Radiohead album by album

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by ponkine, Jul 11, 2020.

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  1. LarsO

    LarsO Forum Resident

    I feel that In Rainbows and A Moon Shaped Pool (yet to be discussed) are the albums closest to OK Computer.
     
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  2. ponkine

    ponkine Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Villarrica, Chile
    On 31 March 2008, 'Nude' was released. It was the second single from 'In Rainbows'. The oldest song from the album, dating back to 'OK Computer' days. The 2 B-sides from the CD single were included on the 'In Rainbows' Disk 2.

    From Wikipedia:

    "Nude" had working titles including "Failure to Receive Repayment Will Put Your House at Risk", "Big Ideas" and "(Don't Get Any) Big Ideas".[1] The final title derives from an early version of the chorus: "What do you look like when you’re nude?"[2]

    Radiohead recorded a version of "Nude" during the first sessions for their third album, OK Computer (1997), with producer Nigel Godrich. This version, inspired by Al Green, featured a Hammond organ, a "straighter" feel, and different lyrics. The band was initially pleased with the recording but, according to Godrich, "for some reason everyone went off it".[3]

    "Nude" was first performed in the late 1990s by singer Thom Yorke in a solo performance in Japan.[1] Radiohead performed it several times over the following decade, and it became one of their best-known unreleased songs.[1] They and Godrich worked on "Nude" again during the sessions for their albums Kid A (2000) and Hail to the Thief (2003), but were not satisfied with the results.[3]

    During the early sessions for Radiohead's seventh album In Rainbows (2007), Colin Greenwood wrote a new bassline for the song. According to Godrich, this "transformed it from something very straight into something that had much more of a rhythmic flow".[3] The band also removed a chorus and wrote a new ending.[3] They performed the new arrangement, along with other new material, on their 2006 tour before recording three takes for In Rainbows.[4] The final take was used, with overdubs recorded in Covent Garden, London.[3] Godrich said in 2008:[3]

    Songs have a kind of window where they are really most alive – and you have to capture it. "Nude" missed its window, and it took a lot of reinvention to bring it back to the place where we could capture it again in a way that resonated for the people playing it. It was essentially the same song; nothing had really changed. What has changed are the people playing it.

    7"
    1. "Nude"
    2. "4 Minute Warning"[8]
    CD
    1. "Nude" – 4:17
    2. "Down Is the New Up"[8] – 5:00
    3. "4 Minute Warning" – 4:05

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


     
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  3. ponkine

    ponkine Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Villarrica, Chile
    From NME 2007:

    First written ten years ago, ‘Nude’ was considered a forgotten classic until now. The song, which used to be titled ‘Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any)’, was first played live in 1998, and has not appeared on albums before ‘In Rainbows’ due to the band being unable to agree on how to approach its recording. The song opens with an orchestral flurry cut through by Thom Yorke’s driving croon. It’s a slow, ethereal song underpinned by Phil Selway’s trademark patter and tish drumming, not unlike the work he did on ‘Pyramid Song’.

    From Pitchfork 2007:

    This song is the oldest of the bunch, dating as far back as the late 1990s (please enjoy some lovely, glockenspiel-led internet evidence of that claim below), when it was debuted as a solo acoustic Thom Yorke track in Japan, then eventually folded into the band's sets:

    In the above clip, Yorke introduces this as a "new song that doesn't have a title"-- since then it's had four: "Failure to Receive Repayment Will Put Your House at Risk" (as claimed by Yorke in the tour film * Meeting People Is Easy * ), "Big Ideas", "(Don't Get Any) Big Ideas", and now alas the far inferior "Nude". Suburban ennui, crushing boredom, unfulfilling go-nowhere lives-- it's like a graceful and sorrowful version of those sometimes sneering, knees-up Kinks/Blur character songs, or the inverse of "No Surprises".

    "But dreams have a knack of just not coming true," the Smiths once moaned; "Don't get any big ideas/ They're not gonna happen," Radiohead claim here, but it's largely too late, the protagonist seems stuck, having already tricked himself into holding out hope for too long.

    Radiohead fans may have felt the same thing about the track, having been prepped to believe it would appear on * Kid A * (and being told that, in retrospect, it was considered for * OK Computer * ) and teased with scattered appearances at shows over the past decade, before it was finally mentioned as one of the first batch of songs the group was working on in its intial LP7 sessions, in 2005.

    Key lyric: "Now that you've found it, it's gone/ Now that you feel it, you don't"


    Here's Live from the Basement performance

     
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  4. ponkine

    ponkine Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Villarrica, Chile
    And here, the 1998 version from 'Meeting People is Easy'. At the time, the song was known as 'Big Ideas'

     
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  5. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    The version that came out on the OKC Minidiscs was really cool to hear, though I’m glad that wasn’t the final version. They made the right call to wait until they had this later arrangement. It’s got so much room to breathe and Thom’s vocals fit into that space perfectly.
     
  6. CassetteDek

    CassetteDek social distancing since 1979

    Location:
    Chicago
    The verses of Nude really crystallize to me some of the attitudes that 10 years prior were subliminally, or not so subliminally, seeping into me growing up as a card-carrying Generation X-er, affecting my outlook in ways I’d probably change if given the second chance. So it goes.

    Then the bit about going “to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking” was also one of many head-****s I had to grapple with from church (though obviously that’s not specific to Gen X). When I heard Thom sing that line, the idea just never sounded so ridiculous. A whole other can of worms, I digress.

    The music, orchestration and arrangement are exquisite, and even the title works really well to encapsulate the vulnerability of the sentiment. Not to mention one of Thom’s most beautiful vocals.

    Of course it was Colin who saved the song with his bass line. He may be the MVP of the record’s first side.
     
  7. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    At some point in this thread I will rank my top 10 Colin basslines
     
  8. jalexander

    jalexander Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Thanks for pointing out the mini disks version of Nude. That set is so big I haven’t been able to absorb it. Same song. Relatively same tempo. Totally different vibe - largely because of the organ vs. bass.

    I must say it’s been interesting reading about this as Radiohead’s “sensual” album. I’ve never thought of it that way, and still find it a bit laughable. The old version of Nude has a bit of r&b flair thanks to the organ, but with Thom wailing over top, it still feels very much like a dirge to me. Love the album, but when I’m looking for “sensual”, I’m going to be reaching somewhere else in my collection....
     
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  9. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    “House of Cards” has a sensual sort of vibe to me. Especially in the vocals.
     
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  10. CassetteDek

    CassetteDek social distancing since 1979

    Location:
    Chicago
    just found this official tour T-shirt:
    [​IMG]
     
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  11. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    When I saw them on the IR tour, Colin was wearing the black men’s version of that shirt. I kinda love the idea of him digging through the merch to find a clean shirt before the show.
     
  12. jalexander

    jalexander Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    That’s the only one that came to mind when I read that comment from Thom, until I remembered the lyrics... we’re hardly in Let’s Get it On territory... or even Love the One You’re With... more like Ang Lee’s Ice Storm set to music. So now along with our economy, politics, and society being a total blow out, so is love/marriage. Now that’s the Thom I know! But what a song! Definitely a top ten Radiohead tune for me.
     
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  13. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Haha yea the lyrics don’t exactly get anyone going! The vibe and sound of it, though...
     
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  14. CassetteDek

    CassetteDek social distancing since 1979

    Location:
    Chicago
    Starting with In Rainbows, I lost track of their non-album tracks altogether, and I’ve only acquainted myself with a lot of them just this year during, ya know.

    I definitely rank 4 Minute Warning very highly, it’s an incredibly perfect song. Again, those vocals!

    I want to like Down is the New Up more than I do. Maybe it’ll grow on me. Almost like the composition is a tad too ambitious and doesn’t add up to something. Given the lyrics, maybe that’s the point, but kinda meh. Anyway the instrumentation sounds really great on it.
     
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  15. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    The live arrangement of 4 Minute Warning on the 2006 tour was pretty great. I totally get why they changed it for the record; it was very straightforward and poppy, and I’m sure they didn’t want that. I’m glad I got to see it once though.

     
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  16. ponkine

    ponkine Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Villarrica, Chile
    Track 4: 'Weids Fishes/ Apeggi'

    From NME 2007:

    This song was premiered by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood when they played a one-off gig at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2005, and the band have played it on tour since. Mid-paced and relaxed but with a dancey drum pattern, Thom Yorke croons about being eaten by worms and the aforementioned weird fishes.

    From Pitchfork 2007:

    "Arpeggi" only * seems * to have debuted ages ago-- it was the first hint of new material since 2003's * Hail to the Thief * and among the first omg YouTube moments, an indication that this video site would now document every step and move our favorite musicians (and eventually politicians, classmates, family members) made.

    The song debuted in March 2005 at London's Ether Festival, with Yorke and Jonny Greenwood performing it amongst two of Greenwood's own orchestral pieces. As David Raposa __ wrote at the time __ , "Greenwood plays the Ondes-Martenot, an electronic keyboarded [that] produces elegiac tones that sound like a cross between the warm buzz of a Rhodes piano and the resonant blare of a pipe organ. Such tones are perfect for Yorke's tremulous voice and his equally tremulous words."

    Once out on the road, "Arpeggi" became a fixture at their shows, appearing in three-quarters of the 2006 sets, making it one of the band's most frequently played songs of the tour.

    Key lyric: "Your eyes/ They turn me/ Why should I stay here?"


     
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  17. ponkine

    ponkine Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Villarrica, Chile
    Here's the Live From The Basement version

     
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  18. aphexj

    aphexj Sound mind & body

    Lianne La Havas and her excellent band did an amazing cover version on her latest album

     
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  19. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    The crucial lyric for me is “everybody leaves if they get the chance and this is my chance.” This song is just perfect to me. Those beautiful bubbly guitars. Thom’s vocal soaring higher and higher. That breakdown in the middle. All gorgeous. Always a highlight live, too
     
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  20. CassetteDek

    CassetteDek social distancing since 1979

    Location:
    Chicago
    ^absolutely agree with all that

    Weird Fishes is probably in my top 5 songs of theirs. One of the most beautiful pieces of music by anyone, ever. Those arpeggios are so propulsive.

    During the “eaten by the worms” breakdown, where the all timbres magically turn more percussive, the overall effect is like the sonic equivalent of scattered rays of sunlight just beneath a churning ocean surface.
     
  21. Doctor Worm

    Doctor Worm Romans 6:23

    Location:
    Missouri
    Weird Fishes is a standout and seems to be popular with fans. It always seems to get a big reaction at shows.
     
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  22. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I really enjoy how Ed’s backing vocals in this song have become another big audience singalong part. EEEEEEEEEDDDD
     
  23. JimSpark

    JimSpark I haven't got a title

    Doesn't the story go that most of Ed O'Brien's backup vocals are him just singing his own name? "Eeeeeeeeeeeed!" :p
     
  24. petercw2

    petercw2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    tx
    was so fortunate to find a used, but NM copy of the original 'In Rainbows' Xurbia_Xendless 45RPM box set, and without question one of the finest recording/pressings I own.
     
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  25. robbroncs

    robbroncs Forum Disgrace

    Location:
    NJ
    seeing the amount of work that goes into that song live cemented it as my favorite Radiohead song. quite possibly my favorite song of all time. every time i hear it, goosebumps are everywhere.
     
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