputer2".  it sounds NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING like okcomputer.  and any reviews that say this sounds anything \like it, are not listening to the same album.  the review i agree most with, is actually the one from BLENDER that i was thumbing through the other day...

Radiohead promise a return to rock, but continue the dirge-fest
Reviewed by James Slaughter  


In the two years since their last album, Amnesiac, Radiohead have been dethroned by Coldplay as the kings of serious, pointy-headed British rock. The same fans who made Radiohead one of the world's biggest, most admired bands after OK Computer in 1997 were bewildered by the free-jazz squalls and dissonant electronica of Kid A and Amnesiac and defected to Coldplay, who sound like Radiohead from before the days when Radiohead could scare your date.

The buildup to their sixth album, Hail to the Thief, suggests that Radiohead want to regain their fans — and their crown. Guitarist Ed O'Brien has claimed that the record "won't alienate people...I think we've got over that musical snobbery. We feel rehungered." He compared Radiohead's current "swagger" to that of the Rolling Stones circa 1968. You can almost sense ears pricking up.

But ears are liable to quickly prick down again once they hear the album. Although it's not as willfully obtuse as Kid A, it's roughly 87 percent alienation and 13 percent swagger. The most commercial moment may well be the first single, "There There," which features the rare return of actual guitars, including a charmingly strangulated Jonny Greenwood solo, but it stays strangely subdued until an acceleration well past the four-minute mark. By contrast, OK Computer's "Paranoid Android" sounds like Van Halen.

Radiohead repeat that pattern throughout this confusing album, offering nothing in the way of a chorus, nothing approaching a hook, nothing graciously pleasing. The songs are packed with nice touches, but they sound vague and half-finished. Thom Yorke's high, alien voice drawls and croons, often wordlessly, as though he has given up on language.

"Myxomatosis" (named for a highly lethal disease that infects rabbits) isn't much more than a monstrous, proggy bass-synth riff, and Yorke haltingly declares, "I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied." "Backdrifts" offers the same whirring loops found on Amnesiac's "Like Spinning Plates," and it has a lovely piano line buried in the mix. "Sit Down, Stand Up" appears to be part of a song. Admittedly, it's the best part, building slowly from pattering techno beats to speedy, drum-laden anxiety, but the excitement is undercut by a puzzling sense of incompleteness.

Hail to the Thief sounds less like a band swaggering than a band determined to keep circumventing and defacing rock & roll as they savor the outer limits of texture and deliberate inarticulateness. Sometimes they focus on an idea: "Sail to the Moon" is a woozy ballad with Pink Floyd orchestration, testament to how marvelous Yorke sounds when he eases up on the histrionics. "A Punch-up at the Wedding" is presumably the type of song that excited O'Brien — softly funky bass, lambent piano and caustically funny lyrics: "You had to piss on our parade," Yorke complains, as distraught as ever.

Not the stuff of belly laughs, sure, but it's a vast improvement on the rest of the mood, which reaches an apotheosis of misery on "We Suck Young Blood." This is a cartoonist's caricature of Radiohead: whining, tuneless, agonizingly slow and so depressing you can't imagine anyone wanting to hear it twice. The song doesn't exactly jump the shark, but it does walk listlessly around the shark tank, moaning about the appalling conditions marine life endures in captivity, before slumping home in a sulk.

Complaining that Radiohead sound miserable is like complaining that Britney Spears is tacky: That's the essence of their appeal. Radiohead are meant to carry the weight of the world's problems on their scrawny shoulders. Nevertheless, there's something unappealing about Hail to the Thief's brand of glum. It offers none of the thrilling anger that powered OK Computer. The album seems resigned, defeated, passive — like an hour-long sigh.

Lately, rock bands have seemed so desperate to please that their every move seems to imitate some other successful act, so it's hard to criticize a group for taking risks. But there's a world of difference between admiring a record's ambition and enjoying the results; it's the difference between Radiohead in 1997 and in 2003.

Hail to the Thief is the third straight Radiohead album that's difficult to love: It's too vague, too remote, too encased in its misery. The only concrete point it makes is that the thrilling band that made The Bends and OK Computer has dug its heels into joyless, post-rock dirt, and it's not coming out.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Sleuth

I don't like The Gloaming, but Myxomatosis is one of my favorites man.  And why is everyone so up on Radiohead "returning" to some sort of root in which they rocked hard or something.  I sure as hell don't remember that.  Listening back on their first 3 albums is a bore now that I have Kid A, Amnesiac, and HTTT.  They're evolving.  Won't you let them evolve?
I like to hug dogs

Pedro

Quote from: tremoloslothI don't like The Gloaming, but Myxomatosis is one of my favorites man.  And why is everyone so up on Radiohead "returning" to some sort of root in which they rocked hard or something.  I sure as hell don't remember that.  Listening back on their first 3 albums is a bore now that I have Kid A, Amnesiac, and HTTT.  They're evolving.  Won't you let them evolve?
Amen.

SoNowThen

I think the fucking album is great, and swaggers in its own way. It's just that their specific way of writing "melody" takes a good amount of listens to find. But when you do, it's soooooo worth it.
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

sphinx

i got my music video cd back today from radiohead....no note with it or anything.  i made sure to leave the disc in pristine condition when i shipped it to see how they could handle it.  it arrived in a blank manilla envelope and the case was wrapped in bubble wrap.  something that looks like a cookie crumb and a few pieces of dust were all i could find on the surface of the cd.  inter-vesting

bonanzataz

sphinx, what the hell are you talking about?


anyway, this is the first radiohead cd i've listened to all the way through. i've always been more of a selected singles on kazaa man myself. but this album is amazing. i listen to it almost every night before sleep. the songs stick in my head like glue. i sure do love it.
The corpses all hang headless and limp bodies with no surprises and the blood drains down like devil's rain we'll bathe tonight I want your skulls I need your skulls I want your skulls I need your skulls Demon I am and face I peel to see your skin turned inside out, 'cause gotta have you on my wall gotta have you on my wall, 'cause I want your skulls I need your skulls I want your skulls I need your skulls collect the heads of little girls and put 'em on my wall hack the heads off little girls and put 'em on my wall I want your skulls I need your skulls I want your skulls I need your skulls

sphinx

Quote from: bonanzatazsphinx, what the hell are you talking about?

i sent in a music video to radiohead a while ago because they were all like 'send us your music videos and shit'

so ya

BonBon85

Sphinx, I'd love to see it, and I'm sure a few others on here would too. Those caps you posted a while back looked great. Pretty please!