radiohead by zack

A Week With Radiohead's "In Rainbows": Day 3

14 January 2008
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Jacob Henneman // Illustration by Zack Sultan

To b-side or not to b-side was the question for Radiohead. Although the In Rainbows second disc has been tagged a bonus, a collection of cuts that didn’t quite fit on the album proper, it’s hard to jump on that b-side bandwagon and not consider these eight songs as an extension of the first 10 tracks. “MK1” picks up right where the haunting piano and stuttering percussion of “Videotape” leave off, and extend the piano chords over Yorke’s bleeding-heart cooing. Then “Down is the New Up” comes out of nowhere and absolutely rips shit up. The only answer as to why it was left off the first disc can only do with thematics. Its strings swell, layering atop each other until they reach a gluttonous monster, before collapsing under their own weight. Only the rambunctious “Bangers & Mash” matches its sheer energy. The rest of the disc is passive by comparison. Yorke’s voice again shines throughout with the plaintive slowburner “Go Slowly” and the equally as melancholic “Last Flowers,” which is as stripped down and stark as Radiohead has ever been. It’s all fish in a barrel.

So what do we call disc two? It is both an extended ending to the first album and a work that can stand upright on its own. If you were to mash it together with disc one you’d have 18 tracks totaling 69 minutes with absolutely no drop in song quality. And with “4 Minute Warning” we have the perfect ending to a Radiohead album: a countdown the apocalypse.

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*

Disc 2? Huh? I didn’t get any disc 2. WTF?

bizona | 17 January 2008
*

Disc 2 came with the In Rainbows box set that included the vinyl and cd

fronski | 22 January 2008

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