Brilliant Music For An Innovative Release

Euphoric.

That’s the best way to describe the Radiohead’s seventh studio album, In Rainbows.

The quintet hailing from Oxford, England announced the surprise release 10 days ago, but that wasn’t the only surprise. The band decided to allow fans ordering the album to choose how much they wanted to pay for it—or to pay nothing at all. Fans also had the choice of ordering a discbox, which will be shipped Dec. 3 and contains eight more unreleased songs, as well as vinyl and a full color book for the rather steep asking price of $80.

Radiohead has been well-praised for its unique style, and no two releases are alike. Consequently, don’t expect In Rainbows to sound like a prior release or almost anything you’ve ever heard. It is stuck somewhere between the dark and haunting lyrics of OK Computer and the lighter string and electronic melodies of Kid A. The album is not as lyrically cryptic as Thom Yorke’s lyrics usually are, providing for a much easier connection between the listener and music. However, though they are not as complex, they are still triumphantly beautiful and engaging. Radiohead has truly set the bar at an almost unreachable level, making it impossible for any band to copy or even attempt to copy this sound. Picking the album’s highlights is extremely difficult, because while each song still has a defining individual style, the arrangement of the 10 songs creates a single arc that makes it hard to separate the songs from one another.

“Nude,” however, is a standout, opening with what is easily this year’s best 40 seconds of music. The song builds from Yorke’s not-overpowering background vocals and grows steadily louder and overlaps with light drums—one imagines that this is what heaven sounds like. The intro fades out into Colin Greenwood’s heavy bass over Yorke’s eerie voice belting out a depressing tale, “Don’t get any big ideas/They’re not gonna happen.” This song could easily go on to be one of the band’s defining songs, as its style perfectly represents the Radiohead canon.

The album’s halfway point at the end of “All I Need” is quite possibly one of the most uplifting moments Radiohead has ever recorded. Over the escalating instrumentation, Yorke cries, “It’s all right/It’s all wrong/It’s all right.” The oppositions are clear—the contradiction within the lyrics, and between the lyrics themselves and the music—but Radiohead makes it work perfectly.

“Faust ARP” was the one song that was never heard before the record’s release, and early speculation was that it would be an instrumental track. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of the album’s highlights. The song seems to have come straight from the Beatles’ White Album, a twitchy combo of “Julia,” “Blackbird,” and “Mother Nature’s Son,” backed by a beautiful string section composed by Jonny Greenwood.

As I listened, I was waiting with mixed feelings for “Reckoner,” an uplifting guitar jam that dates back to The Bends and OK Computer sound, but the song’s old incarnation has thankfully been redone. A light tambourine perfectly accents another amazing string section complemented by a nice guitar riff until Yorke’s voice slides right into place. The new “Reckoner” adds to the ghostly vibe as Yorke’s vocals sound like phantoms.

Whether a Radiohead diehard, casual fan, or a first-time listener, the reaction should be the same: amazement. In Rainbows is such a well-mastered and put together work it would be difficult for anyone to deny its beauty. In fact, for at least the next few days you can expect almost every iChat status bar and Facebook status to contain one of the album’s song titles. Regardless of how much you paid for In Rainbows, after listening you’ll wish you could give Radiohead more.