[Severian]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

I never thought of radiohead as gloomy, i feel its a stereotype

That's fine. I'd be interested to hear what songs specifically you don't think are gloomy, because I've been all over their discography and I know the words to all the songs and I'm not sure how anyone could possibly feel the way you do. But I'm happy for you all the same.

[Severian]

Yeah, what's gloomy about Codex? Or motion picture soundtrack for that matter? Or exit music for a film? Or How to Disappear Completely or Climbing up the walls or let down or wolf at the door or fake plastic trees or high and dry or you and whose army and talk show host and and...

All of these songs, and every other song I can think of, is about crushing anxiety through a lens of depression or war or suicide or guilt or alienation or powerlessness. Fucking every. Single. One.

Even the more innocuous tracks like everything in its right place contain references to confusion or discomfort of some kind. And it goes all the way back to Pablo Honey.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

You are reading it either through your own bias or through a biased interpretation. I will go through the track by track analysis for you shortly because i like a challenge even though no one is here and it likely wouldn't change your mind anyway

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

And if you want to have a "who has radiohead more committed to memory" pissing contest i absolutely promise i will win and no i don't have a metric to prove it

[Severian]

But actually I kind of agree about TKOL in the sense that I think it's the one of their least gloomy albums. It's because the focus is so fixed on the music, specifically the meter. It's because it's their krautrock record. The songs are still responsible for more than a few of my dopamine crashes, but it's not as intolerably depressing as Amnesiac and In Rainbows.

Hail to the Thief is peak Radiohead, to me. But even its grooviest track (myxomatosis, which is Radiohead's best song in my opinion) is filled with deeply unsettling imagery. Airbag is as close as they come to overtly optimistic, and its energy is swallowed whole by every fucking song that follows on OK Computer. Is OKC a great album? Sure! But I can't listen to "Let Down" anymore. Fuck that shit.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

And if you want to have a "who has radiohead more committed to memory" pissing contest i absolutely promise i will win and no i don't have a metric to prove it

Why would I want to do something as stupid and pointless and childish as that? Why does such a moronic idea even occur to you? I am sincerely interested in hearing some examples of uplifting Radiohead lyrics. Not because I want to fight, and not to tear your reasoning apart, but because I'm genuinely curious as to what the hell you could possibly be talking about.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Pulk/pull revolving door feels upbeat too me, not pessimistic.
Dollars and Cents has a straight up happy
Everything in Its Right Place literally feels upbeat and positive, like a morning sunrise.
Kid A feels the same.
I always felt Optimistic was like a pep song.
15 Step is exploding with positive energy.
Bodysnatchers feels like, "hey, I'm feeling good even if you don't want me to so fuck it."
Videotape has the jittery feeling of a first date.
Morning Mr Magpie feels like a song for a playground
How is Feral negative or gloomy?
Separator is that positive feeling you get when having a breakthrough
Sail to the Moon is a blissful night at the beach living in the moment.
Backdrifts is a classic "fuck you we are comfortable with ourselves and who we are" jam

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

I know their catalog isn't like Bob Marley level of joy but i dont think its all doom and gloom. Honestly i feel those gloomy songs are cathartic enough to be considered positive like a cleanse. They aren't moping or moaning about those negative feelings, instead to me they fee like that moment of acceptance and moving on. Indeed its why whenever i have felt depressed about things i actually go straight to radiohead not to sulk but to reflect, grow, and move on.

[Severian]

I think I get your point if you're talking about the music itself. I don't necessarily mean their music is always gloomy. Not at all. But "Videotape" actually bums me right the fuck out, to be honest.

Dollars and Cents is an excellent song but it's been the stuff of more than one real life bad trip for me. "We are the dollars and cents and be pounds and pants and the mark and the yen/ we're gonna crack your little souls, crack your little souls"

I once ate a heroic dose of mushrooms and got way too familiar with Amnesiac for my own good.

*shivers*

Maybe you're right, maybe it's just me. But the fact remains that their music often feels almost soulless to me, even though I've been a fan since I was a pre-pubescent.

I'm not saying I don't love Radiohead. I'm just saying... I don't know. None of the lyrics to "Burn the With" surprise me. The title itself seems like something that would pop into my head if I were asked to invent a Radiohead song on the spot (I know it's an older song, but you take my meaning I hope). The video? A mashup of Trumpton and the Wicker Man? Sounds almost predictably Radiohead. Nursery rhymes and scary shit.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Severian

I think I get your point if you're talking about the music itself. I don't necessarily mean their music is always gloomy. Not at all. But "Videotape" actually bums me right the fuck out, to be honest.

That is what i love about music. Every one hears it different. To me videotape is one of songs that immediately picks up my spirits in a positive way. I remember how blown away i was when i first heard it from the 2006 tour.

And i agree. I was definitely thinking more of the instrumentation

Maybe you're right, maybe it's just me. But the fact remains that their music often feels almost soulless to me, even though I've been a fan since I was a pre-pubescent.

Soulless?? Whoa. There is no shame in personalizing music. That is kind of the point yes? I just disagreed with your premise that radiohead is somehow "going for" gloomy. I think they lole life itself are more complex than that

[noisereductions]

I love "Pyramid Song" - actually Amnesiac may be my favorite Radiohead album. I love the first song on In Rainbows - blanking on title. I love "Codex" on Limbs. I don't know - certain songs hit me the total right way.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

I love "Pyramid Song" - actually Amnesiac may be my favorite Radiohead album. I love the first song on In Rainbows - blanking on title. I love "Codex" on Limbs. I don't know - certain songs hit me the total right way.

15 Steps.. when they opened with that track at Hollywood Bowl i totally lost my shit. I mean loke teenage girl seeing Beatles in 1965 lost my shit

[Severian]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

That is what i love about music. Every one hears it different. To me videotape is one of songs that immediately picks up my spirits in a positive way. I remember how blown away i was when i first heard it from the 2006 tour.

And i agree. I was definitely thinking more of the instrumentation


Soulless?? Whoa. There is no shame in personalizing music. That is kind of the point yes? I just disagreed with your premise that radiohead is somehow "going for" gloomy. I think they lole life itself are more complex than that

I'm not trying to shit on the band. I just ... I guess I have a long and kind of painful story, and Radiohead's music has been a huge part of that story.

For instance, I first fell in love with Radiohead at the same time (down to the month) that I fell in love for the first time. Real, deeply confusing, frustratingly beautiful love, with a person, a friend, who is still a close friend to this day but never became more than that. This was ~20 years ago.
I met her, after I got to know her I actually had a moment where the climax of "Fake plastic trees" just went off in my head, and I realized that I was in love for the first time. We had a weird kind of will they/won't they semi-courtship over the next few years, and Radiohead soundtracked all of that.

So the band is kind of inexorably tied to the heartbreak for me. And later, songs like Motion Picture Soundtrack and True Love Waits defined another era of heartbreak entirely, as did There There (the line "just cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there" is linked to another doomed romantic encounter). So I'm definitely seeing things through my own bias.

I will always love the band, but they're just too emotionally exhausting for me in too many different ways, and I find myself digging their remixes and more techno-infused songs more than anything else.

Same goes for Modest Mouse, circa Lonesome Crowded West.

I guess "True Love Waits" is a pretty straightforward love song. It's melancholy, but not depressing. Has bits of hope in it.

Believe me I wish I could go back in time to when I took solace in the feelings these songs brought out in me. I have a similar relationship with Yo La Tengo, though for entirely different reasons.

I'll surely but the new album, as I've done with everything else the band's ever released, because I'm a lifer. But I think Radiohead has been relegated to 2nd or 3rd tier favorite band of mine. If all of Sonin Youth's albums were as emotionally bleak and exhausting as, say, Evol, SY wouldn't be my favorite band. I'd like to see Radiohead make a Daydream Nation or Murray Street kind of album, where beauty ruled, and all the parts interlocked to create something that *I* could hear as truly uplifting.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

15 Steps.. when they opened with that track at Hollywood Bowl i totally lost my shit. I mean loke teenage girl seeing Beatles in 1965 lost my shit

That happened to me with 2+2=5 in 2004. Hell of a concert.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Hail to the Thief was a record that came out when i was going through a divorce. So many of those songs got me through it. Even while i was depressed it always felt like those songs were cathartic, were helping me get through it and get on with my life. Again music is what you make it. I get more depressed listening to The Seven Day Theory than any radiohead

[noisereductions]

yes "15 Steps!"

Y'know what else I love? The version of "Like Spinning Plates" that's on I Might Be Wrong. OMG.

Even when I complain about them, I love Radiohead so much haha. I just keep thinking of great songs.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Hail to the Thief was a record that came out when i was going through a divorce. So many of those songs got me through it. Even while i was depressed it always felt like those songs were cathartic, were helping me get through it and get on with my life. Again music is what you make it. I get more depressed listening to The Seven Day Theory than any radiohead

OK, so you probably get why There There is a special one for me. It soundtracked a breakup after a long term relationship, during which more than one "backsliding" event took place. I used to just jam that song and shout along with the "we are accidents waiting, waiting to happen" part.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

yes "15 Steps!"

Y'know what else I love? The version of "Like Spinning Plates" that's on I Might Be Wrong. OMG.

Even when I complain about them, I love Radiohead so much haha. I just keep thinking of great songs.

Yeah I feel you. I really just want to listen to Dollars & Cents and Pulk/pull right now, and I have "SPECTRE" playing as I type this — how this song was passed up in favor of that Sam Smith audio abortion is simply beyond me... that film would have been at least 20% better if this song had been used.

I have gripes with the band partly because they're one of the most prevalent bands of my teenage-to-adult life. Few are the bands/artists I've followed with more devotion than Radiohead. Even if they're not what they once were to me, they really defined a huge portion of my life.

[Severian]

Not to be a douche, but it's just called "15 Step." Sorry

[noisereductions]

after years of waiting
nothing came