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Originally Posted by noisereductions
I actually don't disagree.
I mean, both In Rainbows and King Of Limbs ended up in my year end Top 10 lists, but at the same time I feel like for the past decade plus, Radiohead have suffered the fate of sounding like Radiohead. Like, I love the band. But nothing they've done after Amnesiac has really felt all that different. I mean there were moments, sure. But as albums it's not like the transitions from The Bends to OK Computer to Kid A/Amnesiac where every album was like OMG what will they do next? Y'know? They've gotten into a groove of "here's a new Radiohead album" and you hear it and you're like "oh yeah. That's what it is. A new Radiohead album. I still like that band."
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All the Radiohead songs I like best, the ones I go back to now and then, are the ones that feel fresh and are pushed by a kind of dizzy momentum. I'm talking about Airbag, Karma Police, kid a, idioteque, I Might Be Wrong, There There, Myomatosis, Separator... I NEVER sit there and think, "You know what I'd love to hear right now? Knives fucking out and pyramid song and Codex, because I really want to feel like slitting my goddamn wrists."
It probably doesn't help that I've been listening to Radiohead songs and thinking about relationships since The Bends came out. Probably doesn't help either that I am kind of a morose person in general, and I tend toward depression sometimes. But seriously, I can't listen to ANY of their albums all the way through. When I was younger there was almost a kind of youthful energy that came with feeling melancholy, but now I'm just not fucking interested.
It's sad, because I've been a fan forever, but no band is more relentlessly depressing than Radiohead. Even their "happier" songs are filled with unsettling imagery and extremely dark themes. I think a lot of it is Thom Yorke's fault. As a lyricist, he's like a slightly more dynamic Trent Reznor. It's all pigs and knives and bad acid trips. The band itself is done a disservice by this, because musically they're just about the most solidly talented 5-piece band on the planet, but they stick to this really depressing lyrical and thematic shit, and it puts them in a box.
When I do listen to Knives Out, I listen to the Flaming Lips version. Live is too bleak to sit around listening to bleak ass music all the time. This is one of the main reasons I spend so much time with hip-hop and vocalless electronic music.