Well. It’s a given I’ll buy this album. It’s the sort of disc I feel I have to listen to multiple times, to get comfortable with. My initial thought is Rubber Soul if the Beatles got to rerecord it knowing everything they learned from Revolver through The White Album.

There are a lot less electric guitars, electric noodling, and spacey sound effects (save for Bodysnatchers which sounds almost like Paperback Writer). But what you get is a tighter sound - we’re back to drums, voice, and guitars - not unlike how I view Rubber Soul with its unified, acoustic sound where every song feels a part of the whole. All the “extra” sounds are controlled to the point where they don’t sounds out of place, accidental, or improvised.

With a song like Videotape, I feel there is no question that the piano notes are the notes Radiohead intended. It’s not, sit at the piano and play these chords in whatever voicing or octave you desire, and we’ll work it out in the mix. The entire album bears a sense of decision and perfection that is quite stunning. I feel this is the first album I’ve encountered in a while where I might listen to it like watching a movie - nothing else going on - in order concentrate on the unfolding music. Definitely not background music.

But this may be too polished for some. Similarly, if there’s anything I could fault this album for is an over-reliance on dropped beats or odd meters, no bombastic drumming or guitar solos, and the arena-rock spacey reverb thing has been banished. There is no Paranoid Android or Thom turning his voice into a robot. So it’s a trade off. I’m really enjoying the seriousness of intent and microscopic attention to detail.

I’ll give In Rainbows a more proper review after I’ve listened to it a few more times. But right now, my favorite songs are Bodysnatchers, Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, Faust Arp (this one in particular sounds like a drunken White Album outtake), Jigsaw Falling Into Place, and Reckoner. Gee, that’s five out of ten.

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