Best Albums of 2011: #12

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Everyone knows that Radiohead is one of those bands that will always be constantly redefining themselves and challenging their listeners. Because of that, when people hear a new Radiohead album, they expect something new. Something definitive. Something that will challenge the idea of being a rock band in an "in-your-face" kind of way. And for the past 10 years, that is exactly what Radiohead has done whether it wasOK Computer or Kid A or In Rainbows.

However, King of Limbs presents the band in a new way -- it reintroduces the band as one that can be subtle. So subtle that the band might do something like announce the album for one day and then just release the album the day before in a seemingly inconsequential way. They might release a "newspaper" edition -- a transitory medium that is here one day and forgotten the next. They might have tracks that give the band room to explore and perhaps even jam a bit. Tracks like "Bloom" and "Lotus Flower" feature textures that are mind-blowingly dense, yet at the same time they always feel somewhat effortless. The more I listened to this album throughout the year, the more I realized that Radiohead knew exactly what they were doing with this album and in many ways have surprised fans and critics again, but in a way we never would have expected.



Best Tracks: "Bloom", "Lotus Flower"

Best Albums of 2011: #17

Jonny Greenwood - Norwegian Wood OST
Admittedly, I haven't watched as many films this year as I wish I could have, which of course, also means I haven't heard as many great soundtracks either. However, Radiohead guitarist and composer extraordinaire Jonny Greenwood has written possibly one of his best works yet in his scoring of the Japanese film, Norwegian Wood. Greenwood has this tragic underpinning behind his work that so effectively puts the audience inside the minds and hearts of the characters on screen.

The album opens with "Mou sukoshi jibun no koto, kichinto shitai no", which introduces the twisting theme of the score -- here it unfolds in a series of canons and loops just before unraveling into nothing as if it were never there to begin with. The plot follows the love triangle of three young Japanese college students and the deals with themes of identity, sexuality, and loss in their lives. In tracks like "Quarter Tone Broom", Greenwood shows off his beautiful language of dissonance that brilliantly describes the unwinding mental state of Norwegian Wood's characters. But what really made this soundtrack even more special for me was Greenwood's inclusion of two haunting acoustic guitar tracks that has me convinced that Greenwood is one of the most talented and unique composers working in the film industry right now.

Best tracks: "Mou sukoshi jibun no koto, kichinto shitai no", "Toki no senrei o ukete inai mono o yomuna"

Favorite Radiohead Songs of All Time

I know Radiohead's most recent album, The King of Limbs, was "sooo two months ago", but in light of all the mixed reviews its been getting and the recent attention the band has been receiving, I thought it would be fitting to make a list of my favorite Radiohead songs of all time. I can't say, after making this list, that I understand any better how The King of Limbs fits in the grand scheme that is the Radiohead discography, but oh well. Oh and by the way, I don't claim to be a Radiohead expert or even the world's biggest fan; these are the ones that have stuck with me the longest.



Honorable Mentions:
-Karma Police
-Bloom

10. Creep
While a lot of "hardcore" Radiohead fans tend to overtook their most popular single of all time behind, I find "Creep" to be a great representation of how even from very early on, Radiohead was able to write music that resonated with listeners in a very special way. After seeing a cover of the song sung by a choir in the trailer for the recent film, Social Network, it became so very clear to me that there was something significant about the way this band would come to inhabit the voice of an entire generation of people entangled in issues of self-image, individuality, and alienation.

9. High and Dry
If you listen to this one up against the other songs on the list, you'll find its pretty striking how much Radiohead has changed their sound. A single off their second 1995 alternative rock album, The Bends, "High and Dry" represents the best of Radiohead's more mainstream pop/rock sound and is a good reminder of how good the band once was at this sound.

8. Let Down
The big single off of OK Computer, "Let Down", saw Radiohead mastering their new experimental rock sound and perfectly combining it with the mainstream rock sound of The Bends, their previous album. "Let Down" was just the kind of anthem that the band needed to boost them into the stratosphere of global popularity and stadium rock stardom. Plus, the cute, sine wave tinkles at the end of the album are a naive, but cordial prophecy of the electronic experimentation of Kid A that was just around the corner.

7. Paranoid Android
This incredibly strange track off OK Computer shows off Radiohead's bizarre harmonic language that shows off the band's uncanny use of traditionally non-pop chord progressions and key changes. Taking cues from progressive rock and the late Beatles albums, this multi-sectional song had just enough dark sonic exploration and explosive electric guitar fuzz to win over fans from all sides of the "rock" spectrum.

6. House of Cards
Who honestly knew Radiohead still had this side of them around? This often overlooked, reverb-laden track off of In Rainbows, has got to be one of the most simple songs Radiohead has ever released. Its soaring melody, love affair-themed lyrics, and simple production makes this one my favorite "ballad" (if you want to call it that) by Radiohead and shows that for all Radiohead's contrived instrumentation and pretentious lyrical ideas, they can still write a simple love song and pull it off with a convincing amount of tenderness.

5. Optimistic
This more "classic Radiohead" sounding, track off of Kid A is often seen as the one misnomer in the Kid A album. Whereas the rest of album retreats from incredibly popular sound that the band achieved on their previous record, OK Computer, "Optimistic" finds a lot of overlapping ground with it. Featuring a full-fledged rock band Fortunately, Optimistic is simply too good have been left off a Radiohead album and features just enough lyrical and sonic experimentation to fit in well enough on the album while at the same time giving older fans something to hold on to.

4. Reckoner
Only after three albums of electronic experimentation could Radiohead be free to release such tracks like Reckoner of pure, simple, unrestrained beauty. In "Reckoner", a track off of In Rainbows, we are again reminded of how sweet and powerful Thom Yorke's haunting falsetto vocals truly are. Yorke's long sweeping melodies contrast up against the assorted percussion from the rest of the band and culminate in a beautiful drop-out bridge section, only to return to the previous section with layered strings and percussion in the arsenal.

3. Idioteque
This one is the crown of Kid A and perhaps the climax of the album as a whole. Using the sounds of house and techno beats to drive the unnerving post-apocalyptic tension in this track, Idioteque is the prime example of what I would call Kid A's thematic emphasis on 'digital anxiety'. The beautiful chorus melody contrasts starkly with the ghostly atmospheric noises and hollow drum machines and making Idioteque land somewhere between a dance song not meant for dancing and a rock song without any real instruments. However you classify it, it's straight up genius and that's before hearing the energetic live versions that made turned it into a fan favorite.

2. Airbag
The opening distorted electric guitar notes that begin "Airbag" and OK Computer are truly representative of the more experimental rock genre in which they were headed as well as the lyrical ideas of the album. While not a true concept album, OK Computer dealt quite directly with issues of consumerism, alienation, industry, and apocalypse and "Airbag" opens with these evocative lyrics: "In the next world war/In a jackknifed juggernaut"/I am born again" and "In an interstellar burst/I am back to save the universe". People have linked the 1997 album to the millIt was all of a sudden very clear that Radiohead's era of soul-searching and personal lyricism was over and they were entering into the strange, mysterious ground of concept.

1. Everything in Its Right Place
Okay, so I guess I'm a sucker for album openers. To me, this first track off of Kid A is not only my favorite Radiohead song, it was also the face of the new sound Radiohead wanted to project with their shocking, new electronic sound in Kid A. The smooth electronic organ, the strange vocal manipulations, and the uniquely Radiohead harmonic language just perfectly sums up the band for doing what they are best at: constantly redefining what it means to be a rock band in our ever-changing cultural landscape through beautiful musical experimentation and masterful songwriting.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

9.0

Self-released
02/19/11

There has been more than enough written about how significant albums like OK Computer and Kid A are, so I don't even want to attempt at properly introducing the band in those terms. Instead, let me just say that having been previously plagued by the disease of having to reinvent themselves artistically or reinvent music itself with every release, Radiohead has finally made an album that feels comfortably like themselves. Their last release, In Rainbows, was the band's "return to form" so to speak and featured songs that were based completely around what they were actually doing live as a band in contrast to the electronic-heavy experimentalism of Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief. In Rainbows also showed off the more poppy, sweeter side of Radiohead that had been missing since The Bends and OK Computer in tracks like "Reckoner" and "House of Cards". Pulling influences from a variety of Radiohead's different styles and energizing them with a dose of breakbeat, The King of Limbs feels like it could have been the proper followup to just about any Radiohead album.

What it lacks in memorable melodies and conventional song structure, it boasts in high octane energy and extroverted instrumentation. This is Radiohead's most externally aggressive music since OK Computer and it feels great. The first five tracks of the album are hard-hitting jams that feature Colin Greenwood's delicious bass groves and Phil Sleway's characteristically robotic drums leading the charge, proving that they are just as essential as Thom Yorke's vocals are to who Radiohead is as a band. While its true that songs like "Bloom" and "Lotus Flower" don't sound all that aesthetically revolutionary up against songs like "15 Step" and "Bodysnatchers" from In Rainbows, the band's 4-year absence seems to toss out the early impressions that interpret this as some kind of In Rainbows sister-album. Instead, The King of Limbs seems to do a good job of pulling influences from "Little By Little" harmonic experimentalism sounds like it could have been straight out of OK Computer, while "Feral's" vocal modulations and breakneck speed feels like it could have been placed on the second half of Kid A. Later on in this incredibly short album, "Codex" brings down the tempo and continues Radiohead's tradition of including soft piano-led songs. This time around, the piano is surrounded by a How To Dress Well-esque soft buzz of clipping that acts as a perfect way of wrapping Yorke's voice in a layer of nostalgia and lo-fi trendiness. To close off the album, "Give Up the Ghost" and "Seperator" are some of the most accessible and beautiful Radiohead songs ever written, functioning in the vein of In Rainbows.

Ultimately though, its tough to know exactly where this album fits in the grand scheme that is the Radiohead canon. It has already split critics and fans, some claiming its too low-key, while others claiming its too abstract. As with most Radiohead records, it will take more listens and thought than the average album and will demand just as much from you as you do from it as a listener. However, at some point we are all going to have to realize that Radiohead is just a band and The King of Limbs is a good reminder that they don't always have a grand scheme in their music. The King of Limbs might not be a complete sonic makeover but its definitely also not a transition or B-side album as some have suggested. The album is layered and complex both musically and thematically, but it also feels comfortably settled like a band that is increasingly sounding like a band who knows who they are and what they want to accomplish. But most importantly, The King of Limbs is a straight up smart, challenging, and beautiful album; all the things you'd expect from Radiohead.


Radiohead - Bloom