Videotape.

So it’s been a few days since the release of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, the album that has been causing much buzz on the web. Not only is it the first album since Hail To The Thief, it’s also the first album Radiohead has brought to us since having fulfilled their quota with EMI. Which of course brings us to the part of it that is making the most news… the album was released online and at a cost of “it’s up to you”. No, that wasn’t a typo or an text editing transmisplacement mistake. They are letting you pay whatever you want to for a download of the album. Of course, if you are like me and a lot of other fans, you would be surprised to learn that the download has a low bitrate of 160kbps. Not so cool if you ask me, I am slightly offended by it actually. But I could never actually be angry AT Radiohead. As I’ve told people before, a lot of their music is tied to both my best and worst memories over the last several years.

Much like the last album, I didn’t neccesarily enjoy this or get excited the very first time I heard it. But with each listen I love it more and more. Their music is simple yet intricate, and I’m sure I speak for many fans when I say that you learn to appreciate a lot of the elements that are there as you become comfortable with the whole of what’s going on in the recordings. A good friend of mine speaking on this and related topics had this to say: “The rule is listen to a radiohead record until you love it, and I’m almost there. ”

With that said, and that I really do enjoy the entire album now, one piece stands out. Videotape. Videotape is the reason I look forward to new albums. Every so often there comes a release containing a song that I want to listen to over and over and over again. Videotape is fantastic. Very warm and magnificent yet unbelievably simple. It’s not too often these days that I hear something that doesn’t seem to need to hide behind a wall of studio gimmicks, noise and countless layers of sound to mask the fact that it COULD be better. Videotape is just good and is the mark of the true artisans i’ve known RH to be.