CD Review

I guess when you’re the greatest recorded band in recent history, the only thing left to do is spend two years slaving over a new record, and when every minute detail is edited to magnificent perfection and the latest masterpiece is finally complete, just throw the mp3s up on a nondescript website and let people decide how much a download is worth.  Of course, in doing so, you also single-handedly flip the music industry on its quickly crippling side, eliminate the need for a proper distribution model, drop your entire marketing budget to the cost of an internet connection and a godaddy account, and ultimately expose the practice of putting a conformed price tag on art seem rather archaic. 

In Rainbows is more than Radiohead’s seventh album - it’s the first significant music project in these early stages of Web 3.0.  Living up to the legacy of OK Computer or Kid A is kind of irrelevant.  This latest collection of mp3s has all of the eerie, haunting Thom Yorke vocals (“Nude,” House of Cards,” “Videotape”), chaos (“Bodysnatchers”), frigid percussion (“Reckoner,” “Jigsaw Falling Into Place) and absolute timeless compositions that surpass anything anyone else is currently writing (“15 Steps,” “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” “All I Need,” shit, pretty much the whole tracklist could go here, but you get the picture…).  The only difference this time around is the format.  And even that was innovative. 

A new Radiohead album came out today.  You can download it at inrainbows.com.  After you put it in your shopping cart, you can choose to pay whatever price you want.  What else can you say?