Delightful. Listened to track one on my Apple EarPods before swapping over to the stereo set up and a nice stretch out on the couch. I've listened to this album a few times before, so certain melodies were expected and delivered with still beautiful, concrete feeling, but this listen had my focus more intently squared upon each track, 4 parts that run at a total of 33 minutes. Each track, in it's 6-7 minute runtimes, feel concise enough to not get boring, but also decidedly exploratory and exciting, whether it be in the drum solo sections that exercise control and precision within rapid speed, the manic riffing of Coltrane on the sax, or the trades with piano as Coltrane silences himself for long periods while the piano carries through with measured playing that finds it's own world against the drums and sax, it's a listen that is totally enveloping. I got chills, I got suprised at some of the immediate rushes of ferocity throughout, impressed with how expertly the chaotic spirals could swirl itself back into the main melodies and rhythms. I am just chuffed. A fantastic piece all around.
A masterclass of hip-hop excellence. Listened to this one on my Apple EarPods. This listen was one of many--an album I am well-familiar yet not even closed to bored of. Even in the few, rare moments where the album drags, like some of the intermissions, it is redeemed by moments of astonishing, shining prowess. Every member of this huge rap group has their own feel, their rhyme schemes and flows are just so fun--especially guys like Ol' Dirty Bastard, who as Method Man puts it in an interlude "has no father to his style." This album is so deeply unafraid of itself, whether that be in the geeky Voltron and Samurai cinema references throughout, the fun voicings of many bars, or the harrowing portrayal of grief from RZA on Tearz, where he genuinely sounds traumatized as he recounts the death of someone close to him.
This is why this album continues to excite, it's total singularity and confidence within itself. It wasn't just sounding unlike anything at the time, nothing has really matched it since, because this combination of techincal mastery in beats and rapping combined with earnest confidence in the stuff that personally excites them (I mean, they're called the Wu-Tang Clan and the album name comes from their favorite martial arts movies) makes it a landmark achievement.
One of the best hip hop releases ever!
Listened to on my Apple EarPods. I threw this on before a walk on a bright, sunny day, and the album certainly matches that vibe. It's a genre I'm not too familiar with, MPB, and even though it is in a language foreign to me, there are still many rhythms and melodies to hook your ear in and engage.
It's not my favorite style of music, and I found the album to be a little repetitive at times, especially with the heavy use of the cuíca instrument, which while fun and upbeat sounding seems pretty limited in range, making it feel a little tired to my ears as it carried it's way through the full length of multiple songs.
I found myself particularly stuck on the track "O Plebeu", with a smooth and relaxing "la la la" singing out over many portions of the song, and I ran that one back many times.
This was an enjoyable listen, and I'd definitely go back to it, even though I didn't get super attached to it.
Listened to on my Apple AirPods Max. This is yet again an album I am not new to, but not super familiar with outside of "Changes" and "Queen Bitch", which I love listening to (and still do after this listen). Really sitting down with the album and letting it unfold was quite a nice experience, a pop-rock effort that has such inspired instrumentation--especially the piano and guitar throughout--and flows so elegantly between tracks. There is a jovial quality to the album, especially on songs like "Kooks" and "Fill Your Heart" that creates a fun atmosphere, and that's really the greatest quality of the album to me, the atmosphere. Although I can't pick out many tracks that I would go back to over and over (yet, at least), the album is so cohesive in a front-to-back play, with smooth transitions and fun excursions to keep things entertaining, like the spacey and experimental intro to "Andy Warhol" or the proto-punk of "Queen Bitch", which could be confused for a Sex Pistols track if it was a little rougher and faster.
This album is just a great listen all around!
Listened to on my 2.1 channel stereo set up. I was very familiar with Little Wing, one of my fav songs which appears on this album, but I've only ever gave this album a shake one time, years ago. Upon relisten, it really cements what a great piece of work this is. Not to discredit the rhythm section here, especially with Mitch Mitchell on drums, but Jimi's playing and singing really carries this album to soaring heights. Although I didn't find myself attaching to much of the lyrical content, he has such a smooth voice that pairs excellently with his playing, which is just endlessly inventive. Beyond just his knack to rip into licks and solos like second nature, the riffs that carry these tracks are unique and fun, like one of my favorites from this listen "Wait Until Tomorrow".
There are some tracks on here that I didn't really grip me, like "She's So Fine" and "Little Miss Lover", but there is an overflowing amount of goodness laid in these tracks, and it's snappy as hell too, most tracks lasting at or just under 3 minutes. Great stuff!
Oh yeah, and one of my favorite album covers ever.
Listened to this one on my Apple EarPods. Superunknown is an album I'm pretty familiar with, but mostly it's first half. And I have to say, wow, what a first half. It is just back to back dark and heavy tracks with interjections of slower pace like "Fell on Black Days" and "Head Down", before culminating in the total one-two punch of "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman", tracks that totally encompass each sphere of slow, dark, and depressing and bursting, heavy excitement respectively.
Then the second half rolls around, and it's just...fine, for the most part. Even in past listens, I usually tap out at this point, as the tracks head in the opposite direction in terms of energy (less thrashy, more moody) and ideas start to feel not as compelling. Even the moment where they bring it back to my prefered feel of fast paced energy in "Kickstand" ends up sounding more to me like a B-side than a proper album cut, and similarly I didn't find the venture into the more experimental "Half" to be compelling, especially with how short it runs. It luckily ends on the strong note of "Like Suicide", but it overall feels very long in the tooth for what's on offer, stretching the whole thing out to an hour plus listen.
Still, I feel remiss to rate this lower than a 4. A tolerable-at-worst second half cannot seriously decay what an electrifying and monumental first half is on offer here, with tracks I have listened to dozens of times over the years like "Spoonman", "Superunknown", and one of my personal favorite songs of all time, "My Wave". From tracks 1-8, Soundgarden is completely unstoppable, and with the power of technology, I can stop my playback there and run that sequence over and over til I'm sick to my stomach.
Listened to this on my Apple EarPods. As a fan of rock, songs like "Simple Man" and "Free Bird" were already present in my knowledge of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but I haven't not ventured much deeper than that (and "Sweet Home Alabama" from their second album). This album offers up a good listen of Southern rock backed by some true talent in the instrument section (just look at the album cover to see this larger than normal band) with impressive rhythm held in the drums and bass against a stack of 3 guitar players, piano, strings, and banjo thrown in for good measure. We also cannot forget Ronnie Van Zant on vocals, who's southern crooning is effectively utilized for each end of emotion--belting yells and soft contemplation. It's impressive to have a group this large play so effectively with each other, both in terms of keeping the beat and contributing meaningfully to the tracks.
Outside of the two tracks I mentioned at the beginning, I enjoyed "Gimmie Three Steps" for it's fun riff and storytelling and I appreciated "Things Goin' On" for it's social consciousness, even if it's fairly vague.
Beyond all that, however, I didn't really find myself super gripped with this album. It's certainly pleasant enough as a cohesive work, but it's very, very southern sounding in a way that I am not a big listener to outside of random occassion. I am impressed by their talent and did have a good time listening, but I just don't imagine myself going back to this one too often.
...And now time for the "Free Bird" paragraph. The American answer to "Stairway to Heaven" from Led Zeppelin, this final track is almost Skynyrd's whole legacy, but what a fantastic track to have as such. The beautiful slide guitar paired with the somber lyricism of love and change, it spends it's 9 minute runtime half as a soft ode to leaving someone behind and the next half truly as the "Free Bird", solos absolutely ripping the track to shreds in it's awesomeness while the drum and bass keep amping up the intensity throughout. Is it better than Stairway? Hmm...may that be an eternal battle perhaps never to be won.
Listened to on my stereo 2.1 set up. I'm not very familiar with the work of The Clash, but I really really dig punk rock, albeit not exactly this early kind of punk rock (more of a Black Flag, Dead Kennedys kinda guy). The Clash, as I've known them as well, dance a inordinary tune with punk rock, with sensibilities and lyricism that scream punk, but songs that sonically can lean closer into other musical directions like rock and reggae. This first release, self titled "The Clash", is very much some punk rockin tunes through and through, and it's a pretty good listen, though one that couldn't exactly hold it's luster for me in it's full runtime.
Although coming in right at the earliest days of punk rock, this album does not hold back from immediate woes about classism, racism, growing up in a dead end area where people burn out rather than be somebody, these classic tomes of punk find itself here, right at the starting lines. Songs are snappy and pointed, and genuinely angry, painting this picture of a troubled coming of age in contemporary London, finding yourself not fitting in with a society that seems so abnormal to your own sensibilities, whether that be your privileged race content with dissatisfaction in "White Riot", disillusionment with the global world leaders in "I'm So Bored with the USA", or annoyance with a record industry set to vampirically suck the creative vein dry in pursuit of cash in "Garageland."
Yes, The Clash and their self titled release covers many bases that would be punk rock staples in the future, and they still do it with power and passion. Yet, even at it's 35 runtime, the album does not fire on all cylinders, feeling more like a testing ground for greatness rather than a mind-blowing showing. There are melodies and choruses and ideas in here that are great and keep the thing engaging enough, but there is also a rote familiarlity in song structure and lyrical ideas that can be too vague to feel strong and written out in a way that finds the lead singer needing to play catch up or slur to keep it in the 4/4 boundaries.
What's funny, is that a lot of these criticisms are ones I could kind of apply to any punk rock album, even though I would say punk rock is probably one of my favorite genres, and one of the most influential in my life. So, to point it closer to the unique abilities of The Clash, I don't necessarily prefer the slower feel of this punk rock to what hardcore american acts would push towards in the 80s, and I find the singing to be a mix of grating and exciting, which gives me this push pull feel of connection with the album.
It's certainly respectable, and songs like "I'm So Bored with the USA" and "White Riot" really stand out to me, but I feel the same way about this album that I feel about many full punk rock releases. Pretty good, but not amazing.
Wow. Listened to this on my 2.1 stereo set up (even though I guess it's not even stereo, or perhaps fake stereo? I could only find this album on YouTube anyways, so much for high quality sound). For an album that feels so expectedly "oldies", or in this case some of the first RnB and rock-n-roll you could hear, there is just some intrinsic sauce in the performance of this thing that makes me really like it.
For all the sax breaks busting in around a minute deep, or love lyrics that switch between forlorn and yearning, ya know, the things that make you feel like you are listening to just another collection of "early rock", there is some serious rhythm in this album, making me want to bounce along to every track. It's very jazzy sounding, especially with the sax, but with the piano and drums rockin along the whole time it gives it a unique feel, which I guess was that original "rhythm and blues". I can dig it.
Fats Domino has one great voice, gliding smoothly atop each track, which helps this album really stand out. Even if the stories told are one's you've heard a dozen times, there's something about the delivery on songs like "Blueberry Hill" that just make it feel special.
Beyond that track, I really liked "The Fat Man's Hop", and so much of this album is just filled with songs that are just delivered to that truly expert degree, and with some fun--soul, if you will--that it still sounds interesting in the wake of all the rock it helped to birth in front of it. It can get a little repetitive, but as someone who can only take oldies in certain doses, this really punches above it's weight for me.
What a work of punk rock. Listened to this one on my Apple EarPods. Coming off a recent listen to The Clash's self-titled debut for this project, this is the kinda punk that really speaks to me--hard and fast--and only two years removed from that album. But what really blows me away about this album beyond just how excellent this hardcore style punk is delivered, is how inspired and personal it feels. Because, for as much as it can be broadly (and accurately) described as punk, there is a range of sounds plainly evident throughout that make it feel like more, and it always feel pointed to inspired fun rather than simple, random interjections.
This can be found on the numerous guitar solos that rip through the tracks, something much of punk rock left behind as it distilled the essence of noise and anger, the goth rock found in "Plan 9 Channel 7", the percussive breaks in "Anti-Pope" and "Liar", the use of synths (and electric organ?) on "I Just Can't Be Happy Today", or the whole theatricality of closer track "Smash it Up (Pts 1 and 2)", which almost sounds like a tune from a musical.
This is just a fun album to listen to, plain and simple. It's indebted and heavily spun within the punk rock framework, but The Damned wear their creativity with pride, unafraid to mix silly gags and humor--this unserious vibe--with focused and, for lack of a better term, serious musical exploration. It's a great yin-yang.
There are two tracks on here that I don't really jam with as much as the others, being the carny-infused "These Hands" (not a huge fan of those kinda songs, but is fun enough and luckily short) and the fairly straightforward "Liar", which outside of it's shortlived percussion break within feels pretty typical and less exciting compared to the rest of the tracklist.
Beyond these small little snags for me, however, is an impressive work of punk rock art. It's heavy, it's fast, it's jokey and raw, but it's also super creative and I really didn't expect so many musical ideas throughout, ideas that feel substantive and interesting. Just a great release all around.
Listened to with my Apple EarPods. This is an album I'm semi-familiar with, as I'm sure many are if they existed during the early 10s--this album has radio hit after hit on it. At one point, this was an album that I could point to as one I liked, the "I don't listen to Taylor Swift really, but 1989 was great." I no longer hold that opinion.
This album really feels like the musical equivalent of the blazing lights and rapid fire sound effects declaring "You are a special winner" from a slot machine or a rotten mobile game, designed to manipulate the brain. I listen to it, and I don't really connect with it closely, but it sounds quite nice. I want to automatically shuffle to something to distract my mind while listening, as the music seems to get better the more it centers in the subconscious rather than focused intent, in which it seems to be worse.
I sound harsh, and there are some tracks ("Welcome to New York", "Blank Space") that I enjoy and a lot of moments throughout that sound nice to my ears, usually from a way Taylor Swift sings a certain melody. But really sitting and focusing with this, I felt so bored at the choruses that had the same feel throughout, the lower volume shout overdubbed into climax moments over and over, the plasticity of the instrumentation ("I Know Places" can only aspire to the bounce of the 90s/00s RnB it pulls from), and the kitschy, vague lyricism that feels devoid of real personality, only hinting at earnest expression (the first verse of "Shake it Off" feels like one of the only real peeks at this, but it too becomes this nothingness as it continues).
It's an album that isn't especially grating, or irritating, and is in fact mostly pleasant sounding throughout. But it feels so manufactured, glossy, and fake to me that I can't really connect to it at all. I couldn't claim I would roll my eyes in disgust if it came on in the background somewhere, in fact, I'd probably enjoy it. But the deeper I actually just sat there with the album listening, the less I liked was I was hearing.
Listened to on my Apple EarPods. This album is one I have listened to before, but many years ago. Although I love hip hop, I would not categorize myself as an Eminem fan--in fact, I don't really like his music much at all (what I've heard, at least). Whether that be the edgy raps from 'Slim Shady' or the rehabilitated anthemic pop raps from Marshall Mathers, I find myself historically skipping over his songs.
I do remember enjoying 'The Slim Shady LP' from my initial listen, and 'My Name Is' was always the one track I could point to as a fun song I'm not embarassed to thrown on in the car. Upon this revisit, I feel about the same as I did before.
Cohesively, it works quite well as a rap album that is unlike many others; deliberately brash, brazen, edgy, with horrifically evocative lyricism and storytelling that feels purpose built to push the boundaries of what is "acceptable". It's the type of album where most of the songs would get a side-eye if you just randomly tossed it into the aux, but as a full listening experience does well to paint a picture of harsh reality through an extremist lens. Unshackled descriptions of rape, drug abuse, and violence are spoken in a giddy manner, but one that feels far from glorification or lazy edge. Perhaps it's the mix of serious tracks like "Rock Bottom" that help shine a light on the idea of this album--a man that has lived through the tribulations of poverty, violence, drug abuse, abandonment, and uses the 'Slim Shady' persona as the teller of these tales, as the sometimes-comic-sometimes-terrifying indulging in the worst of the behavior.
It's interesting in that way, how the vocal and proud endorsement of these actions provoke feelings of pity and tragedy, like beyond the absurdity of it is a unfortunate reality of how life is, especially in these poverty-stricken areas of the US where it's hard to lift yourself up and out of the environment around you where you see all these things.
It helps that Eminem really flexes the creative writing muscle, making so that even in the limited topics he does cover (repetitiously so, as the album reaches the back half), he's saying the same things in different ways. Multiple times I found myself giggling at just how ridiculous some of the bars were on here.
Still, beyond it's unflinching vision, I can't say I love this album. I'm not a huge fan of Eminem's nasally voice, the choruses are weak on the whole, it runs long even though he begins running through topics he already speaks to at length, and I don't find much of the album traditionally "listenable", at least to my sensibilities. Sorry, but for as fun as a song like "Guilty Conscious" is, I can't see myself throwing it in any playlists.
So for me, it remains as an interesting project, boldly pushing musical boundaries but remaining an album that feels most appropriate in it's own quarantined, occasional listens.
Listened to on my Apple AirPods Max.
There is no better way to describe this listening experience than joyfully relaxing. This is an hour long treatment for the ears, basking you in the delightful sounds of Cuba, as it fuses together several Cuban-specific styles of music. So often I found myself just letting my mind drift, imagining various scenes or just kind of staring off blankly, empty of tension or worry or such like, while enjoying the music.
This is just classy all around, expert instrumentation delivering these tracks that are just so soothing and pleasant, while being substantive enough to really engage with, picking out fun little phrases in the piano or guitar, which pepper themselves all over the songs in sudden and fun ways. Each track is layered pretty deep, making the listens feel bright and alive with character, as instruments take turns speaking, or I find one in particular to focus on which maybe has a more subtle presence throughout.
Personal highlights for me include the two piano-driven instrumentals “Pueblo Nuevo” and “Buena Vista Social Club”, which are super duper jazzy, the male/female duet of “Veinte Años“ which is just ridiculously smooth, and the lengthy “El Cuarto de Tula”, which has an earworm chorus and a great guitar solo towards the end.
I don’t know if it fully utilizes it’s hour long runtime, as I did feel moments of repetition drag it a bit throughout, but it provides such a great listening atmosphere, creating an environment of comfort, whether you want to dance to some of the more upbeat tracks or stretch out and relax when things slow down. An excellent album.
Listened to on my Apple AirPods Max.
On occasion, Apple Music will give brief descriptions of albums you click on, usually with some commentary peppered in. For ‘Velvet Underground & Nico’, they quote fellow musician Brian Eno in a statement of how the band was not super popular, but was highly inspirational, causing those who did listen at the time to start bands of their own. The description continues about the looseness in feeling from Velvet Underground, how “they didn’t really sound like professionals, but they didn’t really sound like normal people either”, and how that works to make listeners feel like it’s something they could do as well.
The reason I spend that paragraph pulling from the Apple Music description is that it summarizes my overall feeling to an absolute T. This is an album that separates itself from the likes of contemporary pop rock explorations into experimentation found from The Rolling Stones or The Beatles. Where their combinations of radio friendliness and earnest creative thinking felt very laden in a technical expertise and talent that feels unachievable by the average joe schmo, The Velvet Underground go full bore into creative expressions, pushing the limits of rock n roll within a graspable, understandable format, which in turn pushed the limiting factors of technical mastery to the background.
It doesn’t sound overly improvisational or random, outside perhaps the closing track ‘European Son’, but there is this looseness throughout that really effectively captures feeling over execution. This can be found in the solos in songs like ‘Run Run Run’ that have this kind of jagged, stiff tremolo picking throughout that doesn’t feel nearly as clean cut as something that ‘guitar gods’ of the time would have played, but plays the way a solo needs to play on these tracks—raw and energizing. In several moments, the band falls out of time with each other, and sometimes notes aren’t played exactly as they probably were intended, but it never really feels amateurish, always just feeling honest in effort and in thought.
There is also a strong leverage on repetition, with long run times in the tracks, not because there is an absence of creative output, but because it’s utilized to immerse and almost underline what is being played, which in itself takes it’s own talent to achieve—playing the same rhythm over and over without sounding boring.
None of this is meant to discount the musical abilities of The Velvet Underground, of course. But this album almost makes me feel like I’m in a garage with my friends, who are just making art for the sake of expression, doing what they can to make stuff that doesn’t just sound good, but is interesting. Between these dives into freaky experimentality like ‘Venus in Furs’ and ‘The Black Angel’s Death Song’ are more conventional tracks, whether pointed towards typical rock n roll (‘Waiting for my Man’) or this soft and sweet pop (‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, ‘Sunday Morning’). But it never, ever feels uninspired. Whether it’s within the conventions of the time or not, Velvet Underground push such a monumental creative undercurrent, and it’s really just beautiful, plain and simple.
Two of my favorite highlights from this album are ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ and ‘Heroin’, which could not stand more opposed to one another, and perhaps no other duo of songs could perfectly portray what this album has to offer. One is a 7 minute long track that pushes this constant of tension and release while depressingly delivering an ode to self destruction through drug abuse, while the other is just over two minutes long—the shortest track on the album—about true love lifting oneself out of their own judgments and cloud of self-doubt set to breezy and jangly instrumentation.
It isn’t rare to hear good music, but it can be exceptionally rare to hear music that you not only connect with, but feels genuinely inspiring, and makes you want to go and make your own music, or be creative in any other way. It can be easy to forget, but the people who make all our favorite music are just that, people—like you and me. This album feels like ‘people’ can make amazing stuff, not just ‘musicians’ who have some intangible, inherent talent that we can only daydream about.
Listened to on my Apple AirPods Max.
It can be surprising to have an album establish it’s legendary status within the first track, but I believe Boston’s self titled debut does just that with ‘More than a Feeling’, a classic rock anthem for the ages. There is something truly enchanting about this track, with it’s blend of smooth acoustic driven verses backing the explosive distorted choruses with lyrics that capture so earnestly, and poetically, the one that got away. Many albums use the first track as the onboarding to the album, a taster for what’s to come without really divulging the goods. Boston—in their total confidence—make the first track one of the most legendary rock song ever, then to be followed up by a string of truly excellent companions in ‘Peace of Mind’ and ‘Foreplay/Long Time’.
Although I really do love ‘More than a Feeling’, ‘Peace of Mind’ is my personal favorite on the album. It’s a song I’ve heard dozens of times over the years, and one I play regularly on guitar. This one is faster and more upbeat, but maintains the earnest lyricism, this time about individuality in the face of an America who began to derive identity and validation from their job rather than personal growth, an idea that has only become more prevalent today. ‘Foreplay/Long Time’ sounds like a more appropriate album opener, at least in a conventional sense, due to it’s extended instrumental intro led by some excellent organ work, before jumping into ‘Long Time’ with it’s catchy chorus that leaves Boston at 3/3 right out of the gate on classic rock essentials.
The album continues to deliver some great tunes, especially the smooth ‘Hitch a Ride’, but this is where the album drops from that legendary status held by the ridiculous trio of songs it starts with. Hardly a strong mark against it, however—it’s always gonna be hard to follow that act up for a whole album length. Mostly, it’s the songs ‘Rock and Roll Band’ and ‘Something About You’ that don’t grip me as much as the rest of the album, feeling noticeably weaker to me than everything.
Although there is the shining talent of Tom Sholz, who composed much of the instrumentation and lyrics, and the ripping voice of Brad Delp, who can really belt out these tunes, I can’t help but feel that there is a bit of a limit felt in this album. It doesn’t affect the album too much, but there are moments where songs sound a bit similar to each other, or fit a little too cleanly in the established sensibilities of rock at the time.
Still, there isn’t enough negatives to terribly impact the effort and achievement found on this album. It has some legendary tracks, great performance, especially in Brad Delp’s vocals, and is a great listen.
Listened to on my Apple AirPods Max, Apple EarPods, and my 7.1 surround set up.
I am very familiar with drum n' bass, a subgenre of electronic music that walks a thin line in my head, in terms of inspired creative expression. For as automatically my brain becomes activated to a track when I hear a breakbeat in the background, I too disregard if it seems to be just another DnB track, with lazy samples over swelling, expected synths and the boldest steps into track identity seem to be adding a spattering of hyper-fast stutters to the samples.
If I sound too harsh on DnB, know that it comes from a place of love, for there is something about this genre that satisfies this obtuse yin yang in my brain, where a track is simultaneously bursting with energy and calming enough to put me into a nap. Perhaps that's just my ADHD speaking.
Goldie's Timeless, I'm happy to report, is a worthy DnB effort, an album that doesn't exceed my expectations of what DnB can mean, but it so consistent and expertly crafted that it creates a great listen.
For a nearly two-hour piece of music, I never quite found myself getting tired of what was being played. Beyond the effective moments of repreive from serene chaos found in moments like the jazzy "Adrift", with it's spacey sax and smooth vocals running eschewed of drums all together, or the constant little flourishes to tracks to keep things interesting, like the breakbeat programmed to the 808 in "Still Life", there is an expert management of tension and flow, whether it be from track to track or within some of these mammoth sized tracks (the self-titled opener running at 21 minutes!).
I think this is where the heart of the album lies, the idea that it isn't enough to create great tracks of DnB, but to find balance within the album experience, much like a DJ has to balance their set at a club to ensure the crowd stays engaged.
It's why my method of listening was changing throughout, because whether I was completing some chores around the house (AirPods Max), readying for a task outside the house (EarPods), or just sitting back and letting the sounds wash over me (7.1 surround set-up), the album was ready for me, offering varying states of this balanced, controlled, serene chaos.
Listened to on my Apple AirPods Max.
A masterpiece, plain and simple. This is an album I’m already well familiar with, and I am a Radiohead fan on the whole, and still there is something so beautiful and masterful about this album.
Over Radiohead’s career, they found their footing in the new wave of British rock bands rising in the 90s, set themselves as icons of that wave with huge hit ‘Creep’ and the foreboding new world phobia of album ‘OK Computer’, before transitioning themselves into different lanes, whether that be the pure electronica of ‘Kid A’ or the experimentality of albums after.
The point is, Radiohead had a long and storied career before arriving confidently and assuredly at ‘In Rainbows’, my personal favorite album from them. This work sees the band work all of their favored sensibilities into something incredibly focused and direct, with substantive nuance. Most of these songs play it very straightforward in terms of it’s pure skeletal structure, but the range of vibes from song to song—like the fast paced distortion of ‘Bodysnatchers’ into the reeled in and slim ‘Nude’—the expert fusion of electronic elements within the tracks, like the clattering programmed drums of ‘15 Step’, and the honed lyricism that floats within familiar Radiohead territory but with a deep maturity to it—all these elements come together to create one of the most professional and enchanting listening experiences I have discovered.
It feels like Radiohead distilled down into their purest essence. There’s exploration into weirdness, layered tracking that folds in many sounds, movements within songs that change up the attitude, it’s everything I’d expect from Radiohead but delivered with such an unmatched clarity and vision that I can’t help but be blown away upon each listen.
The songwriting itself is a particular high note throughout the album, with many songs following a path of self-reflection and reflection upon love and relationships, delivered in this wispy, gloomy way that hesitates to be direct, while being strong enough not to come off as vague. The song ‘All I Need’ is almost like a spiritual successor to ‘Creep’, though trading the unabashed young feelings of a lack of self-confidence for this unrequited and unhealthy attachment that plays the same in feeling, but comes off more somber and affecting, at least to me, due to the aging of Thom Yorke, who was about a decade and a half removed from that initial, emotionally barring hit.
‘In Rainbows’ is just a monumental achievement. Following the exploratory dives into what it meant to be Radiohead as a project after their triumphant ‘OK Computer’, the band found themselves grown up, and able to cohesively work elements from all of that music into this 100% lean, no fat, laser focused album.
