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Originally Posted by choc e-Claire
I'm probably missing out on this due to my age - I don't know a time when the IMBW version was the only one.
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Well, up until the release of A Moon Shaped Pool, the IMBW live version was the only official version of the song. So... you probably do remember, because it was 2016.
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I have an irrational love of Amnesiac, even despite the knowledge that a good third of it is crap. In Rainbows just seems kinda plain to me.
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You might be surprised about what parts of Amnesiac I think are crap. It’s not “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” because that song thumps. It’s not “Dollars and Cents” because that track is a dark, menacing discopunk gem. It’s not even “Packt like Sardines...” which appeals to my electronic palate like most of the sounds Radiohead brazenly ripped off from Aphex Twin and Squarepusher.
No.
It’s fucking “Pyramid Song,” which is a quest through the doldrums of absolute boredom where the only existing emotion is a deeply buried and repressed desire to end one’s own life... PERHAPS as a result of the ENDLESS boredom that go-nowhere track elicits.
I know... sacrilege, right? Wrong. Fuck that plod-along.
It’s also the wholly unnecessary retread of “Morning Bell” that lacks the subtle thump and mystique of the Kid A original.
And it’s “Life in a Glass House” because UGHHHHHH the tedium.
If the good, bizarro tracks from Amnesiac — “You and Whose Army?” and “I Might be Wrong” and the aforementioned “Dollars and Cents” and the logical “Videotape” precursor “Like Spinning Plates” had been put on an EP, THAT would have been cool.
But “Pyramid Song” and its PlayStation 1 Vector Man music video can piss off.
Blur’s “13” kicks the living shit out of “Amnesiac” and that’s the truth.
NOW... In Rainbows has some nice tracks.
“Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is one of the band’s all-time best songs. No question. And “Videotape” is great and weird. And “All I Need” is like a grown-up version of “Climbing up the Walls.”
But what REALLY disappointed me about that album is this:
Every other Radiohead album after The Bends had one song that just seemed to blow the world apart and stand as a document in and of itself, pointing to the future — or to some weirdass other plane, never to be spoken of again — and away from the rest of the album. But In Rainbows has no such song.
Sure, you could argue “Videotape” but that’s not it.
On OKC it was “Electioneering” (or fucking “Paranoid Android,” for that matter, but I say “Electioneering” because it stood out, and people didn’t like it, but it rocked like hell and was almost preternaturally predictive of the political landscape 20 years later.
On Kid A it was “Idiotqeue”
On Amnesiac it was “I Might Be Wrong”
On Hail to the Thief it was the motherfucking KING of the bonkers Radiohead album outliers, “Myxomatosis,” which, to this day, is my single favorite Radiohead song because WHAT THE FUCK.
And then on In Rainbows had... nothing, really. No single song that says, “WE ARE BETTER THAN YOU AND THIS IS WHY.” No song bold enough to sound like it belonged on another album by another band. I LIKE it and RESPECT it when bands do this.
Modest Mouse did it with “The Stars are Projectors” in 2000. Just *leveled* the competition with one big fat fucking middle finger to the world.
Slint did it with “Good Morning Captain” and the rest is history.
(Kanye did it with “Runaway” and anyone who wants to fite can line the fuck up)
Radiohead decided to stop doing it, and I promptly lost interest and I haven’t been a hardcore fan since.