Well I got 'In Rainbows' earlier today, Thom Yorke came round on his bike with a copy (all very carbon neutral) I paid him £2.51 for it just to be clever, and what can I say? What an album who would have thought '15 Steps' would see Thom and the boys take their sound in to a sort of country-stomp direction I mean the lyrics "take your partner by the hand/ go 15 steps forward and 3 steps back/ you do it to yourself you fool, you had too much to drink" were entirely unexpected as it saw Radiohead go in a completely new direction but also revisit a lyric from 'Just'. If that wasn't enough 'Bodysnatchers' was simply snippets of audio taken from the 1993 film of the same name, I would call it Radiohead's boldest step since OK Computer. 'Nude' was a very strange track because it wasn't even Radiohead (literally it was actually taken from the 1981 album of the same name by Camel) it really sounded nothing like a bold fusion of Hail To The Thief and all music released since by everybody even The Kooks. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi was undoubtedly the stand out track as Thom Yorke ditched his trademark vocal style and instead opted for a bad Elvis impersonation with lines like "Don't step on my Weird Fishes/ You ain't nothing but a case of Mxamatosis crying all the time" Radiohead decided to make a interesting step into the realm of comedy-rock. Finally 'All I Need/Faust ARP/Reckoner/House Of Cards/Jigsaw Falling Into Place/Videotape" was simply a very long recorded piece of white noise (recorded on a poor quality cassete from what I could tell) an even more experimental sound then we heard on Kid A, at one point you can hear Jonny Greenwood humming to himself in the background which was defnitely the high point. Overall I would say this is Radiohead as you've never heard them before they take the guitar-driven drive of 'The Bends', mix it with electronic noise which may have been on 'OK Computer', it really defies expectations in every sense of the word, so I gave it 9.7 (Best New Music) in my totally original scoring system.Pre-Order:Radiohead-In Rainbows
