The Creative Chemistry of Radiohead

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Available at the Home Depot. Exclusion supply see Home Depot.com slash pri atch for details Can I tell you the single most bizarre and reckless and potentially catastrophic stunt I've ever pulled as a professional rock critic. I should have gotten arrested for this in 2003, while living in Oakland, California and working as the music editor for a Bay Area altweekly called the East Bay Express, I played the new radiohead album, the two thousand three radiohead album Hail to the Thief for a classroom of fifth graders and I asked those kids to draw pictures based on what they heard and how it made them feel. Jail, prison. I should still be in prison . Tom York's voice draws you closer. It makes you lean in toward him conspiratori ally, even when he's literally singing the words, walk into the jaws of hell. It's wild, man. I am standing in a fifth-grade classroom in San Leandro, California, surrounded by nine, ten, and eleven-year-olds who are not at all psyched about being forced to listen to the celebrated Zeitgeist-defining English rock band Radiohead. I found a fifth-grade teacher who would consent to this experiment, and the kids' parents consented to letting me publish their kids' drawings. Here's the first drawing by Maddie, age 10. Okay, let's see. We got a boy and a girl taking a romantic magic carpet ride amidst pyramids and swirling clouds and Maddie, I'm pretty sure this is a scene from the Disney movie Aladdin. I'm gonna tell you up front. I don't think every kid took the listen to radiohead prompt super seriously. That's fine. It's fine. Thank you, Maddie. Yeah, the teacher consented, the parents consented, but the actual fifth graders notably had no say in the matter. Their teacher says, this is a direct quote. She says, this is not hip-hop. I'm not asking if you like it. End quote. She ain't gotta ask. Radiohead front man and generational spokesman Tom York is enticingly moaning the words, walk into the jaws of hell in a fifth-grade classroom over glistening mournful piano. That song is called Sit Down, Stand Up, Haunting Piano riff, phenomenal, oppressive, suffocating atmosphere. And the kids don't give a hoot. The kids are giggling. The kids are fidgeting. The kids immediately ask if we can listen to 50 Cent or Sean Paul in stead. No . And then Tom York sings the raindrops 47 times in a row. And so one of the kids, Willie, he's 11, Willie draws a picture of a house with a sad f rowning kid staring out the window at a torrential rainstorm. I will both display these drawings on video and describe them verbally for our audio only listeners. I respect it. Incredible detail work on all the raindrops by Willie. This unfortunately is one of the more cheerful and less concerning of the 30 odd child's drawings I collected during this misbegotten scheme. Just to establish a weather spectrum, another kid, Kaya, also 11, Kaya pointedly ignores the raindrops entirely and draws a giant sun beating down on three people trudging through a hellish, unforgiving desert landscape. One person's got a speech bubble that says, I'm tired. Another person says, I'm thirsty. And the third one says, I'm dying of heat. Not ideal , psychologically, but still, alas, most of Kaya's classmates aren't handling this as well. Dig Tom York on Volcanic Indignant Hail to the Thief opening track two plus two equals five, busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, if the Kool-Aid man were frowning and crying. I went into this somehow imagining that I was gonna play the entire 2003 radiohead album, Hail to the Thief, for a classroom of fifth grad ers, all 56 minutes and 35 seconds of it. And I was mistaken. The collective giggling only intensified as Tom York's impassioned apocalyptic wailing intensified. And I found the kids' amused indifference to be disturbing and almost sacrilegious. Yo, this is Radiohead. This is the greatest rock band that ever lived. Dude, these guys made Okay Computer, the greatest album of all time. Where are your parents? Also, please don't show these drawings to your parents. This drawing by Adam, he's 10 . Let's see, we got a grim reaper with a scythe, a skull and crossbones, multiple anguish ghosts, an alien lizard guy, a cactus, a lot of desert imagery happening, and also for emotional variety, a balloon, a sunlit mountain range, a pipe organ, and a thing of McDonald's fries. Looks like Adam's learned a valuable lesson today about corporatization . We got two songs into Hail to the Thief and then Bailed. Track three on that record is an aching glacial exquisitely somnolent piano ballad called Sail to the Moon. And I thought these kids are either going to fall asleep or riot. And I panicked and I audibled and I threw on everything in its right place. Mesmerizing, amniotic opening track on landmark 2000 Radiohead classic Kid A. Oh come on, certainly these young punks know Kid A . The album that redefined Rock and roll for a grim new century. Don't you read Pitchfork. Meanwhile, Hannah is ten years old, and hmm, Hannah draws a stick figure preparing to leap off a mountain while saying, I hate my life, flanked by a giant frowning sun, and the grim reaper holding a blood-dripping scythe and saying, Yes, joined here by the devil with 666 written over his head. The devil's also saying yes to encourage the stick figure's imminent suicide. There is a second falling stick figure in mid-air, mid-suicide, halfway down the mountain, and a dead stick figure crushed into the ground below next to a fourth stick figure who I believe just shot himself while standing beside a gravestone and beneath a torrential rain cloud. Great detail work on these raindro ps as well. And I'm looking at this drawing back at my desk afterward and I'm like, oh no . And then I play the children the national anthem. Track three off Kid A, because I figure the kids will really respond to the malevolent bass heavy kraut rock groove and the scronking free jazz horns. Regrettably the kids respond ed. Okay, this picture we got four dead stick figures, two of them hanging, and a fifth dying stick figure who is holding I think it's a knife. It's a knife or an arrow or a machete. The devil, I presume, is once again lurking in the bottom right and saying Stay with me, ha ha ha while in the upper right corner are the words you can't stay here with an arrow pointing to the gateway to hell. Uh I presume this means that you have to go into hell and not just stand outside the gateway to hell. Tom York did sing the words walk into the jaws of hell verbatim. Sorry. This picture was drawn by Hannah, age 10. And hold on a second. I am just now realizing, 20 plus years later, that unless there are two 10-year-olds in this class named Hannah with identical handwriting, the same Hannah drew both these last two pictures, featuring two devils and eight dead or dying stick figures total. Well at least she's enthusiastic. I better put on a more cheerful radiohead song. You the remember, you the remember. And then I play them par anoid android. Yo What ? Jail Prison . What? Hang the DJ Paranoid Android. Electrifying Multi Suite Prague Rock Guitar God Freak Out Lead Single off 19997's Okay Computer, the aforementioned greatest album of all time. Fifth graders. Kicking Screaming Gucci Little Piggy. Okay. Brace Yourselves. Here's the drawing that's still haunts me and condemns me. Jeffrey with a J, age nine , nine years old. Okay, we got five dead stick figures here, one hanged, one stabbed in the heart, one pointing a gun at his own head, one with a hypodermic needle sticking out of his hand, and one drowned andor crushed at the bottom of a waterfall. That's a new one. Yet another grim reaper with a bleeding scythe, yet more graves with R.I.P on the gravestones, yet another gateway to hell, this one labeled Road to Hell, with a short line of people approaching the road to hell, next to a sign reading popul ation 9999999999999. And in the middle of the page, a free suicides booth. A lemonade stand style booth with a sign reading free suicides, with a much longer line of tiny people waiting for their free suicides. And I'm sitting there looking at this picture like, oh sh it . I suspect we did not get that far into the song Paranoid Android in this classroom on that day, and thus the kids were cruelly denied the life changing experience of hearing Tom York moaning the panic, the vomit, the panic, the vomit, amidst a hypnotic, demoralizing, reverse celestial acoustic guitar tail spin. We probably bailed during the first freak-out guitar solo . As the fifth graders are drawing, I wander around the classroom looking at the stuff on the walls, all their other remarkably more up beat and appropriate drawings. And I also read the posted official class rules for room 14, which include: don't fidget, be helpful, and keep negative ideas to yourself. Tom York would not thrive in this environment. Meanwhile, Daniel, who is 10 years old, Daniel drew a 1,000-foot ice cream cone, posed next to a smiling, delighted, one-foot-tall person for sc ale . Fantastic. No notes. Like all of his former classmates, Daniel's in his 30s now, and even so, I hope he's doing great . Then I played the kids High and Dry, a graceful, buoyant, mercifully accessible, melodically generous thousand-foot ice cream cone of a tune from Radiohead's Maximum Guitar God second album, released in 1995 and called The Benz. Playing high and dry is the first remotely sane and defensible decision I've made this whole time . The kids liked this one. The kids liked this one and only this one. Some of these kids were possibly not even born yet back in 1993 when Radiohead released their debut album, Pablo Honey, but to give them a taste of how it all started, I regale the class with an encouraging song called Anyone Can Play Guitar . Well does time and it fl ander books I stand on the beach with my time . Listen to how youthful and carefree, Tom York sounds. Here's a correspondingly simple and pleasant and carefree drawing for you. Earl W., age 10. Alright. Alright, Earl has drawn a lush, breathtaking landscape of tower ing beautiful mountain peaks. And what are these, puffy clouds, or verdant forests, or both or neither? But this picture deftly conveys the sense of a colossal and inviting and awfully soothing environment, an entire planet to explore and enjoy. If you squint, you can almost convince yourself Earl is deliberately channeling the mountains on the Kid A album cover. And we got a tiny little Pokemon type dude just chilling near the bottom right of this drawing, totally at peace, just taking in all the majesty. And the little Pokemon type dude's got a little speech bubble that says, Mommy, please come help. Okay , time to wrap this up Be players and there are I am intense apparently on steering these bored, indierentff tra,umatized fifth graders back toward the new radiohead album. And so our program today concludes with Sail to the Moon, the aching glacial, exquisitely somnolent piano ballad I wisely avoided earlier. I was gonna close with Cree, the apocaly ose guitar god's self-loathing national anthem off Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey, but I realized just in time that Cree has like 50-pound swear words in it. That would have gotten me kicked the fuck out of this elementary school. And rightly so. Uh anyway, the teacher announces that Sail to the Moon will be the last song, and everyone cheers. 30-odd fifth graders all go, yes ! A few pump their fists. My work here is done. So, sail to the moon. Great closer. That's a joke. Given all the glacial aching in that song, it takes Tom York quite a while to sing all those words. But I'd never notice that Tom sings, maybe you 'll be presidents and no right from wrong. And Tom could very well be singing directly to these fifth graders. He could be addressing the youth in both a vaguely encouraging and specific ally bitterly political sort of way. Let's not get into it. Let's focus on Tom York sitting at the piano, crooning directly to the youth that apparently disdains him. Here's the last drawing I'll show you. And this one also still haunts me and still startles me with its perceptiveness. Chris is ten years old, and Chris draws a lone figure sitting at a piano , surrounded by a huge and truly oppressive feeling amount of white space, especially behind the piano. This white space is broken up only by a crowd, an ominous crowd of mostly fac eless ovals staring at the piano player on stage. You can just totally tell they're all staring. This picture is one-third total blankness, one-third lone, anguished seeming figure at the pi ano, one third mostly faceless mob . Yeah. I've written andor spoken tens of thousands of words about Radiohead in my illustrious career, but I ain't never captured Tom York's essence the way Chris just did . There is nearly always a gorgeous morose oppressed full band raging or elegantly moaning behind Tom York . He's got friends, he's got bandmates, he's got co-conspirators, he's got backup . But he still always sounds so alone to me, or at least he does now. So that's what I learned today. What did the kids learn today? Fuck all, if you don't mind my saying. Excuse me, my apologies for not keeping my negative thoughts to myself. They learned sod all, as the English might say. Don't let weird rock critics into our classroom. That's what these kids learned. Shout out the parents of all these traumatized child ren for not finding me and beating me to death. Speaking to you now, as a father of children, uh, I would not consent to this experiment. No, sir, I would not sanction this buffoonery. Beat it, blog boy. Stay away from my family. Go get your content elsewhere. Why did I do this? Well, for one thing, yeah , I needed content. I had a weekly column, man. I had to feed the beast to use a journalism term I learned at the East Bay Express. But I also did genuinely wonder if the youth weres into Radiohead. And anecdotally it turns out that they ain't, or they weren't. And this shocked and dismayed me back in 2003 . And then, four years later, in 2007, all these kids are what, 13 or 14 or 15 now? They're teenagers. They're the increasingly sullen youth. And Radiohead's got another new album, and this one's free on the internet, if you want. And I do wonder if any of those kids listen ed to this new record and remembered that day I polluted their fifth grade classroom. And I wonder if any of those kids heard this new aching glacial exquisitely somnolent extra majestic radiohead piano ballad and thought to themselves , not this shit again . I'm in the middle of your preacher , I in the re My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 41st episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole in the 2000s, and this week we are discussing all I need by Radiohead from their 2007 album In Rainbows, which is the third best radio head album. Okay Computer is number one, the Benz is number two. I will be taking no questions at this time, because it is time for an advert . Snoring? Gasping during sleep? Feeling fatigued? Wake up to Zepbound. Terzepatide. The first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obes Zebound is an injectable prescription medicine that may help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zebbound should be used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity. Zebbound is a approved as 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zebbound contains terzepatite and should not be used with other terzepatite-containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zetpound is safe and effective for use in children. Do not share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take Zebbound if allergic to it. 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Because the only thing better than a great playlist is a great trip. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at bestest w ern . Book direct and save at bestwestern.com . Apparently there is often no ad after I say that it's time for the ad break. And I don't know whether to be honored or offended by this lack of ads. Why am I exerting all this effort coming up with amusing ways to announce the ad break if there's no fucking ad during the ad bre ak. It's either I'm too cool for capitalism or not cool enough . This strikes me as a very radiohead problem. We did a radiohead episode already, if I recall correct ly, back when we were doing the nineties. Uh Radiohead, first formed in Oxfordshire, England back in nineteen eighty-five, and permanently consisting of Tom York on lead vocals and guitar and piano, etc., Johnny Greenwood on guitar super, etc., uh Ed O'Brien on guitar mostly, Colin Greenwood, Johnny's older brother, Colin on bass mostly, and Phil Sel way on drums mostly. We did an episode on creep, of course, off Radiohead's 1993 debut album, Pablo Honey. I myself was 15 when Pablo Honey came out. And so we did basically a whole episode about how I responded to radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood's guitar noise in creep, the same way Beavis did . But I'm Beavis, co-star of the sublime Pure Isle Zeitgeist Defining MTV animated program, Beavis and Butthead, which likewise debuted in 1993. Beavis still speaks for me on the topic of creep when Beavis says Yes, yes, rock, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No blah blah blah yeah . My thoughts exactly. My verbalized words ex,actly . As a chowderhead teenager, all through high school, my internal and external monologue was basically girls, girls, girls, girls, na ry. And that monologue was frequently drowned out by, and also righteously fueled by, various additional loud, raucous, discordant, excellent guitar noises generated by the Oxfordshire rock band R adiohead. Their second and second best album comes out in 1995 and is called The Benz. Their third album, OK Computer, comes out in 1997 and is immediately my favorite album of all time, and maybe it still is. Who can say? We have time for exactly one clip from the Benz, an okay computer. Two of my favorite albums ever made by anybody. So let's choose wisely . I see we've chosen the song just off the bends as a means of illustrating that I've played hundreds of hours of air guitar to those first three radio head albums. My air guitar skills are legendary. If I ever competed in the air guitar championships or whatever, my signature song would be just and I would secure my victory during that part of just by lifting my air guitar over my head and flipping it around and pushing it into my air amplifier, my air marshall stack, and going we e for 2 twelve seconds. I tried to play actual electric guitar as a teenager, but I fared poorly. Remember those shreds videos from back when the internet was still young and cool and fun. Those videos where this genius guitar player guy would take real live footage of Eddie Van Halen or whoever shredding on stage. And then the guy would dub hyper-realistic ter rible guitar playing over it. A lot of those got vaporized, but the ones you can still find are postmodern masterpieces. The Shreds videos are a beautiful illustration of the vast gulf between how an amateur guitar player perceives oneself and how an amateur guitar player actually sounds . That slas h from Guns N' Roses, that's the slash shreds video, which made me cry laughing this morning. The faint polite applause is really something. Radiohead made me think I could play guitar. And not just because they had a song called Anyone Can Play Guitar. Even before they became my favorite band, Radiohead made me think guitar god rock music would reign forever, and the electric guitar would rain forever. And certainly the electric guitar would reign forever in this band . Because if you could play rad shit like this all the time, why would you ever want to do anything else . That's from Paranoid Android, the multi-sweet prog rock guitar god freak out lead single off okay computer, my favorite album ever made, maybe. Uh we had time for two clips from two of my favorite albums ever made by anybody. We made time . Okay . That was nineties radiohead, basically. So October two thousand. I'm at an off-campus Midwestern college party. Standard college party, replacement level college party. No offense. Bunch of people farting around in an off-campus house drinking beer. Lovely. Awesome. I myself, I believe I was drinking woodchuck, the hard cider, the apple juice of beers. Yeah, I've consumed 1.5 to 2.5 woodchucks, and I keenly observe that this house is a back bedroom. And even with the door shut, there is clearly incredibly loud wall and floor and teeth rattling music blaring in this bedroom. And occasionally I see dudes shuffling in or shuffling out. So I bumble on over there, I open the door, I stick my head in, I assess . Near total darkness, no No lamp l.amps or overhead lights on. 10 to 12 people. All dudes. And the dudes are all sitting politely and silently. They're sitting in chairs or non-ero tically sitting on the bed or on the floor , and the dudes are all facing the stereo against one wall, and the stereo is cranked up ridiculously loud and emitting the only light in the room. And there's another dude standing directly in front of the stereo, facing it, bathed in its nauseating digital glow. And I know this guy, friend of mine named Chaz. I worked at the student newspaper with Chaz. Great guy. Everyone liked Chaz, and Chaz liked stuff. Right? He had enthusiasm. No irony or cool guy hesitation. If Chaz likes a band or a movie or whatever, he wants you to know about it so you'll like it too. Infectious enthusiasm. And so now I'm standing in this doorway, watching a dozen guys, I don't know, watching Chaz, as he leans in and presses his forehead against the incredibly loud st ereo, as though attempting to physically bond with it. And now we are one in everlasting peace. His eyes are closed, his mouth is slightly open, the stereo is physically imprinted And I just think, oh wow , kid A The fourth Radiohead album is released in October 2000 and is called Kid A . This song is called Idiotech. It is the sound of rock and roll dying. Or more accurately, it is the sound of rock and roll having died. It is the sound of the last day Encased in a solid block of ice like a woolly mammoth. Radiohead are into harsh but beautiful but really harsh electronic music. Now they're into the warp records labeled broadly, and Apex Twin specifically. They're sampling experimental seventies synthesizer tunes. They're channeling Kraut Rock and 20th century classical and free jazz. They are pushing fans of yes, yes, rock, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, guitar god, rock and roll music, so far out of our comfort zones that we've all tumbled off a cliff like a herd of buffalo. I remember I can also summon a suspiciously detailed vision of me as I sat alone on the floor of my own apartment, and I ceremoniously unwrapped the Kid A jewel case, and I delicately slid the C D into the mouth of my stereo, like it was the body of Christ, and I reverently hit play, and I listened to this record for the very first time, and I thought , well , this is what music is now . And logically, it's an absurd exaggeration, but it felt like the 21st century only began right that second in October 2000. The first time I heard the hypnotic and enveloping and emphatically guitar free refrain of everything in its right place. I loved Kid A. Of course I did. I still love it. Of course I do. Fourth or maybe fift h best radiohead album. A moon-shaped pool really sneaks up on you. I've always loved the song The National Anthem. Right? This is the can song, the Charles Mingus song, the song with the rad droning bass line that Tom York played himself, and the horn section that Johnny Greenwood and Tom York conducted themselves by jumping up and down. And Tom jumped up and down so vigorously that he broke his foot. I've especially always loved two little micro moments in the national anthem, one of which I apparently hallucinated. The national anthem micro moment I love that actually exists is the slick little ascending bass fill right here. Right after the line, everyone is so near, and halfway through the line, everyone has got the fear The little extra doo doo doo do do do do do do do do flourish right there just kills me. Of course I, grasped the innovation and sophistication of Kid A, or I tried to, but I could never stop myself from gravitating toward the tiny deviations, the rare, refreshing human elements, the thunderbolts of something approaching playfulness. My other favorite micro moment on the national anthem is at the very end when all the horns are scronking and all the horn players take a huge, gasping, audible breath between skronks There is in fact no huge gasping audible breath taken by all the horn players between Skronks on the national anthem. I apparently hallucinated that for years . For decades. If you'd asked me a month ago about my favorite span of 10 seconds on Kid A, I would have rambled on about that huge, gasping audible breath and how it represented the frail humanity, struggling to emerge from within the rigid, glacial, mechanized, defiant inhumanity of Kid A , and I would have once again been mistaken. I don't think I ever knew Kid A or loved Kid A as much as everyone else seemed to. And it made me feel like I'd betrayed my favorite band . The pitchfork review, right? The famous Perfect 10 Pitchfork review, written by Brent DiCrescenzo, where he says, comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to b lue construction paper. And he also says Kid A makes rock and roll childish. Famous review, crucial in radiohead lore, even more crucial in pitchfork lore. I respect that Kid A is among the most lavishly praised and the most painstakingly analyzed pieces of music in my lifetime. Critic and author and friend of the show, Stephen Haydn, he published a splendid book in 2020 called This Isn't Happening: Radiohead's Kid A and the Beginning of the 21st Century. See, he agrees with me on the 21st century thing. Although my favorite part of Steve's book is when he politely points out that Lincoln Park's debut album, Hybrid Theory, also came out in October 2000 and sold like 12 times as many copies as Kid A, and is arguably more influential. Steve's book, of course, also reminds me of my favorite song on Kid A, which is called How to Disappear Complet ely. And it was always a little embarrassing to me, uh, given how cool, how ambitious, how experimental, how futuristic Kid A was, that I ultimately preferred the comforting and dist inctly retro-feeling song where Tom York croons sulkily over an acoustic guitar. And sure, How to Disappear Completely is also the song where guitar god Johnny Green wood plays the Onde Martineau, a bizarre French multipart electronic music instrument invented in nineteen twenty eight that looks like a cross between a theremin, a keyboard, and the hat the Pope wears. I would like to know what the Pope hat is adding to the equation with this device . Musically. com.io Radhead are trying new weird stuff even when they're conforming to my outdated expectations for them. But how to disappear completely crystallizes for me that there is a harsh divide between Kid A, the album I listen to, and Kid A, the album I read about . Dig the wild crescendo here. The strings wailing as Tom York's crooning intensifies. Uh do you know the book White Noise? The nineteen eighty five Don DeLillo novel? There's a famous scene in White Noise where two guys, two college professors, they go visit the most photographed barn in America. It's just a barn way out in the countryside. And driving there, first you see a series of signs on the roadside at regular intervals, and they all say the most photographed barn in America. And then there's the barn. Just a normal, reasonably picturesque, replacement level barn. And there's tons of tourists and photographers and vendors, and they're all taking pictures of the barn or selling pictures of the barn. And one of the professors says: No one sees the barn. He says, once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn. He says we're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the Can you feel it? An accumulation of nameless energies. End quote. Naturally, my favorite part of how to disappear completely is Tom York's high note right here. Very important to me. Very emo for me. Very retro for me . Meanwhile, the dude's still talking about the most photographed barn in America. He says, being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see, the thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective percep tion. This literally colors our vision, a religious experience in a way, like all tourism. He says they are taking pictures of taking pictures. White Noise came out in 198 5, 25 years before Instagram. Don DeLillo knows ball. Don DeLillo knew ball before ball was even invented. And finally , the guy says, what was the barn like before it was photographed? What did it look like? How is it different from other barns? How is it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because Snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now. And then the next line of the book is: he seemed immensely pleased by this. Kid A to me is the most photographed barn in America. I am not the first rock critic to compare a piece of pop music to the most photographed barn in America, but I am the most recent. And I was honestly relieved in May 2001 to have something else to listen to and read about The fifth Radiohead album is released in May 2001 and is called Amnesiac. It's better than The King of Limbs and maybe better than Pablo Honey, though I'd have to think about it. This is the first song. It is called Packed Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box. No guitars in sight, though this is no longer news to anyone, even me. I think about the first four lines of this song a lot . After years of waiting, nothing changed. As your life flashed before your eyes, you realised . The realiz ation is not provided. Instead a chorus is provided, in which Tom York addresses anyone who is considering asking him what the realiz ation was . Got it. By 2001, Tom York has long been wildly destabilized by fame. Destabilized by critical adulation. Destabilized by dopey journalists asking dopey questions, all of which is making Tom an increasingly unreasonable man. Amnesiac, coming less than a year after Kid A, is naturally regarded as a sequel, as a continuation, as functionally the second half of a double album. And with amnesiac, instinctively, I filter out all the frigidity and experiment ation and the Martineau Pope hat action, and I laser focus on Tom York's vocals. On his singular combination of yearning and exasperation. He sounds like he wants to be rescued and, also he very much wants everyone to get off his case. White space and faceless crowd. He sounds like getting off his case is the only way to rescue him a w all she I think about the first two lines of the song knives out a lot. The subtle, gloomy acoustic guitar and electric guitar intertwined there, very comforting to me. Yes, but I want you to know the yearning for connection, Tom York implies there, the hand he is graciously reaching out to me. And yet the full line is I want you to know he's not coming back. Tom is not talking here about the Tom York who sang fake plastic trees in 1995. That's not who's not coming back on Knives Out. But forgive me if I thought otherwise . This song is called Pyramid Song and the Harmony there, the second Tom York who emerges to emphasize the words swam with me. That harmony meant a lot to me in 2001. Pyramid Song is a massive, gorgeous, super emo piano ballad, and that particular format will take on increased importance as Radiohead rumbles on. Radiohead never totally abandoned rock, never totally abandoned guitars, but the maximum teenage catharsis I used to derive from Radiohead's guitar god songs, Creep, Just, My Iron Lung, Paranoid Android, Palo Alto, here in the grim 21st century , we get way less of that. But we do get some guitar god catharsis. Now don't we? Just cause you feel This song is called They're There off Radiohead's sixth album released in 2003 and called Hail to the Thief. The line just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there was very important to me in 2003 and almost certainly did not mean whatever I thought it meant. I don't even know what I thought it meant. My sullen youth . There you go. Just because I still feel my sullen youth doesn't mean. Okay. But once again, my favorite part of there, there is the thunderbolt of playfulness in the guitar. The little boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. Somebody sneaks in here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think I played there there for the fifth grad ers. They might have loved there there . Oh well. Hail to the thief is a great album, but it 's the very first radiohead album that I never tried to convince myself was my favorite. You know what I mean? The Benz is way better than Pablo Honey. Okay, Computer is way better than anything. Kid A arrives as this rapturous, world changing, cosmic event. Amnesiac drafts off Kid A, and saying that you like Amnesiac better is a fun way to get kicked out of parties. Whereas hail to the thief, for all its copious glacial, aching beauty and righteous timely anger, this struck me as just another radiohead album. And the just another album phase happens to literally every rock band, right? Even the all-timers. No band ever gets better and more important on every single subsequent new album fore ver. Nobody. com. So what happens to Radiohead in 2007 is shocking for various confounding and gratifying reasons. I can we love where I will take my eyes off the ball again you really had in good extre The seventh radio head album is released in October 2007 and is called In Rainbows. The first song is called 15 Step, and there is a bounce in the step of 15 ste p. Yes? Or at least a relative buoyancy. As with lots of radio head songs, the rhythm is quite odd. Uh fifteen step is in five four time probably. Let's not get into it. But to my mind, unlike lots of radiohead songs, the rhythm is also playful. I get the uncommon urge to clap along even if I cannot quite grasp the rhythm. And the playfulness intensifies. Dig how jaunty Tom York sounds when he sings the words, used to be alright, what happened, etc., etc., and then a funky little bass guy jauntily answers his question etc. There is also intriguingly an extra jaunty choir of children who all go yay after Tom sings the line, fads for whatever. I think that's what Tom says here. Fads for whatever. Maybe just ask the children what he says. Fifty cent ral So there's an immediate kaleidoscopic lightness and brightness to in rainbows. A group of children go yay! And then Tom York sings 15 steps and then a she er drop. But he doesn't sound like he's standing on top of a mountain flanked by a frowning sun and a grim reaper with a blood dripping scythe. Meanwhile, in October 2007, anyway, track one off In Rainbows is somehow not really anyone's first impression of In Rainbows. Your first impression is how this album is released. It is not quite surprise rele ased, like that Beyonce album later, but it's close. Via Radiohead's website, via a Johnny Greenwood blog post. See, he can do anything. We get an unconventionally brisk 10-day warning that In Rainbows is coming. More importantly, In Rainbows is first released on the internet as a pay what you want MP3 download. Pay what you want means free, if that's what you want. You could also buy a mail-order $80 deluxe CD and vinyl version with bonus tracks and cool artwork, et cetera, et cetera. Or you could not do that. Instead, you could listen to Radiohead play dope, jaunty, semi-retro feeling guitar god jams for the low, low price of free ninety-nine . That's track two on In Rainbows. It's called Body Snatchers, and the off-kilter but still palpable exuberance hereere? The decidedly retro feeling that Radiohead have caught hold of a cool, dexterous little guitar riff here. And the fellas sound like they're genuinely enjoying themselves, that warm sunny feeling is deftly undercut by the lyrics to body snatchers. I'd frankly never noticed before that Tom just sang the words, you killed the sound , removed backbone, a pale imitation with the edges sawn off. That's what Tom is singing, but Tom doesn't sound like he's singing that. You get me? Now feels like a good time to mention that In Rainbows launched without any official cover art. And so the journalist Sam Makovich worked up an unofficial In Rainbows cover in which Tom York's face is photoshopped onto the body of a dancing leprechaun. This was published in The Stranger, Seattle's Alt Weekly. The Tom York leprechaun cover is objectively rude, but still very funny to me. And I still regard it as the canonical In Rainbow's album cover. Don't tell Tom I said that. Thank you. It takes him an awfully long time to say it, but also Tom York doesn't sound like he just sang the words you'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking. Does it? He hits that quavering, cathartic high note , like he's conveying a far more encouraging and romantic sentiment . Yes? That's track three on In Rainbows. It's called Nude. Not my favorite slow burn radiohead ballad, but we're off to a strong start, an unexpectedly lively start . So at first, in October 2007, it seems to me that all the conversation about this new Radiohead album is about the pay what you want aspect, the free album from a famous band aspect, the potentially revolutionary delivery system, the internet of it all. The music is cool, but the music is secondary. The great New York Times critic John Perales wrote about In Rainbows in December 2007, and John says, quote: 16 years and seven albums into the career that has made Radiohead the most widely pondered band in rock, it is taking chances with its commerce as well as its art. For the beleaguered recording business, Radiohead have put in motion the most audacious experiment in years. The music industry, as you may recall, is in free fall throughout the 2000s, the aughts. Nap ster decimates everything, uh CD sales, physical sales absolutely crater. The iTunes MP3 store helps, but pir usty is still rampant throughout the decade. You know what else happens in October two thousand seven? Oink gets shut down. Oink , the famous, infamous torrent site where you could get tons and tons of music for free. I never used it, obviously. I just heard about people who did and we're sad when Oink shut down. Those people were sad. And we're nowhere near our current glorious peak streaming era. Right? So in 2007, free digital album from Radiohead is a splendid and novel and audacious and yeah, potentially revolutionary development. Maybe every band will adopt the Pay What You Want model now. Maybe this is the future of rock, etc., etc nine inch nails started messing around with that name your price model also but radiohead and nine inch nails are super famous long running and at least previously major label bands you gotta be pretty huge with a rabid and enormous fan base to successfully conduct such an audacious experiment . My fear at the time was that all the free album stuff would overshadow in Rainbows itself. We'd all remember the music business implications far more than we'd remember the songs. What I did not immediately realize is that in Rainbows features three of my all -time favorite radio head songs . The first truly great in Rainbow song is called Weird Fishes Slash Arpeggy and the Harmony there. The second Tom York who emerg es to sing way in the deeper background there, that harmony meant a lot to me in 2007. This part meant a lot to me also, when suddenly Tom York is float ing, or maybe free falling, amid a colossal and soothing landscape of towering beautiful mountain peaks and puffy clouds and verdant forests, and what he's maybe thinking is, mommy please come help my eating by the world and wed fish es in that moment and this whole song is potentially life changing on headphones. And furthermore, marks the fourth or fifth time in a fifteen year span that a radiohead song has changed my life. But the best in Rainbow songs also proved themselves to be potentially life-changing live. In summer 2008, Radio had headlined this New York City area music festival called All Points West, one of New York's various attempts to start its own Coachella, and Radiohead began their headlining set with the In Rainbow song Reckoner, and I'll never forget it as long as I live . An unexpected opening song to a big concert can for sure permanently change your life. You're braced for the first song on their new record or whatever, and certainly the opener will be something huge and bombastic and triumphant, but sometimes, instead, you get something 200% quieter and gentler that inevitably hits you 200 times harder. Like, seriously, I will never forget standing amid 30,000 or so fellow radiohead fans and feeling like I was alone while Tom York took his sweet time singing the words because we separate like ripples on a blank shore. And this time , yeah, it totally feels like he's singing that because we sing ripples I have just made an absolutely humiliating discovery . I cannot believe this. I just read my initial review of In Rainbows, published in The Village Voice in October 2007, right when the record came out. And my immediate reaction is that In Rainbows is a pretty good radiohead album that will nonetheless be completely overshadowed by the rollout, by the pay what you want scheme. I describe all the immediate discourse around in rainbows as an ocean of noise threatening to capsize to the record itself . And then and then I describe in Rainbows as the most blogged about barn in America. God damn it. Fucking hell, Rob, I completely forgot I did that. How many times have I done the whole white noise most photographed barn in America shtick? I'm hoping just twice, including just now, but sheesh. How about I shock the world and read another book? The best song on In Rainbows is called All I Need . Next day wait ing and wait . I'm an animal trapped in your car . And all I need is one of my absolute favorite slow burn radiohead ballads. Right up there with Let Dow n or Fake Plastic Trees or How to Disappear Completely or Pyramid Song. And in part, I think that's because even when you're listening to this song for the very first time, you can sense the huge cat hartic climactic arena rock zenith coming long before it arrives. It is the eerie and discomforting unhurriedness of all I need for me. It takes Tom York an awfully long time to sing the words, I'm the next act waiting in the wings, I'm an animal trapped in your hot car, which you wouldn't call romantic, these lyrics. But maybe he would. But it's also all the slow-motion blankness swirling around those ostensibly romantic words. It's the skipping an exceedingly dry drumbeat. Boom, boom, ch om, boom, booch , boom, boom, ch om, booch. It is the caustically unromantic line: I only stay with you because there are no others. It is also the Glockenspi el. Dig the Glockenspiel. Going boom bing boom bing. It's 2007. Okay computer is already 10 years old. In rainbows is the fourth new radio head album since then, and ain't nobody looking to these guys to be yeah, yeah, rock guitar gods anymore. The band has repeatedly and successfully conveyed their disinterest in that sort of thing. But what if you were too young to ever remember them being yeah yeah rock guitar god s at all? All I need gives me an exhilarating nostalgic feel ing, right? A nineties feeling, a vintage guitar god radiohead feeling just by other means, other fancier instruments. What the whole in rainbows album gave much younger people , kids in elementary school in the two thousands, say, it gave them the same exhilaration, but it's not nostalgic. It's not retro. They're here, they're now. Stephen Hayden in his book on Kid A. Stephen says, quote, this is based purely on anecdotal evidence, but it has been so overwhelmingly true in my experience that I'm inclined to take it as broadly true. In rainbows is the consensus choice for best radiohead album. This is especially true for millennials and Generation Z, who no doubt flock to In Rainbows because it was the first Radiohead album that was theirs. They were too young to scour the internet for illegal downloads of Kid A back in 2000, and the Benz, an okay computer, already sounded 290s by the mid aughts , but in rainbows, as music and as a moment, hit that gener ation just right . End quote. So far as all I need is concerned, here comes the moment . And the moment comes via piano and glockenspiel, doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, and this creeping, rising, symphonic assault engineered by our old friend Johnny Greenwood. In that New York Times article, it says, quote, For all I need, Mr. Greenwood said, he wanted to recapture the white noise generated by a band playing loudly in a room when all this chaos kicks up. That sound never materializes in the more analytical confines of a studio . His solution was to have a string section and his own overdubbed violas sustaining every note of the scale, blanketing the frequencies. End quote. This does not sound romantic. That verbal description does not sound romantic. The resulting musical sensation does not feel romantic unless maybe it does. Unless maybe it is romantic. Uh, either way, this is the part of all I need that raises all the hair on the back of my neck all the time . I go back and forth on whether Tom York is singing, it's all wrong, it's all wrong, it's all wrong, or if he's singing, it's all right, it's all right, it's all right, there. Or maybe he goes back and forth between singing it's all right and it's all wrong. Either way is fine. Both are fine. It's all wrong, but it's all right is basically the radiohead creed . If all I need had existed back in 2003, and I'd played it for that room full of fifth graders as part of my content gathering terror campaign. I don't think those kids would have dug it back then. But yeah, those kids as teenagers now in 2007, statistically a few of them fell hard for in rainbows, I bet. And that's beautiful. I promise to read another book. I promise. But those kids just had to see the barn for themselves . We are so thrilled and honored to be joined today by Cole Kushner, host of the phenomenal beloved podcast Dissect. Uh check out the new season of Dissect now, focusing on Daft Punk. Cole is also responsible. Pretty much every piece of gear I use now to video podcasts, I bought because Cole told me to. And then he sat on Zoom calls and told me how to set it up very patiently. So thanks for that, Cole. And also thanks so much for being here. Yeah, you look great. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. It's this waffle light. This is the one right here. This is the one that turned the whole thing around for me. You've done I think it's your 14th full season of disse ct you're on right now, and you did a full season on in rainbows. And to date, I think it's the only rock album you've ever done. Ordinarily, you know, it's Kendrick Lamar, Kanye or Tyler, the creator, Beyonce, et cetera. Like what made Radiohead the first rock band, you know, deserving of the dissect treatment. And what made In Rainbows the right Radiohead album? Yeah, um Radiohead's my favorite band ever, so um I think it starts there. But honestly if there's any band uh, particularly a contemporary band that that could undergo the kind of scrutiny and analysis that I put these albums under, I think Radio Ed is kind of the perfect candidate. Um to me therere' they're similar to a Kendrick Lamar in terms of just the depth of their music in a different way, but the depth of their music is just they're just it's endlessly fascinating both musically, philosophically, intellectually. Like it has every little nuance that I' m look looking to fill my show with. So for me, it was a no-brainer. It was mostly about when is the right moment to kind of pivot for the show. Because yeah, traditionally I do focus on hip-hop and there's reasons for that, but um Rioadhead is just it was kind of a one for me and it worked out because you know I I found an audience with the season and despite the pivot, uh it worked out well. And so yeah, then in rainbows, you know, my favorite album by Radiohead is Kid A. Hmm. That's a I would say that's a personal favorite. And you know, when I was trying to figure out what was best for the show, I I considered a number of things in terms of like um which I think we're gonna talk about like in Rainbow's kind of legacy being really interesting and connecting with a different generation than I think you and I are are basically around the same uh generation, but in rainbow scene seems to have a just as uh unexplainable connection to younger people that I would think maybe a kid A and okay computer would have had, but it turned out to be in rainbows. So that was one thing. And then um I don't know uh uh it I don't know if you're gonna talk about it, but like in Rainbow sits perfectly in the center of their catalog and I think it represents the entire spectrum of what Radiohead's legacy is in one album. And so if you're trying to explain the band through one album, I think this is a great way to do it because it incorporates kind of the vulnerability and the softness and the lack of testosterone of their late catalog. And it but it still has a lot of of the elements the early catalog that we love. So it's like kind of this beautiful synthesis of both sides of their of their career. Yeah. And what do you talk about, say, Kendrick Lamar? You talk about how sophisticated and complex and deep it is , but also somehow how accessible it is. You know, it's not so sophisticated and complex that you can't understand it, you know, or grasp it or like connect with it emotionally. And I think that does apply to Radiohead as well. Like what do you think this band's secret is? They they can be, you know, so wild and experimental and almost difficult sometimes, but they're still like hugely popular and people are still really into it and really connecting with it. Yeah, I'm really fascinated exactly with this kind of musical intersection where you have artists like Kendrick Radiohead, I think about like someone like the Beatles has son of had a lot of this too where they they do get experiment al conceptual conceptually really complex and yet they have they retain this accessibility that is I think is one of the hardest things to pull off in music is to be as experimental as some of these acts are and as like conceptual as they are, yet maintain that accessibility. Um that it's not that really anything I could explain to be honest, sometimes I feel like you know, like it's like Tom York can't write a bad melody if he tried. And I think a lot of what glues a lot of the experimentation of radio specifically is Tom's voice and because a lot of times it's like this angel like singing over like what could sound like very dark or dissonant, like and somehow it just it t it brings it all together. It's the same with like I think about um Kirk Cobain had the same kind of quality where it's like he can sing a uh a phrase as vulgar as rate me, yet it's like something we'll end up singing over and over in our head because it's so damn catchy somehow. Right. And there's this weird contrast of like uh I don't know, like some people just have a knack for these melodies that just that kind of tie everything together. I think Tom York has some of that.. Yeah Um I don't know, but it's it's it's definitely something like it's like really hard to explain, you know, that that balance. I don't know. I I think it's a perfect way to put it is Tom York couldn't write a bad melody if he if he tried, but he keeps trying, right? Like something that's really interesting to me is they like they're trying to push you away. You know, they're trying to get as far away from creep and then as far away from okay computer as they can. And they're they're trying to make you uncomfortable and like not alienate you to the point where you're not listening, but it's supposed to be difficult and challenging and like almost not fun at first to try and absorb it. But somehow something about his voice, his melodies, I don't know what it is. Like it's still draws you in even as it's explicitly trying to push you away. You know what I mean? It's yeah, and it's also I think it had the counterbalance of Tom and John ny mixed with the other guys, which I think looking at the solo music of of the other three band members , uh, you know, Brian Ed, they've all r released solo projects and it's like you can see where like once the the ingredients are kind of separated, you could like those guys aren't as experimental as Johnny and Tom. And I think they bring some of that accessibility just by nature of the kind of musicians that they are and their and their personal influences and interests, bringing those two whack the wacky ideas that Johnny and and and Tom are always bringing to the table. So it's it's kinda like the r you know the Ringo to the Lennon. Bill Sellway is Ringo. Yeah, totally. I mean, that's makes sense in multiple respect. All right. Um, okay, so In Rainbows is their seventh album. This is 2007. You know, they've been putting out music almost 15 years. It's amazing to me that this is very arguably their best record or their most popular record. Like even as a huge radio head fan, even as a kid a fan, did any part of you going into in rainbows think like this could be their best record, yeah. Like bands don't do this, right? Like, did you expect them to keep getting better and almost more popul ar ? The more popular, no. Because all sides kind of pointed toward the shift that we're talking about or the attempt at that shift. Um yeah, in the moment, you know, they're coming off of Halo the Thief, which I think I really enjoyed in the moment. I listened to that album a lot, but I think most radio ed fans would tell you it's if you had to r to rank it, it's probably gonna follow in the middle, maybe towards the bottle f bottom for some people. And there's reasons for that. They recorded it, you know, within just a couple of weeks and it seems like they weren't in a great place uh together as a band. So yeah. Um yeah. But I think you saw what they were trying to do. There it was their first attempt post-Kid A amnesiac to kind of bring the band back together in terms of a traditional sounding band with guitars and uh mixed now in with the electronic elements and kind of trying to fuse those all together and it works brilliantly at times and doesn't work so well in some spots on that record. And I think in Rainbows, more than probably any other record in their catalog, does it to perfection, that that fusion and that synthesis that we're talking about. So I don't know if I ever thought I mean there's no signs of them turning this kind of vulnerable and soft, you know. Right. There's always been like ballads in in their catalog. Mm-hmm. But none is like I don't know, soft is just the word that I use for this album so much. There's just like there's a warmth to it that I think was missing from their early work, just even in like the tones that they're using and the consistency of them using those tones, you know, like there's just it's it's just very round where I think a lot of their earlier work is really jagged and you know, harsh edges. Um if that makes sense. No, totally, it totally makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, because you did the band splane, the two part mega band splane episode on Radiohead, and you you talked a lot about in rainbows as like you you use the word soft, I think, in vulnerable. And Yassi sort of talked about is this like their dad album? Not necessarily their dad rock album, but like they're in a different place in their lives. They have families. You know, do you think in rainbows is just a reflection of where they were, you know, personally in their lives, in addition to where the band was specifically ? Yeah, it's always hard with them because they're usually really per you know private about their personal lives, and it's like it's always really difficult for Tom, especially when you're like looking at his lyrics to relate it to anything in his personal life because we just don't know the details and it so it just becomes really abstract and it's almost like to yeah you, it just doesn't even make sense to attempt to try to pin it to any one life circumstance for him. Uh he's just not not not that kind of writer. So I don't know what exactly explains it. I mean, I've had children, you have children, there is a difference. But there is a before and after. I think, you know, it does open you up to, you know, children open you up to being more vulnerable, being a little bit softer. I think as you age into your 40s, you're the lack of testosterone is , you know, uh there's some of that as well that I hear in this album. You know, it's just it doesn't have that edge to you know what most of their even hell the the thief had a lot of that kind of you know, grinding edges to it and a lot of uh anger and you know, more overt anger, expressions of anger in it. So there yeah, there is yeah, I think if we're trying to grasp at something that explains the sound, um, that might be it. But I don't know. Like I've I've never really done that with Radiohead. It's it's really hard to do. Right. When you hear the softness on this record, like where do you most hear it? I think I heard you say, like, nude, for example, is one of maybe your favorite song on the record, and one of your your favorite radio ed songs overall. Is it the softness, like the gentleness? You know, as you say, there'd been ballads before, but nude does feel different and more vulnerable like is that where you are seeing that yeah i think nude is a really great example of that um but it's always i i i i think m musically so much with radio and like the the lyrics to me are always kinda secondary um to the just the the quality of the music. And it's like for me it's like even about like the tones that they're selecting for their instruments, you know, where the where the nude, the bass line that kind of drives nude is so clean, you know, and round and and and saturated and and rich, you know. And pretty simple. Yeah. And even on like the subject of this episode, uh All I Need, you know, there's a crazy outro, which I think we're gonna talk about, but it's like even in that cacophony of sound, it still sounds very pristine and rich, and there it doesn't have the har shness that I think it would have had if if they played that same outro on a previous album, just by the the tones that they're selecting. So I think that's uh one of the reasons why in Rainbows has kind of stood the test of time. Is that there's a there's a it's a very unified sound, despite there a lot of the songs being so different from each other. It never feels out of the world that they created. And I think a lot of that just has has to do with the the way they recorded it and the tones that they were selecting for all the songs. There's like there's a there's a uniformity in a gr in a good way to the to the record where it does feel of all of one of one univer se. Right. And like you said, in rainbows seems to be the favorite among younger people, people younger than us. Like it it reached a new generation. Do you think that's because of like the musical things that we're talking about? Or do you think that that's just a function of you know like okay computer and even kid A are pretty old at this point. You know anything before that is like just the 90s and just feels like ancient history especially to young people. Is it just that in rainbows comes out at this moment that like when people were young, like young as we were, you know, when we heard the bends or whatever? Like is it just the timing of in rainbows that's made it, you know, what it is now Yeah, I don't know. I mean, this is obviously a question m m most accurately posed to someone of that age. If we're like two two old guys trying to speculate why what are the youth thinking? Yeah. Exactly. But I do think obviously I think the release uh being later in two thousand seven does help with that. So like yeah, you know, as the same with like the connection our parents had to the Beatles, like we're just not gonna have it in the same way because we didn't live through it in the same way that you and I lived through okay computer and Kid A, where it's like so much of those records in our relationship to them have to do with I was there when I heard everything and it's right place for the first time. And it was this, you know, otherworldly electronic piano from coming from this rock band that was supposed to be the future of rock and roll. And you know, it's like the story of that record is so much of what our relationship to it, despite the music being phenomenal. There's this other whole other element, experiential element that that comes with it when you live through it. And I think in Rainbows gives gives younger people the chance to have that experience and also comes off this experimental release that I think everybody remembers. If you d even if you don't remember the record, a lot of people just like understand that release. The way they released it was really important and historically impact ful. So I think, I mean, I think all the combination. The other thing I was thinking, which I don't know if it's true, but I don't know, of in my mind at least, like Kid A or like okay computer sounds of an era despite being as innovative and timeless as it is it's like you still get very strong rock elements in it like that were sure kind of normalized in the 90s , right? Kidday, it's like even kidday, you can even tie to specific influences and this whole electronic music scene emerging in the early 2000s and kind of pinpoint it to that. In Rainbows has to mean none of that it exists like you could they could have released that album now and it would there's there would be no difference like for for whatever reason it has a like a true timeless quality where it's really hard to pin the sound of it to anything else that surrounds it in that time of music history. And so I think maybe some of that is also why why? I don't, I'm not exactly sure, but that was just another thought I had when I was thinking about what trying to explain, yeah, what the legacy of this album. It's it's kinda hard. No, I agree with what you're saying. I can I can listen to OK Computer now and picture nineteen ninety seven way easier than I can listen to In Rainbows now and Picture Two Thousand seven. I think I get exactly what you're saying. Um, you mentioned the rollout as being really important and impactful. You know, I I think it was a big deal at first, like a pay what you want, like a band as big is Rioadhead, basically offering you a free album if you wanted it, but you could pay if you wanted just to see what their fans would respond. And it was a huge response. It was really successful for them. You know, and I think there was a thought, at least for five minutes, that like maybe all bands will start doing this forever. But I that didn't happen. And I think in part because like radiohead and nine inch nails are huge, you know, at least former major label bands with huge audiences, like you can't a new band, this isn't gonna work for them. This isn't gonna work for any band that's not as big as Radiohead. Like, what's your sense of the impact ultimately of the release strategy? Like, did it really change the way we thought about music and the internet and what music was worth? Or was it sort of a specific to radiohead kind of thing ultimately? Well, I think, yeah, I think ultimately it was specific to them because yeah, they like you mentioned, it's like they had the capability to do it, they had the fan base built in to do it. Um and so it was kind of and they were coming off a made their major label deal so they had the freedom to do it, which is really important . But I think what it did, why it was so impactful was like we were already having conversations about the value of music when Napster came along and people were stealing music illegally. And like a lot of acts at this time were caught. I mean, people were still buying CDs, but the young people more and more were just downloading it for free. And I think what the why it's such a memorable event is because it crystallized something that was already in the air and it was a it was a turning point moment we can specifically point to. It's like on this day, on at this hour, on this day, you know what I mean? It's like this happened and it only could have happened because there was already this kind of philosophical question about what was the value of music in the 21st century? And it kind of just gave form to that thought, right? And so we can we can look back at it at it as as a formal philosophical challenge of like what is the value of music going forward? And it's a question we're still trying to answer now. You know, I don't think we've really figured it out uh fully because you know obviously there's been streaming services that we all use uh I don't think anyone's really happy with there's multiple factors for that but it's like I s I still think we're trying attempting to answer that question um that they wro they posed all the way back in 2007 which is almost 20 years ago, which is kind of crazy to say. No, that's insane. That's very upsetting, actually. You know what I'd like to know? I would love to know what I paid for it. I'm gonna guess I paid ten dollars, but like it would I there should be a site on the internet where you put in your name and it tells you exactly what you paid for in rainbows. I still have the on an old hard drive I still have the original files that I downloaded for it. And I wanna say I paid twenty dollars for it, but I can't. Okay. That sounds like something that sounds like the the right honorable thing to do. That makes a lot of sense. I think it was I think they had a cap on it too, right? I think they had a hundred pound cap on it. Was it a hundred? I yeah, there was a cap on it, just to be like just in case there are any like real super f ans who are gonna bankrupt themselves in a moment of yeah, it's probably a good idea to cap the amount. I do think for me in Rainbows, the out it's down to three songs for me. It's Weird Fishes, Reckoner, and All I Need. And of course, in in your dissect episode about All I Need, like you talk a lot about the lyrics, Tom's lyrics , which are sort of walking this line between pure enduring love and like creepy desperation, right? Like I'm an animal trapped in your hot car. Like do you do you read that as a love song, as a line and a love song? Do you think Tom York reads it as a as a sincere line in a love song? That's the great thing about this song, because uh you just don't quite know how to take it right yes because there's like there's like three interpretations of it's like where it could be like very endearing just him trying to express how small he feels in you know in front of this beautiful perfect creature, you know, which is like kind of a classical expression of love, you know, historically. Sure. Yes. There's also like the obsession. It's like, does this woman even know he he exists? Or are we back in creep territory where it's like he's like um somewhat st alkerish uh admittedly you know kind of creepy but then there's like there's another layer that only reveals itself till like the second verse where he says, I only stick with you because there is no other. Right. That's like that is just like that turns the song on his head even more. Where there's like yeah now there's like this desperation and like there's a I don't know there's it's just like gets really s sad. Like like there's no one else. So I'm just gonna obsess over you. That's right. And like or or you can even like interpret it like this person's like convincing themselves that the situation that they're with, because there is no other, they're like almost like convincing themselves that this person is so great and talking themselves into it. And it's like, you're all I need, like this mantra of like like I need to keep telling myself this that you're the one because there is no other and if I'm gonna be alone if it's not for you. So I don't know, it's just so fascinating. Like so many of Tom Georg's lyrics where it's like so abstract and so non-specific that you can just kind of mole it over forever. And then when you take in the musical elements, that adds a whole nother kind of dimension to it as well because it is a song that is it's like sweet. Like the s the the instrumental is like pleasant, but also kind of eerie as well. And then you get to the outro, which is like a whole other universe and like there's there's philosophical things about that thing, that as well. So yeah,. I don't know It's like every every radio is like this. It's just a rabbit hole unto itself that you could just kind of theorize forever about. I was uncertain until you started talking and now I'm convinced it's not a love song. I think you totally just talked me out of even the vague interpretation. Yeah, the way you describe it accurately, I think I'm on the not love song side of the fact that we're going it's only a love song if you are listening at surface level. Like it Right. If you if you really look at the lyrics, like I know a lot of people like have this, I I can't remember who it is, but like someone even in my personal life was like, This is me and my, you know, girl song and I'm just like don't go over to dinner at those people's house. Yeah. Okay . Wow. Yeah, so musically, I in in the dissect episode, you talked about all I need is the example of a terminal climax. You say that the song eventually takes on a terminally climactic form. And for those of us unfamiliar with terminal climax, it's like, what does that mean, Cole? And how does that help all I need become as as great it is. Well, terminal climax is a term that my friend Brad Osborne, uh he's the one that uh wrote the book, the analysis book on uh Radiohead, which is really great for any music nerds out there that's really into music theory, check it out by Brad Osborne. But he coined this term . And essentially it means like usually where this there's a bridge in a song, uh, which you know bridge bridges traditionally either go to a whole new kind of climax in terms of dynamic a new dynamic high or it brings the song down so that the the last chorus can kind of hitch harder.. Yeah Hits harder , right? So a terminal climax, I guess the most easiest way to think about it is like it's a bridge that never goes back to the chorus and it just exists in the bridge world until the end of the day. Takes over. Right. Okay.. Exactly And so all I need does this. If another radiohead example is uh Karma Police. Um Beatles do it on Let It Be, um, where they go into the na na na na part and then never returns to the let it be part. Uh or no, sorry, Hey Jude. Hey Jude. Hey Jude, sorry. Hey Jude. Sorry. Sorry, Paul. So what's cool about All I Need is like , one, it's like it kind of comes out of nowhere where you don't you don't ever see it getting like because it is kind of like this understated song, even the chorus doesn't really go anywhere dynamically. It actually drops a little bit lower than the verses. So it's just existing at this low dynamic range for most of the song. And then it just suddenly takes off out of nowhere. And what I find so interesting about it is that John ny orchestrates strings throughout the entire outro and he's playing he had the orchestra play every single note in the scale that the keep that they're in all at one time. And so there's this like like tone cluster white noise kind of underneath everything. And then the chords that I assume Tom are playing, the piano chord, he's hitting one chord over and over, and it's six notes in the chord, which is one note shy of playing every single note in the key as well. And so you're getting this just like the frequency spectrum, the total spectrum is just fully saturated. And he's banging one chord over and over and over. And then this is the thing about Radiohead where it's like just so happens to be in a song about obsessing over one person. And so it becomes to this like this terminal climax, this point of no return where you're just obsessively banging every single fucking note in the song's key signature over and over and over. And you're just like, are these guys geniuses or does it just happen just happen in like every other radiohead song coincidentally? And it's like, I don't know, you then you think about, oh, like pyramid song. Why is pyramid song called Pyramid Song? And then you realize the the rhythm of the song shapes an actual pyramid. You're just like , are these guys like that that kind of shit just pops up in their music all the fucking time? And it's like, right? Are they this brilliant? Or is it a just a yeah, just a crazy coincidence over and over? I don't know. Yeah. Uh just a couple questions to wrap up. So right from creep, you know, Radiohead for me was Tom York 's voice and Johnny Greenwood going on guitar, right? Like these are the two pol es of the band. And like as the band progressed and got more experimental and orchestral, you know, from kid A onward, like do you feel like Radiohead has become more Johnny's band? Like I just think about Johnny now has this whole sideline , you know, one battle after another, so much of that movie's greatness for me is about his score. You know, he's got this entire career all to himself. How do you think that affects, you know, how you hear Radiohead when we go back to just Yeah, I mean in a lot in a lot of ways that they haven't really changed from your creep analysis of like of like of Johnny just going it on different weird disturbance. Just now it's on the old Martinau or whatever. Yes. Yes . Exactly. No, but I mean in terms of like competition, I I know Tom is secretly can not so secretly competitive with Johnny. I think he admires Johnny very much, especially when Johnny started scoring films. You know, the the film that that Tom scored, I forgot what it was called now. Um Was that Body Clown? I remember that was a Johnny score. That was Johnny. Um , but whatever whatever it was called, um you know, he said in an interview, I if I'm recalling it right, like I was looking at what Johnny was doing and I wanted to try it. And John Tom is just not as musically technically in terms of like music theory and knowing how to notate music. Like Tom is just not on the level as Johnny, although obviously Tom is special in his own way. And I think that's just always been the magic of Radiohead. I think again to go back to the Beatles, it's the chemistry between uh John and Paul. And you can explain so much of the band through just these two fucking superhuman musicians just so happening to be at the right place at the right time growing up together in the same area. But it's like we are so lucky that they found each other. You know what I mean? And I think totally for me it's it's been what makes the band special has been those two. No offense to the other guys. They are all each great in their own way. They're doing it. And the chemistry, yeah, the the synthesis of all five of them is what truly makes them great, but come on, without Johnny and Tom together, we're not talking about radiohead in the same way. And I think that's always just been the magic of this of this band. It's those the duo and and like them always wanting to get I was I assume the whole band is like this, but Tom and Johnny specifically always evolving, always trying new things. Right. Johnny getting more and more adept with, you know, orchestration and experimental instruments and all that. Like all of that is you can explain so much of the longevity of ready hood through that kind of experimentation and that evolution because obviously if they they stayed the bends the whole time, we're not having this conversation , right? So uh that's always been the magic to me is those those two guys together. Yeah. And just to wrap up, you know, I worry sometimes that I've listened to and thought about and read so much about Radiohead that like I'm burnt out on them, right? Like all the all the analysis has left me just unable to appreciate it as just music. And I wanted to ask you as someone who does these incredible track by track deep dives into your own favorite albums, like do you ever worry about that kind of burnout? Is it possible to know too much about a song that it's like demystified or something? Or does every new layer you uncover only sort of enhance the greatness of it for you . Yeah, I mean, you're asking the wrong guy this question. Cause it's just like I I like literally, I literally live for this stuff. Like it would have happened by now, I think. You're burnout. Yeah. I get you. Yeah, I mean for me I mean but radio ed is like for someone like me, that's why radiohead gets talked about in this way so much because for people like me who are usually the ones like that are doing this kind of work, it's like it's just so perfe ctly hits every single spot that we're desiring in music where it sounds good. You don't have to think about it for it to be beautiful and great, but if you want to, there's just a world of of of wonder to be discovered if you want to just dig into the weeds. And what I always find so fascinating on dissect , it's really happened. I can't really think of an example of anyone that it hasn't happened to this with, but but certainly there's degrees to it. But it's like always the closer that I look, the more I find. Like there's always something that explains greatness. And a lot of it is inexplainable, but there are parts of it that you can physically point to, or you know, literally point to and say, This is why this section works, or here's how this makes you feel, and so that the lyrics hit you this way instead of this way. And so it's like, I don't know, music to me has always been fascinating in in this way to me because there it is so abstract aside from the lyrics. Like music is something we can't see, we can't touch. It's just physical waveforms that it, you know, are vibrating or eardrums. It's like that to me has always been so mysterious. Like how could this thing make me cry that I can't physically, you know, touch. Right. Um and so I think part of my analysis is like trying to explain the like certain aspects of like why we emotionally music affects us in the way it does, or why uh a sequence of songs can tell a story over the course of an