transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Taxes, trust me, they sound far more complex than they actually are, and it's all thanks to TaxAct. They make it easy to do taxes online, offering step-by-step guidance so you can finish your taxes ahead of the April 15th deadline and get your maximum refund guaranteed. If you get stuck, just add Expert Assist, get unlimited help from a credentialed US-based tax expert. Visit taxact.com to learn more.

Speaker 2:
[00:29] I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly, real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem.

Speaker 3:
[00:40] Nothing in my life goes as smoothly.

Speaker 2:
[00:41] I'm waiting for the catch.

Speaker 3:
[00:43] Maybe there's no catch.

Speaker 2:
[00:44] That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

Speaker 4:
[00:47] Wow, you need to relax.

Speaker 2:
[00:48] I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?

Speaker 4:
[00:50] I think it's laminate.

Speaker 2:
[00:51] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[00:52] Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2:
[00:52] That's close enough.

Speaker 4:
[00:53] Car selling without a catch.

Speaker 5:
[00:55] Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up these may apply.

Speaker 3:
[01:06] Can I tell you the single most bizarre and reckless and potentially catastrophic stunt I've ever pulled as a professional rock critic? I should have gotten arrested for this. In 2003, while living in Oakland, California and working as the music editor for a Bay Area alt-weekly called the East Bay Express, I played the new Radiohead album, the 2003 Radiohead album Hail to the Thief, for a classroom of 5th graders, and I asked those kids to draw pictures based on what they heard and how it made them feel. Jail. Prison. I should still be in prison. Tom York's voice draws you closer. It makes you lean in toward him conspiratorially, even when he's literally singing the words, walk into the jaws of hell. It's wild, man. I am standing in a fifth grade classroom in San Leandro, California, surrounded by nine, ten, and eleven-year-olds who are not at all psyched about being forced to listen to the celebrated zeitgeist-defining English rock band Radiohead. I found a fifth grade teacher who would consent to this experiment and the kids' parents consented to letting me publish their kids' drawings. Here's the first drawing by Maddie, age 10. Okay, let's see. We got a boy and a girl taking a romantic magic carpet ride amidst pyramids and swirling clouds and, Maddie, I'm pretty sure this is a scene from the Disney movie Aladdin. I'm gonna tell you up front, I don't think every kid took the listen to Radiohead prompt super seriously. That's fine. It's fine. Thank you, Maddie. Yeah, the teacher consented, the parents consented, but the actual fifth graders notably had no say in the matter. Their teacher says, this is a direct quote. She says, this is not hip hop. I'm not asking if you like it. End quote. She ain't gotta ask. Radiohead front man and generational spokesman, Thom Yorke, is enticingly moaning the words, walk into the jaws of hell in a fifth grade classroom over glistening mournful piano. That song is called Sit Down, Stand Up, Haunting Piano Riff, phenomenal oppressive suffocating atmosphere. And the kids don't give a hoot. The kids are giggling. The kids are fidgeting. The kids immediately ask if we can listen to 50 Cent or Sean Paul instead. No! And then Thom Yorke sings The Raindrops 47 times in a row. And so one of the kids, Willie, he's 11, Willie draws a picture of a house with a sad frowning kid staring out the window at a torrential rainstorm. I will both display these drawings on video and describe them verbally for our audio-only listeners. I respect it. Incredible detail work on All the Raindrops by Willie. This unfortunately is one of the more cheerful and less concerning of the 30-odd child's drawings I collected during this misbegotten scheme. Just to establish a weather spectrum, another kid, Kaia, also 11, Kaia pointedly ignores the raindrops entirely and draws a giant sun beating down on three people trudging through a hellish, unforgiving desert landscape. One person's got a speech bubble that says, I'm tired. Another person says, I'm thirsty. And the third one says, I'm dying of heat. Not ideal, psychologically, but still, alas, most of Kaia's classmates aren't handling this as well. Dig Thom Yorke on volcanic, indignant Hail to the Thief opening track 2 Plus 2 Equals 5, busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, if the Kool-Aid Man were frowning and crying. I went into this somehow imagining that I was going to play the entire 2003 Radiohead album Hail to the Thief for a classroom of fifth graders, all 56 minutes and 35 seconds of it, and I was mistaken. The collective giggling only intensified as Thom Yorke's impassioned apocalyptic wailing intensified, and I found the kids' amused indifference to be disturbing and almost sacrilegious. Yo, this is Radiohead. This is the greatest rock band that ever lived. Dude, these guys made OK Computer, the greatest album of all time. Where are your parents? Also, please don't show these drawings to your parents. This drawing by Adam, he's ten. Let's see, we got a grim reaper with a scythe, a skull and crossbones, multiple anguished ghosts, an alien lizard guy, a cactus, a lot of desert imagery happening, and also for emotional variety, a balloon, a sunlit mountain range, a pipe organ, and a thing of McDonald's fries. Looks like Adam's learned a valuable lesson today about corporatization. We got two songs in To Hail to the Thief and Then Bailed. Track three on that record is an aching, glacial, exquisitely somnolent piano ballad called Sail to the Moon. And I thought these kids are either gonna fall asleep or riot. And I panicked and I audible-ed and I threw on everything in its right place. Mesmerizing, amniotic opening track on Landmark 2000 Radiohead classic Kid A. Oh, come on, certainly these young punks know Kid A. The album that redefined rock and roll for a grim new century. Don't you read, Pitchfork. Meanwhile, Hannah is ten years old. And, hmm, Hannah draws a stick figure preparing to leap off a mountain while saying, I hate my life. Flanked by a giant frowning sun and the grim reaper holding a blood-dripping scythe and saying, yes. Joined here by the devil with 666 written over his head. The devil's also saying yes to encourage the stick figure's immanence suicide. There is a second falling stick figure in mid-air, mid-suicide, halfway down the mountain, and a dead stick figure crushed into the ground below next to a fourth stick figure, who I believe just shot himself while standing beside a gravestone and beneath a torrential rain cloud. Great detail work on these raindrops as well. I'm looking at this drawing back at my desk afterward and I'm like, oh no. And then I play the children the national anthem. Track three off Kid A, because I figure the kids will really respond to the malevolent, bass-heavy, krautrock groove and the skronking free jazz horns. Regrettably, the kids responded. Okay, this picture, we got four dead stick figures, two of them hanging, and a fifth dying stick figure who is holding, I think it's a knife, it's a knife for an arrow or a machete. The devil, I presume, is once again lurking in the bottom right and saying, stay with me, ha ha ha. While in the upper right corner are the words, you can't stay here with an arrow pointing to the gateway to hell. I presume this means that you have to go into hell and not just stand outside the gateway to hell. Thom Yorke did sing the words, walk into the jaws of hell verbatim. Sorry, this picture was drawn by Hannah, age 10, and hold on a second. I am just now realizing, 20 plus years later, that unless there are two 10-year-olds in this class named Hannah with identical handwriting, the same Hannah drew both these last two pictures featuring two devils and eight dead or dying stick figures total. Well, at least she's enthusiastic. I better put on a more cheerful Radiohead song. And then I play them Paranoid Android. Yo, what? Jail, prison, what? Hang the DJ, Paranoid Android, electrifying multi-suite prog rock guitar god freak out lead single off 1997's OK Computer, the aforementioned greatest album of all time. Fifth graders, kicking, screaming Gucci little piggy. OK, brace yourselves. Here's the drawing that still haunts me and condemns me. Jeffrey with a J, age nine, nine years old. OK, we got five dead stick figures here, one hanged, one stabbed in the heart, one pointing a gun at his own head, one with a hypodermic needle sticking out of his hand, and one drowned and or crushed at the bottom of a waterfall. That's a new one. Yet another grim reaper with a bleeding scythe, yet more graves with RIP on the gravestones, yet another gateway to hell. This one labeled Road to Hell, with a short line of people approaching the road to hell, next to a sign reading, Population 9999999999999. And in the middle of the page, a free suicides booth. A lemonade stand style booth with a sign reading, Free suicides, with a much longer line of tiny people waiting for their free suicides. And I'm sitting there looking at this picture like, Oh, shit. I suspect we did not get that far into the song Paranoid Android in this classroom on that day, and thus the kids were cruelly denied the life-changing experience of hearing Thom Yorke moaning, The panic, the vomit, the panic, the vomit, amidst a hypnotic, demoralizing, reverse celestial acoustic guitar tailspin. We probably bailed during the first freak out guitar solo. As the fifth graders are drawing, I wander around the classroom looking at the stuff on the walls, all their other remarkably more upbeat and appropriate drawings. And I also read the posted official class rules for Room 14, which include, don't fidget, be helpful, and keep negative ideas to yourself. Thom Yorke would not thrive in this environment. Meanwhile, Daniel, who is 10 years old, Daniel drew a 1,000-foot ice cream cone, posed next to a smiling, delighted, one-foot-tall person for scale. Fantastic. No notes. Like all of his former classmates, Daniel's in his 30s now, and even so, I hope he's doing great. Then I played the kids High and Dry, a graceful, buoyant, mercifully accessible, melodically generous, thousand foot ice cream cone of a tune from Radiohead's Maximum Guitar God second album released in 1995 and called The Bends. Playing High and Dry is the first remotely sane and defensible decision I've made this whole time. The kids liked this one. The kids liked this one and only this one. Some of these kids were possibly not even born yet, back in 1993, when Radiohead released their debut album, Pablo Honey. But to give them a taste of how it all started, I regaled the class with an encouraging song called Anyone Can Play Guitar. Listen to how youthful and carefree Thom Yorke sounds. Here's a correspondingly simple and pleasant and carefree drawing for you. Earl W., age 10. All right. All right, Earl has drawn a lush, breathtaking landscape of towering, beautiful mountain peaks. And what are these, puffy clouds? Or verdant forests? Or both or neither? But this picture deftly conveys the sense of a colossal and inviting and awfully soothing environments, an entire planet to explore and enjoy. If you squint, you can almost convince yourself Earl is deliberately channeling the mountains on the Kid A album cover. And we got a tiny little Pokemon type dude, just chilling near the bottom right of this drawing. Totally at peace, just taking in all the majesty. And the little Pokemon type dude's got a little speech bubble that says, Mommy, please come help. Okay, time to wrap this up. I am intent, apparently, on steering these bored, indifferent, traumatized fifth graders back toward the new Radiohead album. And so our program today concludes with Sail to the Moon, the aching, glacial, exquisitely somnolent piano ballad I wisely avoided earlier. I was gonna close with Creep, the apocryl grandiose guitar god's self-loathing national anthem off Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey. But I realized just in time that Creep has, like, 50-pound swear words in it. That would have gotten me kicked the fuck out of this elementary school. And rightly so. Anyway, the teacher announces that Sail to the Moon will be the last song, and everyone cheers. 30-odd fifth graders all go, yes! A few pump their fists. My work here is done. So, Sail to the Moon. Great closer. That's a joke. Given all the glacial aching in that song, it takes Thom Yorke quite a while to sing all those words. But I'd never notice that Thom sings, Maybe you'll be presidents, and no right from wrong. And Thom could very well be singing directly to these fifth graders. He could be addressing the youths in both a vaguely encouraging and specifically bitterly political sort of way. Let's not get into it. Let's focus on Thom Yorke sitting at the piano, crooning directly to the youth that apparently disdains him. Here's the last drawing I'll show you. And this one also still haunts me and still startles me with its perceptiveness. Chris is 10 years old and Chris draws a lone figure sitting in a piano, surrounded by a huge and truly oppressive feeling amount of white space, especially behind the piano. This white space is broken up only by a crowd, an ominous crowd of mostly faceless ovals staring at the piano player on stage. You can just totally tell they're all staring. This picture is one third total blankness, one third lone anguished seeming figure at the piano, one third mostly faceless mob. I've written and or spoken tens of thousands of words about Radiohead in my illustrious career, but I ain't never captured Thom Yorke's essence the way Chris just did. There is nearly always a gorgeous, morose, oppressed, full band raging or elegantly moaning behind Thom Yorke. He's got friends, he's got bandmates, he's got co-conspirators, he's got backup. But he still always sounds so alone to me, or at least he does now. So that's what I learned today. What did the kids learn today? Fuck all, if you don't mind my saying. Excuse me, my apologies for not keeping my negative thoughts to myself. They learned saw it all, as the English might say. Don't let weird rock critics into our classroom. That's what these kids learned. Shout out the parents of all these traumatized children for not finding me and beating me to death. Speaking to you now, as a father of children, I would not consent to this experiment. No, sir, I would not sanction this buffoonery. Beat it, blog boy. Stay away from my family. Go get your content elsewhere. Why did I do this? Well for one thing, yeah, I needed content. I had a weekly column, man. I had to feed the beast to use a journalism term I learned at the East Bay Express. But I also did genuinely wonder if the youth were into Radiohead. Anecdotally, it turns out that they ain't, or they weren't. And this shocked and dismayed me back in 2003. And then, four years later, in 2007, all these kids are what, 13 or 14 or 15 now. They're teenagers. They're the increasingly sullen youth. And Radiohead's got another new album, and this one's free on the internet, if you want. And I do wonder if any of those kids listened to this new record and remembered that day I polluted their fifth-grade classroom. And I wonder if any of those kids heard this new, aching, glacial, exquisitely somnolent, extra-majestic Radiohead piano ballad and thought to themselves, not this shit again. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 41st episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s, and this week we are discussing All I Need by Radiohead from their 2007 album In Rainbows, which is the third best Radiohead album. Okay, Computer's number one, The Benz is number two. I will be taking no questions at this time because it is time for an advert.

Speaker 4:
[22:25] Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? ZepBound Terzepotide may be able to help. ZepBound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. ZepBound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5 or 15 milligram injection. ZepBound contains terzepotide and should not be used with other terzepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if ZepBound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZepBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking ZepBound with a sulfonyluria or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounds.lily.com.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
[25:15] Apparently, there is often no ad after I say that it's time for the ad break. I don't know whether to be honored or offended by this lack of ads. Why am I exerting all this effort coming up with amusing ways to announce the ad break if there's no fucking ad during the ad break? It's either I'm too cool for capitalism or not cool enough. This strikes me as a very Radiohead problem. We did a Radiohead episode already, if I recall correctly, back when we were doing the 90s. Radiohead, first formed in Oxfordshire, England back in 1985, and permanently consisting of Thom Yorke on lead vocals and guitar and piano, etc., Johnny Greenwood on guitar super, etc., Ed O'Brien on guitar mostly, Colin Greenwood, Johnny's older brother, Colin on bass mostly, and Phil Selway on drums mostly. We did an episode on Creep, of course, off Radiohead's 1993 debut album, Pablo Honey. I myself was 15 when Pablo Honey came out, and so we did basically a whole episode about how I responded to Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood's guitar noise in Creep, the same way Beavis did. Beavis, co-star of the sublime Pure Riles, Like Ice Defining MTV animated program, Beavis and Butt-Head, which likewise debuted in 1993. Beavis still speaks for me on the topic of Creep, when Beavis says, Yes, yes, Rock, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[27:10] Nah, blah, blah, blah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[27:14] My thoughts exactly, my verbalized words, exactly. As a chowderhead teenager, all through high school, my internal and external monologue was basically, nar, nar, nar, girls, girls, girls, girls, nar, nar, nar, nar, and that monologue was frequently drowned out by, and also righteously fueled by, various additional loud, raucous, discordant, excellent guitar noises generated by the Oxfordshire Rock Band Radiohead. Their second and second best album comes out in 1995 and is called The Bends. Their third album, OK Computer, comes out in 1997, and is immediately my favorite album of all time, and maybe it still is. Who can say? We have time for exactly one clip from The Bends and OK Computer, two of my favorite albums ever made by anybody. So let's choose wisely. I see we've chosen the song Just, Off the Bends, as a means of illustrating that I've played hundreds of hours of air guitar to those first three Radiohead albums. My air guitar skills are legendary. If I ever competed in the air guitar championships or whatever, my signature song would be Just, and I would secure my victory during that part of Just by lifting my air guitar over my head and flipping it around and pushing it into my air amplifier, my air Marshall stack and going for 12 seconds. I tried to play actual electric guitar as a teenager, but I fared poorly. Remember those shreds videos from back when the internet was still young and cool and fun? Those videos where this genius guitar player guy would take real live footage of Eddie Van Halen or whoever shredding on stage and then the guy would dub hyper realistic, terrible guitar playing over it. A lot of those got vaporized, but the ones you can still find are postmodern masterpieces. The shreds videos are a beautiful illustration of the vast gulf between how an amateur guitar player perceives oneself and how an amateur guitar player actually sounds. That's Slash from Guns N Roses. That's the Slash Shreds video, which made me cry laughing this morning. The faint, polite applause is really something. Radiohead made me think I could play guitar, and not just because they had a song called Anyone Can Play Guitar. Even before they became my favorite band, Radiohead made me think guitar god rock music would rain forever, and the electric guitar would rain forever. And certainly the electric guitar would rain forever in this band. Because if you could play rad shit like this all the time, why would you ever want to do anything else? That's from Paranoid Android, the multi-suite prog rock guitar god freak out lead single off OK Computer, my favorite album ever made, maybe. We had time for two clips from two of my favorite albums ever made by anybody. We made time. Okay. That was 90s Radiohead, basically. So October 2000, I'm at an off-campus midwestern college party, standard college party, replacement level college party. No offense. Bunch of people farting around in an off-campus house drinking beer. Lovely. Awesome. I myself, I believe I was drinking Woodchuck, the hard cider, the apple juice of beers. Yeah, I've consumed 1.5 to 2.5 Woodchucks, and I keenly observe that this house has a back bedroom, and even with the door shut, there is clearly incredibly loud wall and floor and teeth rattling music blaring in this bedroom. Occasionally, I see dudes shuffling in or shuffling out. So I bumble on over there. I open the door. I stick my head in. I assess. Near total darkness. No lamps or overhead lights on. Ten to twelve people. All dudes. And the dudes are all sitting politely and silently. They're sitting in chairs or non-erotically sitting on the bed or on the floor. And the dudes are all facing the stereo against one wall. And the stereo is cranked up ridiculously loud and emitting the only light in the room. And there's another dude standing directly in front of the stereo, facing it, bathed in its nauseating digital glow. And I know this guy, a friend of mine named Chaz. I worked at the student newspaper with Chaz. Great guy. Everyone liked Chaz and Chaz liked stuff. Right? He had enthusiasm. No irony or cool guy hesitation. If Chaz likes a band or a movie or whatever, he wants you to know about it so you'll like it too. Infectious enthusiasm. And so now I'm standing in this doorway watching a dozen guys, I don't know, watching Chaz as he leans in and presses his forehead against the incredibly loud stereo, as though attempting to physically bond with it. And now we are one in everlasting peace. His eyes are closed. His mouth is slightly open. The stereo is physically imprinting onto his forehead and his whole face is a mask of complete rapture and total concentration. And I just think, oh wow. Kid A! The fourth Radiohead album is released in October 2000 and is called Kid A. This song is called Idiotech. It is the sound of rock and roll dying. Or more accurately, it is the sound of rock and roll having died. It is the sound of the last dead rock and roll band encased in a solid block of ice like a wooly mammoth. Radiohead are into harsh but beautiful but really harsh electronic music. Now, they're into the Warp Records labeled broadly and Apex Twins specifically. They're sampling experimental 70s synthesizer tunes. They're channeling Crout Rock and 20th Century Classical and Free Jazz. They are pushing fans of yes, yes, rock, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, guitar god rock and roll music so far out of our comfort zones that we've all tumbled off a cliff like a herd of buffalo. I remember, I can also summon a suspiciously detailed vision of me as I sat alone on the floor of my own apartment and I ceremoniously unwrapped the Kid A jewel case and I delicately slid the CD into the mouth of my stereo like it was the body of Christ and I reverently hit play and I listened to this record for the very first time and I thought well this is what music is now. And logically, it's an absurd exaggeration, but it felt like the 21st century only began right that second in October 2000, the first time I heard the hypnotic and enveloping and emphatically guitar-free refrain of everything in its right place. I loved Kid A. Of course I did. I still love it. Of course I do. Fourth or maybe fifth best Radiohead album, A Moon-Shaped Pool really sneaks up on you. I've always loved the song The National Anthem, right? This is the Cannes song, the Charles Mingus song, the song with the rad droning bassline that Thom Yorke played himself, and the horn section that Johnny Greenwood and Thom Yorke conducted themselves by jumping up and down. And Thom jumped up and down so vigorously that he broke his foot. I've especially always loved two little micro-moments in the National Anthem, one of which I apparently hallucinated. The National Anthem micro-moment I love that actually exists is the slick little ascending bass fill right here. Right after the line, everyone is so near, and halfway through the line, everyone has got the fear. The little extra do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do flourish right there just kills me. Of course, I grasp the innovation and sophistication of kid A, or I tried to, but I can never stop myself from gravitating toward the tiny deviations, the rare, refreshing human element, the thunderbolts of something approaching playfulness. My other favorite micro moment on the national anthem is at the very end, when all the horns are scronking and all the horn players take a huge gasping audible breath between scronks. There is, in fact, no huge gasping audible breath taken by all the horn players between scrunks on the national anthem. I apparently hallucinated that for years, for decades. If you'd asked me a month ago about my favorite span of 10 seconds on Kid A, I would have rambled on about that huge gasping audible breath and how it represented the frail humanity struggling to emerge from within the rigid glacial mechanized defiant inhumanity of Kid A. I would have once again been mistaken. I don't think I ever knew Kid A or loved Kid A as much as everyone else seemed to. It made me feel like I'd betrayed my favorite band. The Pitchfork Review, the famous Perfect 10 Pitchfork Review, written by Brent DiCrescenzo where he says, comparing this to other albums is like comparing aquarium to blue construction paper. He also says, Kid A makes rock and roll childish. Famous review, crucial in Radiohead lore, even more crucial in Pitchfork lore. I respect that Kid A is among the most lavishly praised and the most painstakingly analyzed pieces of music in my lifetime. Critic and author and friend of the show, Steven Hayden, he published a splendid book in 2020 called, This Isn't Happening, Radiohead's Kid A and the Beginning of the 21st Century. See, he agrees with me on the 21st century thing. Although my favorite part of Steve's book is when he politely points out that Lincoln Park's debut album, Hybrid Theory, also came out in October 2000 and sold like 12 times as many copies as Kid A. It is arguably more influential. Steve's book, of course, also reminds me of my favorite song on Kid A, which is called How to Disappear Completely. And it was always a little embarrassing to me given how cool, how ambitious, how experimental, how futuristic Kid A was, that I ultimately preferred the comforting and distinctly retro feeling song where Thom Yorke croons sulcally over an acoustic guitar. And sure, How to Disappear Completely is also the song, where guitar god Johnny Greenwood plays the en-de-martino, a bizarre French multi-part electronic music instrument invented in 1928, that looks like a cross between a theremin, a keyboard, and the hat the pope wears. I would like to know what the pope hat is adding to the equation with this device, musically. Harvilla at gmail.com. Radiohead are trying new weird stuff even when they're conforming to my outdated expectations for them. But How to Disappear completely crystallizes for me that there is a harsh divide between Kid A, the album I listen to, and Kid A, the album I read about. Dig the wild crescendo here, the strings wailing as Thom Yorke's crooning intensifies. Do you know the book White Noise? The 1985 Don DeLillo novel? There's a famous scene in White Noise where two guys, two college professors, they go visit the most photographed barn in America. It's just a barn way out in the countryside, and driving there, first you see a series of signs on the roadside at regular intervals, and they all say, the most photographed barn in America. Then there's the barn, just a normal, reasonably picturesque, replacement level barn, and there's tons of tourists and photographers and vendors, and they're all taking pictures of the barn or selling pictures of the barn. One of the professor says, no one sees the barn. He says, once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn. He says, we're not here to capture an image. We're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it? An accumulation of nameless energies. Naturally, my favorite part of How to Disappear Completely is Thom Yorke's high note right here. Very important to me, very emo for me, very retro for me. Meanwhile, the dude's still talking about the most photographed barn in America. He says, Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision, a religious experience in a way, like all tourism. He says, They are taking pictures of taking pictures. White Noise came out in 1985, 25 years before Instagram. Don DeLillo knows Ball. Don DeLillo knew Ball before Ball was even invented. And finally, the guy says, What was the barn like before it was photographed? What did it look like? How is it different from other barns? How is it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here. We're now. And then the next line of the book is, He seemed immensely pleased by this. Kid A to me is the most photographed barn in America. I am not the first rock critic to compare a piece of pop music to the most photographed barn in America, but I am the most recent. And I was honestly relieved in May 2001 to have something else to listen to and read about. The fifth Radiohead album is released in May 2001 and is called Amnesiac. It's better than The King of Limbs and maybe better than Pablo Honey, though I'd have to think about it. This is the first song. It is called Packed Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box. No guitars in sight, though this is no longer news to anyone, even me. I think about the first four lines of this song a lot. After years of waiting, nothing changed. As your life flashed before your eyes, you realized. The realization is not provided. Instead, a chorus is provided, in which Thom Yorke addresses anyone who is considering asking him what the realization was. Got it, by 2001, Thom Yorke has long been wildly destabilized by fame. Destabilized by critical adulation, destabilized by dopey journalists asking dopey questions, all of which is making Thom an increasingly unreasonable man. Amnesiac, coming less than a year after Kid A, is naturally regarded as a sequel, as a continuation, as functionally the second half of a double album. And with Amnesiac, instinctively, I filter out all the frigidity and experimentation and on-de-martino Pope hat action, and I laser focus on Thom Yorke's vocals, on his singular combination of yearning and exasperation. He sounds like he wants to be rescued, and also, he very much wants everyone to get off his case. White space and faceless crowd. He sounds like getting off his case is the only way to rescue him. I think about the first two lines of the song Knives Out a lot. The subtle, gloomy acoustic guitar and electric guitar intertwined there. Very comforting to me. Yes, but I want you to know the yearning for connection Thom Yorke implies there, the hand he is graciously reaching out to me. And yet, the full line is I want you to know he's not coming back. Thom is not talking here about the Thom Yorke who sang Fake Plastic Trees in 1995. That's not who's not coming back on Knives Out. But forgive me if I thought otherwise. This song is called Pyramid Song, and the harmony there, the second Thom Yorke who emerges to emphasize the words, swam with me. That harmony meant a lot to me in 2001. Pyramid Song is a massive, gorgeous, super emo piano ballad, and that particular format will take on increased importance as Radiohead rumbles on. Radiohead never totally abandoned rock, never totally abandoned guitars, but the maximum teenage catharsis I used to derive from Radiohead's Guitar God songs, Creep, Just, My Iron Lung, Paranoid Android, Palo Alto, here in the grim 21st century, we get way less of that. But we do get some Guitar God catharsis. Now, don't we? This song is called There There, off Radiohead's sixth album, released in 2003 and called Hail to the Thief. The line, just cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there, was very important to me in 2003, and almost certainly did not mean whatever I thought it meant. I don't even know what I thought it meant. My sullen youth. There you go. Just cause I still feel my sullen youth doesn't mean. Okay, but once again, my favorite part of There There is the thunderbolt of playfulness, and the guitar.

Speaker 2:
[50:28] The little ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.

Speaker 3:
[50:30] Somebody sneaks in here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think I played They're There for the fifth graders. They might have loved They're There. Oh well, Hail to the Thief is a great album, but it's the very first Radiohead album that I never tried to convince myself was my favorite. You know what I mean? The Benz is way better than Pablo, honey. OK Computer is way better than anything. Kid A arrives as this rapturous, world-changing cosmic event. Amnesiac drafts off Kid A, and saying that you like Amnesiac better is a fun way to get kicked out of parties. Whereas Hail to the Thief, for all its copious, glacial, aching beauty and righteous, timely anger, this struck me as just another Radiohead album. And the just another album phase happens to literally every rock band, right? Even the all-timers. No band ever gets better and more important on every single subsequent new album forever. Nobody. Harvilla at gmail.com. So what happens to Radiohead in 2007 is shocking for various confounding and gratifying reasons. The seventh Radiohead album is released in October 2007 and is called In Rainbows. The first song is called 15 Step, and there is a bounce in the step of 15 Step. Yes? Or at least a relative buoyancy. As with lots of Radiohead songs, the rhythm is quite odd. 15 Step is in five, four time, probably. Let's not get into it. But to my mind, unlike lots of Radiohead songs, the rhythm is also playful. I get the uncommon urge to clap along even if I cannot quite grasp the rhythm. And the playfulness intensifies. Dig how jaunty Thom Yorke sounds when he sings the words, used to be all right, what happened, et cetera, et cetera. And then a funky little bass guy jauntily answers his question. There is also, intriguingly, an extra jaunty choir of children who all go, yay, after Thom sings the line, fads for whatever. I think that's what Thom says here. Fads for whatever. Maybe just ask the children what he says. So there's an immediate kaleidoscopic lightness and brightness to In Rainbows. A group of children go, yay! And then Thom Yorke sings fifteen steps and then a sheer drop. But he doesn't sound like he's standing on top of a mountain flanked by a frowning sun and a grim reaper with a blood dripping scythe. Meanwhile, in October 2007 anyway, track one off In Rainbows is somehow not really anyone's first impression of In Rainbows. Your first impression is how this album is released. It is not quite surprise released like that Beyonce album later, but it's close via Radiohead's website, via a Johnny Greenwood blog post. See, he can do anything. We get an unconventionally brisk 10 day warning that In Rainbows is coming. More importantly, In Rainbows is first released on the internet as a pay what you want mp3 download. Pay what you want means free if that's what you want. You could also buy a mail order $80 deluxe CD and vinyl version with bonus tracks and cool artwork, et cetera, et cetera, or you could not do that. Instead, you could listen to Radiohead play dope, jaunty, semi-retro feeling guitar god jams for the low, low price of free 99. That's track two on In Rainbows. It's called Body Snatchers, and the off-kilter but still palpable exuberance here, the decidedly retro feeling that Radiohead have caught hold of a cool, dexterous little guitar riff here, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, and the fellas sound like they're genuinely enjoying themselves. That warm, sunny feeling is deftly undercut by the lyrics to Body Snatchers. I'd frankly never noticed before that Thom just sang the words, You killed the sound, removed backbone, a pale imitation, with the edges sawn off. That's what Thom is singing, but Thom doesn't sound like he's singing that. You get me? Now feels like a good time to mention that In Rainbows launched without any official cover art. And so the journalist Sam Malkovich worked up an unofficial In Rainbows cover in which Thom Yorke's face is photoshopped onto the body of a dancing leprechaun. This was published in The Stranger, Seattle's Alt Weekly. The Thom Yorke leprechaun cover is objectively rude but still very funny to me, and I still regard it as the canonical In Rainbows album cover. Don't tell Thom I said that. Thank you. It takes him an awfully long time to say it, but also Thom Yorke doesn't sound like he just sang the words, you'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking. Does it? He hits that quavering cathartic high note like he's conveying a far more encouraging and romantic sentiment. Yes, that's track three on In Rainbows. It's called Nude. Not my favorite slow burn Radiohead ballad, but we're off to a strong start, an unexpectedly lively start. So at first, in October 2007, it seems to me that all the conversation about this new Radiohead album is about the pay what you want aspect, the free album from a famous band aspect, the potentially revolutionary delivery system, the Internet of it all. The music is cool, but the music is secondary. The great New York Times critic, John Perales, wrote about In Rainbows in December 2007, and John says, quote, 16 years and seven albums into the career that has made Radiohead the most widely pondered band in rock, it is taking chances with its commerce as well as its art. For the beleaguered recording business, Radiohead have put in motion the most audacious experiment in years. End quote. The music industry, as you may recall, is in freefall throughout the 2000s. The odds. Napster decimates everything. CD sales, physical sales absolutely crater. The iTunes MP3 Store helps, but piracy is still rampant throughout the decade. You know what else happens in October 2007? Oink gets shut down. Oink, the famous, infamous torrent site, where you could get tons and tons of music for free. I never used it, obviously. I just heard about people who did and were sad when Oink shut down. Those people were sad. And we're nowhere near our current glorious peak streaming era. Right? So in 2007, free digital album from Radiohead is a splendid and novel and audacious, and yeah, potentially revolutionary development. Maybe every band will adopt the pay what you want model now. Maybe this is the future of rock, et cetera, et cetera. Nine Inch Nails started messing around with that name your price model also. But Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are super famous, long running, and at least previously major label bands. You got to be pretty huge with a rabid and enormous fan base to successfully conduct such an audacious experiment. My fear at the time was that all the free album stuff would overshadow In Rainbows itself. We'd all remember the music business implications far more than we'd remember the songs. What I did not immediately realize is that In Rainbows features three of my all-time favorite Radiohead songs. The first truly great in Rainbow song is called Weird Fishes slash Arpeggi, and the harmony there, the second Thom Yorke who emerges to sing way out in the deeper background there, that harmony meant a lot to me in 2007. This part meant a lot to me also, when suddenly Thom Yorke is floating, or maybe free-falling, amid a colossal and soothing landscape towering beautiful mountain peaks and puffy clouds and verdant forests, and what he's maybe thinking is, mommy, please come help. In that moment, in this whole song, is potentially life-changing on headphones. And furthermore, marks the fourth or fifth time in a 15-year span that a Radiohead song has changed my life. But the best In Rainbows songs also proved themselves to be potentially life-changing live. In summer 2008, Radiohead headlined this New York City area music festival called All Points West. One of New York's various attempts to start its own Coachella. And Radiohead began their headlining set with the In Rainbows song, Reckoner. And I'll never forget it as long as I live. An unexpected opening song to a big concert can for sure permanently change your life. You're braced for the first song on their new record or whatever, and certainly the opener will be something huge and bombastic and triumphant, but sometimes, instead, you get something 200% quieter and gentler that inevitably hits you 200 times harder. Like seriously, I will never forget standing amid 30,000 or so fellow Radiohead fans and feeling like I was alone, while Thom Yorke took his sweet time singing the words, Because We Separate, Like Ripples on a Blank Shore. And this time, yeah, it totally feels like he's singing that. I have just made an absolutely humiliating discovery. I cannot believe this. I just read my initial review of In Rainbows, published in the Village Voice in October 2007, right when the record came out. And my immediate reaction is that In Rainbows is a pretty good Radiohead album that will nonetheless be completely overshadowed by the rollout, by the pay what you want scheme. I describe all the immediate discourse around In Rainbows as an ocean of noise threatening to capsize the record itself. And then, and then I describe In Rainbows as the most blogged about barn in America. God damn it. Fucking hell, Rob, I completely forgot I did that. How many times have I done the whole white noise, most photographed barn in America shtick? I'm hoping just twice, including just now, but sheesh. How about I shock the world and read another book? The best song on In Rainbows is called All I Need. And all I need is one of my absolute favorite slow burn Radiohead ballads, right up there with Let Down or Fake Plastic Trees, or How to Disappear Completely or Pyramid Song. And in part, I think that's because even when you're listening to this song for the very first time, you can sense the huge cathartic climactic Arena Rock Zenith coming long before it arrives. It is the eerie and discomforting unhurriedness of All I Need for me. It takes Thom Yorke an awfully long time to sing the words, I'm the next act waiting in the wings. I'm an animal trapped in your hot car, which you wouldn't call romantic, these lyrics. But maybe he would. But it's also all the slow motion blankness swirling around those ostensibly romantic words. It's the skipping an exceedingly dry drumbeat. It is the caustically unromantic line, I only stay with you because there are no others. It is also the glockenspiel. Dig the Glockenspiel. Going bong bing, bong bing. It's 2007. OK Computer is already 10 years old. In Rainbows is the fourth new Radiohead album since then, and ain't nobody looking to these guys to be yeah yeah rock guitar gods anymore. The band has repeatedly and successfully conveyed their disinterest in that sort of thing. But what if you were too young to ever remember them being yeah yeah rock guitar gods at all? All I Need gives me an exhilarating, nostalgic feeling. Right? A 90s feeling, a vintage guitar god Radiohead feeling, just by other means, other fancier instruments. What the whole In Rainbows album gave much younger people, kids in elementary school in the 2000s, say, it gave them the same exhilaration, but it's not nostalgic. It's not retro. They're here. They're now. Stephen Haydn in his book on Kid A. Stephen says, quote, This is based purely on anecdotal evidence, but it has been so overwhelmingly true in my experience that I'm inclined to take it as broadly true. In Rainbows is the consensus choice for best Radiohead album. This is especially true for Millennials and Generation Z, who no doubt flocked to In Rainbows because it was the first Radiohead album that was theirs. They were too young to scour the internet for illegal downloads of Kid A back in 2000, and the Bends and OK Computer already sounded 290s by the mid aughts. But In Rainbows, as music and as a moment, hit that generation just right, end quote. So far as All I Need is concerned, here comes the moment. And the moment comes via piano and glockenspiel, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, and this creeping, rising symphonic assault engineered by our old friend Johnny Greenwood. In that New York Times article, it says, For all I need, Mr. Greenwood said, he wanted to recapture the white noise generated by a band playing loudly in a room when all this chaos kicks up. That sound never materializes in the more analytical confines of a studio. His solution was to have a string section and his own overdubbed violas sustaining every note of the scale, blanketing the frequencies. End quote. This does not sound romantic. That verbal description does not sound romantic. The resulting musical sensation does not feel romantic. Unless maybe it does. Unless maybe it is romantic. Either way, this is the part of All I Need that raises all the hair on the back of my neck all the time. I go back and forth on whether Thom Yorke is singing, it's all wrong, it's all wrong, it's all wrong. Or if he's singing, it's all right, it's all right, it's all right, there. Or maybe he goes back and forth between singing, it's all right, and it's all wrong. Either way is fine. Both are fine. It's all wrong, but it's all right is basically the Radiohead creed. If All I Need had existed back in 2003, and I'd played it for that room full of fifth graders as part of my content gathering terror campaign, I don't think those kids would have dug it back then. But yeah, those kids as teenagers now in 2007, statistically a few of them fell hard for In Rainbows, I bet. That's beautiful. I promise to read another book. I promise. But those kids just had to see the barn for themselves. We are so thrilled and honored to be joined today by Cole Cuchna, host of the phenomenal beloved podcast, Dissect. Check out the new season of Dissect now focusing on Daft Punk. Cole is also responsible pretty much every piece of gear I use now to video podcasts I bought because Cole told me to, and then he sat on Zoom calls and told me how to set it up very patiently. So thanks for that, Cole, and also thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 2:
[71:51] You look great. I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 3:
[71:54] Thank you. It's this waffle light. This is the one that turned the whole thing around for me. You've done, I think it's your 14th full season of Dissect, you're on right now, and you did a full season on In Rainbows. To date, I think it's the only rock album you've ever done. Ordinarily, it's Kendrick Lamar, Kanye or Tyler, the creator of Beyoncé, etc. What made Radiohead the first rock band deserving of the Dissect treatment and what made In Rainbows the right Radiohead album?

Speaker 2:
[72:27] Radiohead is my favorite band ever, so I think it starts there. But honestly, if there's any band, particularly a contemporary band that could undergo the scrutiny and analysis that I put these albums under, I think Radiohead is the perfect candidate. To me, they're similar to Kendrick Lamar in terms of just the depth of their music in a different way, but the depth of their music is just endlessly fascinating, both musically, philosophically, intellectually. It has every little nuance that I'm looking to fill my show with. For me, it was a no-brainer. It was mostly about when is the right moment to pivot for the show because traditionally, we focus on hip-hop and there's reasons for that, but Radiohead is just, it was a one for me and it worked out because I found an audience with the season, and despite the pivot, it worked out well. Then In Rainbows, my favorite album by Radiohead is Kid A. I would say that's a personal favorite. When I was trying to figure out what was best for the show, I considered a number of things in terms of, which I think we're going to talk about, like In Rainbows legacy being really interesting and connecting with a different generation, then you and I are basically around the same generation. But In Rainbows seems to have just an unexplainable connection to younger people that I would think maybe a kid A and OK Computer would have had, but it turned out to be In Rainbows. That was one thing. Then I don't know if we're going to talk about it, but In Rainbows sits perfectly in the center of their catalog, and I think it represents the entire spectrum of what Radiohead's legacy is in one album. So if you're trying to explain the band through one album, I think this is a great way to do it because it incorporates those vulnerability, and the softness, and the lack of testosterone of their late catalog, but it still has a lot of the elements of the early catalog that we love. So it's kind of this beautiful synthesis of both sides of their career. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[74:39] And what do you talk about, say, Kendrick Lamar, you talk about how sophisticated and complex and deep it is, but also somehow how accessible it is. It's not so sophisticated and complex that you can't understand it, or grasp it, or connect with it emotionally. And I think that does apply to Radiohead as well. What do you think this band's secret is? They can be so wild and experimental and almost difficult sometimes, but they're still hugely popular, and people are still really into it and really connecting with it.

Speaker 2:
[75:10] Yeah. I'm really fascinated exactly with this kind of musical intersection, where you have artists like Kendrick, Radiohead. I think about someone like The Beatles had a lot of this too, where they do get experimental, conceptually really complex, and yet they retain this accessibility that is, I think is one of the hardest things to pull off in music, is to be as experimental as some of these acts are, and as conceptual as they are, yet maintain that accessibility. It's not really anything I could explain, to be honest. Sometimes I feel like Thom Yorke can't write a bad melody if you try, and I think a lot of what glues a lot of the experimentation of Radiohead specifically, is Thom's voice, and because a lot of times it's like this angel singing over what could sound very dark or dissonant, and somehow it brings it all together. It's the same way I think about Kurt Cobain had the same kind of quality where he could sing a phrase as vulgar as, write me, yet it's like something we'll end up singing over and over and ahead because it's so damn catchy somehow.

Speaker 3:
[76:28] Right.

Speaker 2:
[76:28] And there's just this weird contrast of like, I don't know, like some people just have a knack for these melodies that just that kind of tie everything together. I think Thom Yorke has some of that.

Speaker 3:
[76:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[76:41] I don't know, but it's definitely something like it's like really hard to explain that balance, I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[76:47] I think it's a perfect way to put it is Thom Yorke couldn't write a bad melody if he tried, but he keeps trying. Something that's really interesting to me is they're trying to push you away. They're trying to get as far away from creep and then as far away from okay computer as they can. They're trying to make you uncomfortable and not alienate you to the point where you're not listening but it's supposed to be difficult and challenging and almost not fun at first to try and absorb it. But somehow, something about his voice, his melodies, I don't know what it is, like it still draws you in even as it's explicitly trying to push you away. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2:
[77:23] Yeah, and it's also I think at the counterbalance of Tom and Johnny mixed with the other guys, which I think looking at the solo music of the other three band members, Brian and they've all released solo projects and it's like, you can see where once the ingredients are separated, those guys aren't as experimental as Johnny and Tom, and I think they bring some of that accessibility just by nature of the kind of musicians that they are and their personal influences and interests bringing those to the wacky ideas that Johnny and Tom are always bringing to the table. So, it's kind of like the Ringo to the Lemon.

Speaker 3:
[78:08] Phil Selway is Ringo. Yeah, totally. I mean, that makes sense in multiple respects. All right. Okay, so In Rainbows is their seventh album. This is 2007. They've been putting out music almost 15 years. It's amazing to me that this is very arguably their best record or their most popular record. Even as a huge Radiohead fan, even as a Kid A fan, did any part of you going into In Rainbows think this could be their best record yet? Bands don't do this, right? Did you expect them to keep getting better and almost more popular?

Speaker 2:
[78:44] The more popular, no, because all sides kind of pointed toward the shift that we're talking about or the attempt at that shift. Yeah, and the moment, they're coming off of Hailed the Thief, which I think I really enjoyed in the moment. I listened to that album a lot, and I think most Radiohead fans would tell you it's, if you had to rank it, it's probably going to fall in the middle, maybe towards the bottom for some people. And there's reasons for that. They recorded it, you know, within just a couple of weeks, and it seems like they were in a great place together as a band. So, yeah. But I think you saw what they were trying to do. It was their first attempt post-Kid A amnesiac to kind of bring the band back together in terms of traditional sounding band with guitars and mixed now in with the electronic elements and kind of trying to fuse those all together and it works brilliantly at times and doesn't work so well in some spots on that record. I think in Rainbows, more than probably any other record in their catalog does it to perfection, that fusion and that synthesis that we're talking about. So, I don't know if I ever thought, I mean, there's no signs of them turning just kind of vulnerable and soft, you know? Right. There's always been like ballads in their catalog. But none is like, I don't know, soft is just the word that I use for this album so much. There's just like, there's a warmth to it that I think was missing from their early work. Just even in like the tones that they're using and the consistency of them using those tones, you know, like, there's just, it's just very round where I think a lot of their earlier work is really jagged and, you know, harsh edges, if that makes sense. No, totally.

Speaker 3:
[80:30] It totally makes sense.

Speaker 2:
[80:31] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[80:33] Yeah, because you did the band Splain, the two part mega band Splain episode on Radiohead. And you talked a lot about In Rainbows as like, you use the word soft, I think, and vulnerable. And Yasi sort of talked about, is this like their dad album? Not necessarily their dad rock album, like they're in a different place in their lives, they have families. You know, do you think In Rainbows is just a reflection of where they were, you know, personally in their lives, in addition to where the band was specifically?

Speaker 2:
[81:03] Yeah, it's always hard with them because they're usually really private about their personal lives. And it's like, it's always really difficult for Thom, especially when you're like looking at his lyrics, to relate it to anything in his personal life, because we just don't know the details. And so it just becomes really abstract. And it's almost like to, yeah, it just doesn't even make sense to attempt to try to pin it to any one life circumstance for him. He's just not that kind of writer. So I don't know what exactly explains it. I mean, I've had children, you have children, there is a difference before and after. And I think, you know, it does open you up to, you know, children open you up to being more vulnerable, being a little bit softer. I think as you age into your 40s, the lack of testosterone is, you know, there's some of that as well here in this album. You know, it's just, it doesn't have that edge to, what most of their, even Hailed the Thief had a lot of that kind of, you know, grinding edges to it and a lot of anger and, you know, more overt anger, expressions of anger in it. So yeah, there is, yeah, I think if we're trying to grasp at something that explains the sound, that might be it, but I don't know. Like I've never really done that with Radiohead. It's really hard to do.

Speaker 3:
[82:23] Right. When you hear the softness on this record, like where do you most hear it? I think I heard you say like Nude, for example, is one of maybe your favorite song on the record and one of your favorite Radiohead songs overall. Is it the softness, like the gentleness? You know, as you say, there had been ballads before, but Nude does feel different and more vulnerable. Like, is that where you are seeing that?

Speaker 2:
[82:46] Yeah, I think Nude is a really great example of that. But it's all, I think musically so much with Radiohead, like the lyrics to me are always kind of secondary. To just the quality of the music. And for me, it's even about the tones that they're selecting for their instruments, where the Nude, the bass line that kind of drives Nude is so clean and round and saturated and rich.

Speaker 3:
[83:16] And pretty simple.

Speaker 2:
[83:17] And even on the subject of this episode, All I Need, there's a crazy outro, which I think we're going to talk about, but it's like even in that cacophony of sound, it still sounds very pristine and rich, and it doesn't have the harshness that I think it would have had if they played that same outro on a previous album, just by the tones that they're selecting. So I think that's one of the reasons why In Rainbows has kind of stood the test of time, is that there's a, it's a very unified sound, despite there a lot of the songs being so different from each other, it never feels out of the world that they created. And I think a lot of that just has to do with the way they recorded it, and the tones that they were selecting for all the songs. There's like, there's a uniformity in a good way to the record where it does feel all of one universe.

Speaker 3:
[84:12] Right, and like you said, In Rainbows seems to be the favorite among younger people, people younger than us. Like it reached a new generation. Do you think that's because of like the musical things that we're talking about? Or do you think that that's just a function of like, okay, computer and even kid A are pretty old at this point. Anything before that is like just the nineties and just feels like ancient history, especially to young people. Is it just that In Rainbows comes out at this moment that like when people were young, like young as we were, when we heard the bends or whatever, like is it just the timing of In Rainbows that's made it what it is now?

Speaker 2:
[84:51] Yeah, I don't know. I mean, this is obviously a question most accurately posed to someone of that age. We're like two old guys trying to speculate on the young boy.

Speaker 3:
[85:00] What are the youth thinking?

Speaker 2:
[85:01] Yeah, exactly. But I do think, obviously, I think the release of Being Later in 2007 does help with that. So same with the connection our parents had to The Beatles. We're just not going to have it in the same way because we didn't live through it in the same way that you and I lived through Computer and Cadet, where it's so much of those records and our relationship to them have to do with, I was there when I heard everything in its right place for the first time. It was this otherworldly electronic piano coming from this rock band that was supposed to be the future of rock and roll. The story of that record is so much of our relationship to it, despite the music being phenomenal. There's this whole other experiential element that comes with it when you live through it. I think In Rainbows gives younger people the chance to have that experience and also comes off this experimental release that I think everybody remembers. Even if you don't remember the record, a lot of people just understand that release, the way they released it was really important and historically impactful. I think all the combination. The other thing I was thinking, which I don't know if it's true, but I don't know. In my mind, at least, Kid A or OK Computer sounds of an era, despite being as innovative and timeless as it is, it's like you still get very strong rock elements in it, like that were normalized in the 90s. Even Kid A, you can even tie to specific influences and this whole electronic music scene emerging in the early 2000s and pinpoint it to that. In Rainbows has, to me, none of that. They could have released that album now, and there would be no difference. For whatever reason, it has a true timeless quality where it's really hard to pin the sound of it to anything else that surrounds it in that time in music history. And so I think maybe some of that is also why I'm not exactly sure, but that was just another thought I had when I was thinking about trying to explain the legacy of this album. It's kind of hard.

Speaker 3:
[87:14] No, I agree with what you're saying. I can listen to OK Computer now in picture 1997 way easier than I can listen to In Rainbows now in picture 2007. I think I get exactly what you're saying. You mentioned the rollout as being really important and impactful. I think it was a big deal at first, like a pay what you want, like a band as big as Radiohead, basically offering you a free album if you wanted it, but you could pay if you want, and just to see what their fans would respond. It was a huge response. It was really successful for them. I think there was a thought at least for five minutes that maybe all bands will start doing this forever. But that didn't happen, and I think in part because Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are huge, at least former major-label bands with huge audiences. A new band, this isn't going to work for them. This isn't going to work for any band that's not as big as Radiohead. What's your sense of the impact ultimately of the release strategy? Did it really change the way we thought about music and the Internet and what music was worth? Or was it a specific to Radiohead kind of thing ultimately?

Speaker 2:
[88:21] Well, I think ultimately it was specific to them because, like you mentioned, they had the capability to do it, they had the fan base built in to do it. They were coming off their major label deal, so they had the freedom to do it, which is really important. But I think what it did, why it was so impactful was we were already having conversations about the value of music when Napster came along and people were stealing music illegally. A lot of acts at this time were cut. People are still buying CDs, but the young people more and more were just downloading it for free. I think why it's such a memorable event is because it crystallized something that was already in the air and it was a turning point moment we can specifically point to. It's like on this day, on at this hour, on this day. It's like this happened and it only could have happened because there was already this philosophical question about what was the value of music in the 21st century. It just gave form to that thought. We can look back at it as a formal philosophical challenge of what is the value of music going forward. It's a question we're still trying to answer now. I don't think we really figured it out fully. Obviously, there's been streaming services that we all use. But I don't think everyone's happy in terms of what we're paying for those or in terms of what money gets funneled ultimately to the artist. I don't think anyone's really happy with it. There's multiple factors for that. But I still think we're attempting to answer that question that they posed all the way back in 2007, which is almost 20 years ago, which is kind of crazy to say.

Speaker 3:
[90:12] No, that's insane. That's very upsetting, actually. You know what I'd like to know? I would love to know what I paid for it. I'm gonna guess I paid $10, but there should be a site on the internet where you put in your name and it tells you exactly what you paid for In Rainbows.

Speaker 2:
[90:28] I still have the, on an old hard drive, I still have the original files that I downloaded for it. And I want to say I paid $20 for it, but I can't remember.

Speaker 3:
[90:37] Okay, that sounds like something, that sounds like the right honorable thing to do. That makes a lot of sense. I think it was 10.

Speaker 2:
[90:44] I think they had a cap on it too, right? I think they had a $100 cap on it.

Speaker 3:
[90:48] Was it a 100? There was a cap on it just to be like, just in case there are any like real super fans who are going to bankrupt themselves in a moment of, yeah, it's probably a good idea to cap the amount. I do think for me In Rainbows, it's down to three songs for me. It's Weird Fishes, Reckoner, and All I Need. Of course, in your Dissect episode about All I Need, like you talk a lot about the lyrics, Thom's lyrics, which are sort of walking this line between pure enduring love and like creepy desperation, right? Like I'm an animal trapped in your hot car. Like do you read that as a love song, as a line in a love song? Do you think Thom Yorke reads it as a sincere line in a love song?

Speaker 2:
[91:35] That's the great thing about this song, because you just don't quite know how to take it, right?

Speaker 3:
[91:43] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[91:44] Because there's like three interpretations of it. It's like where it could be like very endearing, just him trying to express how small he feels in front of this beautiful, perfect creature, which is like kind of a classical expression of love, you know, historically.

Speaker 3:
[91:59] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[92:00] Yes. There's also like the obsession. It's like, does this woman even know he exists or are we back in creep territory where it's like he's like somewhat stalkerish, admittedly, you know, kind of creepy. But then there's like, there's another layer that only reveals itself till like the second verse where he says, I only stick with you because there is no other. Right. That's like, that is just like, that turns the song on his head even more.

Speaker 3:
[92:28] It does.

Speaker 2:
[92:30] Now there's like this desperation and like, there's a, I don't know, there's, it's just like, it's really sad. Like, there's no one else. So I'm just going to obsess over you.

Speaker 3:
[92:42] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[92:42] And like, or, or you can even like interpret it like this person's like convincing themselves that the situation that they're with, because there is no other, they're like almost like convincing themselves that this person is so great and talking themselves into it. And it's like, you're all I need. Like this mantra of like, like I need to keep telling myself this, that you're the one, because there is no other. And if I were going to be alone, if it's not for you. So I don't know, it's just so fascinating. Like so many of Thom Yorke's lyrics, where it's like so abstract and so non-specific that you can just kind of mull it over forever. And then when you take in the musical elements, that adds a whole nother kind of dimension to it as well, because it is a song that is, it's like sweet. Like the instrumental is like pleasant, but also kind of eerie as well. And then you get to the outro, which is like a whole other universe. And like there's philosophical things about that thing, that as well. So yeah, I don't know. It's like every, every Radiohead is like this. It's just a rabble hole into itself that you could just kind of theorize forever about.

Speaker 3:
[93:44] I was uncertain until you started talking. And now I'm convinced it's not a love song. I think you totally just talked me out of even the vague interpretation. The way you describe it accurately, I think I'm on the not love song side of the fence.

Speaker 2:
[93:59] It's only a love song if you are listening at surface level. If you really look at the lyrics, I know a lot of people have this. I can't remember who it is, but someone even in my personal life was like, this is me and my girl's song. I'm just like, please.

Speaker 3:
[94:17] Don't go over to dinner at those people's house. Okay. Wow. Musically, in the Dicet episode, you talked about All I Need is the example of a terminal climax. You say that the song eventually takes on a terminally climactic form. For those of us unfamiliar with terminal climax, it's like, what does that mean, Cole? How does that help All I Need become as great as it is?

Speaker 2:
[94:43] Well, terminal climax is a term that my friend Brad Osborne, he's the one that wrote the book, the analysis book on Radiohead, which is really great for any music nerds out there that's really in the music theory. Check it out by Brad Osborne. But he coined this term. And essentially it means like, usually where there's a bridge in a song, which bridges traditionally either go to a whole new kind of climax in terms of dynamic, a new dynamic high, or it brings the song down so that the last chorus hits harder, right? So a terminal climax, I guess, the most easiest way to think about it is like, it's a bridge that never goes back to the chorus and it just exists.

Speaker 3:
[95:29] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[95:29] In the bridge world until the end of the song.

Speaker 3:
[95:31] It takes over. Right. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[95:33] Exactly. And so All I Need does this. Another Radiohead example is Karma Police. The Beatles do it on Let It Be, where they go into the na, na, na, na part, and it never returns to the Let It Be part. Or no, sorry, Hey Jude.

Speaker 3:
[95:50] Hey Jude.

Speaker 2:
[95:51] That's right. Hey Jude. Sorry. Hey Jude. Sorry, Paul. Yeah. So what's cool about All I Need is like, one, it kind of comes out of nowhere where you don't ever see it getting, because it is kind of like this understated song, even the chorus doesn't really go anywhere dynamically, it actually drops a little bit lower than the verses. So it's just existing at this low dynamic range for most of the song, and then it just suddenly takes off out of nowhere. And what I find so interesting about it is that Johnny orchestrates strings throughout the entire outro, and he had the orchestra play every single note in the scale that they're in, all at one time. And so there's this like tone cluster, white noise kind of underneath everything. And then the chords that I assume Thom are playing, the piano chord, he's hitting one chord over and over, and it's six notes in the chord, which is one note shy of playing every single note in the key as well. And so you're getting this just like, the frequency spectrum, the total spectrum, is just fully saturated. And he's banging one chord over and over and over. And then this is the thing about Radiohead, where it's like, just so happens to be in a song about obsessing over one person. And so it becomes to this like, this terminal climax of this point of no return, where you're just obsessively banging every single note in the song's key signature over and over and over. And you're just like, are these guys geniuses? Or does this just happen in like every other Radiohead song coincidentally? And it's like, I don't know. And then you think about, oh, like, pyramid song. Why is pyramid song called pyramid song? And then you realize the rhythm of the song shapes an actual pyramid. And you're just like, are these guys like, that kind of shit just pops up in their music all the fucking time. And it's like, are they this brilliant? Or is it just a crazy coincidence over and over? I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[97:55] Yeah. Just a couple of questions to wrap up. So right from Creep, Radiohead for me was was Thom Yorke's voice and Johnny Greenwood going on guitar, right? Like these are the two poles of the band. As the band progressed and got more experimental and orchestral, from kid A onward, do you feel like Radiohead has become more Johnny's band? I just think about Johnny now has this whole sideline. One battle after another, so much of that movie's greatness for me is about his score. He's got this entire career all to himself. How do you think that affects how you hear Radiohead when we go back to just listening to Radiohead?

Speaker 2:
[98:35] Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways that they haven't really changed from your creep analysis of Johnny just going, he's just doing it on different, weird instruments.

Speaker 3:
[98:45] Just now it's on the home du Martineau or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[98:47] Yeah. Exactly. No, but I mean, in terms of competition, I know Thom is not so secretly competitive with Johnny. I think he admires Johnny very much, especially when Johnny started scoring films. The film that Thom scored, I forgot what it was called now.

Speaker 1:
[99:10] Was that Body Show?

Speaker 3:
[99:11] That was a Johnny score.

Speaker 2:
[99:13] That was Johnny.

Speaker 3:
[99:14] Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[99:15] But whatever it was called, he said in an interview, if I'm recalling it right, I was looking at what Johnny was doing and I wanted to try it. Thom is just not as musically, technically in terms of music theory and knowing how to notate music, Thom is just not on the level as Johnny, although obviously Thom is special in his own way. I think that's just always been the magic of Radiohead. I think again, to go back to the Beatles, it's the chemistry between John and Paul. You can explain so much of the band through just these two fucking superhuman musicians just so happening to be at the right place, at the right time, growing up together in the same area. But it's like, we are so lucky that they found each other. You know what I mean? I think for me, it's been what makes the band special has been those two. No offense to the other guys. They are all each great in their own way. They're doing great. The chemistry, the synthesis of all five of them is what truly makes them great. But come on, without Johnny and Tom together, we're not talking about Radiohead in the same way. I think that's always just been the magic of this band. It's the duo and them always wanting to get... I assume the whole band is like this, but Tom and Johnny specifically always evolving, always trying new things. Johnny getting more and more adept with orchestration and experimental instruments and all that. You can explain so much of the longevity of Radiohead through that experimentation and that evolution. Because obviously, if they stayed the Benz the whole time, we're not having this conversation, right? So that's always been the magic to me, is those two guys together. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[101:01] And just to wrap up, I worry sometimes that I've listened to and thought about and read so much about Radiohead that I'm burnt out on them, right? All the analysis has left me just unable to appreciate it as just music. And I wanted to ask you as someone who does these incredible track by track deep dives into your own favorite albums, do you ever worry about that kind of burnout? Is it possible to know too much about a song that it's like demystified or something? Or does every new layer you uncover only sort of enhance the greatness of it for you?

Speaker 2:
[101:34] Yeah. I mean, you're asking the wrong guy this question. Because it's just like, I like literally, I literally live for this stuff.

Speaker 3:
[101:42] It would have happened by now, I think, your burnout. Yeah, I get you.

Speaker 2:
[101:46] Yeah. I mean, for me, I mean, but Radiohead is like, for someone like me, that's why Radiohead gets talked about this way so much. Because for people like me, who are usually the ones that are doing this kind of work, it's just so perfectly hits every single spot that we're desiring in music, where it sounds good. You don't have to think about it for it to be beautiful and great. But if you want to, there's just a world of wonder to be discovered if you want to just dig into the weeds. What I always find so fascinating on Dissect, it's really happened. I can't really think of an example of anyone that hasn't happened to this with, but certainly there's degrees to it. But it's always the closer that I look, the more I find. There's always something that explains greatness. A lot of it is inexplainable, but there are parts of it that you can physically point to, or literally point to and say, this is why this section works, or here's how this makes you feel, and so that the lyrics hit you this way, instead of this way. And so it's like, I don't know, music to me has always been fascinating in this way to me, because it is so abstract aside from the lyrics. Like music is something we can't see, we can't touch. It's just physical waveforms that are vibrating our eardrums. It's like that to me has always been so mysterious. Like how could this thing make me cry that I can't physically touch? And so I think part of my analysis is like trying to explain the certain aspects of like why we emotionally music affects us in the way it does, or why a sequence of songs can tell a story over the course of an album. And again, to bring it back to Radiohead, it's like for me, they're just the perfect model for this kind of work, because it does give you so much in return. Just the more that you dig, it rewards you. And to me, that only enriches my experience of the music. It never takes away from it. I'm always just like, how fucking cool is this? I just like, it's like, it's literally why I live.

Speaker 3:
[103:55] I am going to be thinking all day about Thom Yorke obsessing over one person while playing basically one chord. See, this is why you're the best. You figured it out. Cole, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. And thank you again for all this lighting. It's excellent and I really appreciate it.

Speaker 4:
[104:10] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[104:11] Yeah, I appreciate it. It was a pleasure.

Speaker 3:
[104:15] Thanks very much to our guest this week, Cole Cuchna. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Crerie, Justin Sayles and Chris Sutton. Additional production by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Calliton, additional art by Matt James, and special thanks again to Cole Cuchna. And thanks to you for listening and watching. And now let's all go listen to All I Need by Radiohead. See you next week.

Speaker 5:
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