http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVDSdDoD4Sg
Stepping outside of the lore and myth around Radiohead, this is a damn good rock song, loud and fast and sharp and in motion, delicate and precise and industrial, with anger and love and confusion at its core, twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom. I read — and I don't care if it's true, but I feel like it might be — that they recorded this one in an old abandoned house they found; lugged in the equipment, got the echo just the way they wanted. It doesn't matter if I can hear what they heard, because I can hear them play the way they wanted to play based on what they heard, if that makes sense. I don't know what the song means or what it does, but I know how it feels, and I could dance to it.
Showing posts with label radiohead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radiohead. Show all posts
Monday, May 13, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Idioteque — Obadiah Parker (Radiohead cover)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3ivyKx2oo
This is a cover that comes along to change everything about a song — already a stretch from the usual repertoire, Radiohead's Idioteque is techno, synth-poppy, weird and paranoid and seemingly as unmelodic as a song can get, at least at first. But Obadiah Parker's band here takes the frantic rhythms and absolutely brings them to life, turning whatever Radiohead is into indie pop, orchestral and brilliant and choppy — and, above all, melodic. Despite the normal chord sequences, the normal meter, the standard drumming and piano — it comes together in a syncopated way, like birdsong, repetitive and predictable but always new, just one or two beats ahead of where you think it should be.
This is a cover that comes along to change everything about a song — already a stretch from the usual repertoire, Radiohead's Idioteque is techno, synth-poppy, weird and paranoid and seemingly as unmelodic as a song can get, at least at first. But Obadiah Parker's band here takes the frantic rhythms and absolutely brings them to life, turning whatever Radiohead is into indie pop, orchestral and brilliant and choppy — and, above all, melodic. Despite the normal chord sequences, the normal meter, the standard drumming and piano — it comes together in a syncopated way, like birdsong, repetitive and predictable but always new, just one or two beats ahead of where you think it should be.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors — Radiohead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9L5zbaQML0
MOMA, 8th grade. I've just had a music dump from my cousin Derek, full of Radiohead and Counting Crows, the albums Amnesiac and August and Everything After. My family and I are at the museum, looking at weird modern art, the kind that matches the album art; this song comes on and I am hypnotized; I wander away from my family to sit in one of the big spaces, the antechambers, looking at weird shadows and giant forms of architecture, listening to bleeps and clicks and synths and not needing to know what it all means, but realizing right then and there, on the spot, that this would be one of these stuck moments; the entire album would be tied irrevocably to the clean, clinical feeling of an art museum, perhaps the entire discography.
MOMA, 8th grade. I've just had a music dump from my cousin Derek, full of Radiohead and Counting Crows, the albums Amnesiac and August and Everything After. My family and I are at the museum, looking at weird modern art, the kind that matches the album art; this song comes on and I am hypnotized; I wander away from my family to sit in one of the big spaces, the antechambers, looking at weird shadows and giant forms of architecture, listening to bleeps and clicks and synths and not needing to know what it all means, but realizing right then and there, on the spot, that this would be one of these stuck moments; the entire album would be tied irrevocably to the clean, clinical feeling of an art museum, perhaps the entire discography.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Help I'm Alive — Metric
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoK63Bk7pgw
I won't write an essay here on the topic of gender in music — I'm not nearly well-versed enough, and, frankly, it's been done. I will say that the few female vocalists I do enjoy are generally either Jazz, Trip-Hop, or Rock'n'Roll. There are some genres where I know female vocalists exist, but I don't enjoy them (modern pop, rap, alt-rock, etc). I can probably name only a few female vocalists off the top of my head, actually... Ella Fitzgerald, Blondie, the woman from Fleetwood Mac, Metric (above), The Go! Team...
Oh my god, is that all I can list? I know the names of male singers from named bands (Thom Yorke — Radiohead, etc) but rarely the names of female singers from named bands (... — The Decemberists? I know Colin Meloy.) Oh! Imogen Heap. This still isn't that many.
Doesn't Massive Attack have female vocalists? Guest vocalists. And, uh, Morcheeba, Portishead! All the associated trip-hop acts.
Oh dear.
I won't write an essay here on the topic of gender in music — I'm not nearly well-versed enough, and, frankly, it's been done. I will say that the few female vocalists I do enjoy are generally either Jazz, Trip-Hop, or Rock'n'Roll. There are some genres where I know female vocalists exist, but I don't enjoy them (modern pop, rap, alt-rock, etc). I can probably name only a few female vocalists off the top of my head, actually... Ella Fitzgerald, Blondie, the woman from Fleetwood Mac, Metric (above), The Go! Team...
Oh my god, is that all I can list? I know the names of male singers from named bands (Thom Yorke — Radiohead, etc) but rarely the names of female singers from named bands (... — The Decemberists? I know Colin Meloy.) Oh! Imogen Heap. This still isn't that many.
Doesn't Massive Attack have female vocalists? Guest vocalists. And, uh, Morcheeba, Portishead! All the associated trip-hop acts.
Oh dear.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Testify — Xaphoon Jones (Radiohead X Kanye West)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz-8B6pl19g
These are figureheads, Kanye West and Thom Yorke; men revered for their outward appearance, a carefully cultivated pop-culture balancing act between not caring how one is perceived and very, very much caring. Kanye is more braggadocio, and Thom is more punk-rocker in attitude, but together they complement each other; the fierce, unrepentant timbre of Kanye West and the smooth-at-first but abrasive, jangly ballads of Radiohead; they build a complete, cohesive world where the two have always coexisted together. And Kanye's Touch The Sky is about death and achievement and human ambition, and Radiohead's Reckoner is about death and some of these same things; they're sister works, both products of the same mindset in modern society, written by famous, wealthy men who feel some factor of discontent.
These are figureheads, Kanye West and Thom Yorke; men revered for their outward appearance, a carefully cultivated pop-culture balancing act between not caring how one is perceived and very, very much caring. Kanye is more braggadocio, and Thom is more punk-rocker in attitude, but together they complement each other; the fierce, unrepentant timbre of Kanye West and the smooth-at-first but abrasive, jangly ballads of Radiohead; they build a complete, cohesive world where the two have always coexisted together. And Kanye's Touch The Sky is about death and achievement and human ambition, and Radiohead's Reckoner is about death and some of these same things; they're sister works, both products of the same mindset in modern society, written by famous, wealthy men who feel some factor of discontent.
Friday, March 29, 2013
House of Cards — Radiohead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ
This is a song that's been troubling me for a few weeks: every time I sit down to try and say something about it, it comes out more or less complex than I'd like. Some days it's a simple song about sex and seduction, wanting to hook up and leave it at that. Some days it's an encapsulation (thanks, CS125) of nightlife and modern society. Some days (nights, mostly) it's an anthem of sorts, asking to be reconsidered. I don't know what to make of Radiohead — I love them, I think they're great, but I can't say why. The complex musicality is impressive but not exceptional, the lyrics are poetry but don't seem like they'd be any good simply on paper; the instrumentation is unpredictable, Thom Yorke's voice is unusual, it shouldn't work. Each element shouldn't work, but together it absolutely does. I think that's the monument here, is that House of Cards is a pop song by a band that hates pop. If this were a song by old-school Phoenix, it'd be immensely popular, played on Chuck back in 2005, appearing in car commercials, played at high school parties. But it asks to be more mysterious, so we leave it alone.
This is a song that's been troubling me for a few weeks: every time I sit down to try and say something about it, it comes out more or less complex than I'd like. Some days it's a simple song about sex and seduction, wanting to hook up and leave it at that. Some days it's an encapsulation (thanks, CS125) of nightlife and modern society. Some days (nights, mostly) it's an anthem of sorts, asking to be reconsidered. I don't know what to make of Radiohead — I love them, I think they're great, but I can't say why. The complex musicality is impressive but not exceptional, the lyrics are poetry but don't seem like they'd be any good simply on paper; the instrumentation is unpredictable, Thom Yorke's voice is unusual, it shouldn't work. Each element shouldn't work, but together it absolutely does. I think that's the monument here, is that House of Cards is a pop song by a band that hates pop. If this were a song by old-school Phoenix, it'd be immensely popular, played on Chuck back in 2005, appearing in car commercials, played at high school parties. But it asks to be more mysterious, so we leave it alone.
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