RADIOHEAD - In Rainbows

Here is a review of Radiohead’s latest album In Rainbows, which appeared in the last issue of European Vibe Magazine. To read more music reviews and content, click here.

After three years simmering in the backwaters of the British music scene, Radiohead are back; not with a bang; but with a glorious collection of ambient, woozy art-rock tracks. In Rainbows, perhaps doesn’t show us any new sides to Radiohead, it is not a departure, or lurch in musical style, like we saw in 2000 with the release of Kid A, but it sounds more confident and assured than almost anything that they have done before. The songs are fundamentally minimalist (there is more chance of a guitar solo in a Beethoven symphony), and they are fed by a lazy, wandering bass line and Phil Selway’s driving drums. Above all this, of course, soars Thom Yorke’s distinctive falsetto voice, all mixed in with some muffled guitars.

Bodysnatchers and House of Cards are stand out tracks; the latter being driven by a sexy, sleek guitar riff that wouldn’t be out of place on a Velvet Underground LP. The eccentrically titled Faust Arp sounds like Dear Prudence from the Beatles’ White Album, mashed up with a few grams of Amsterdam’s finest; whilst Like a Jigsaw Falling into Place is a little up-tempo number placed nicely at the end of the album to cheer you up a little. Yorke’s lyrics are as ever oblique and cryptic, with the notable exception of the first line of House of Cards when he borders on the romantic: “I don’t want to be your friend; I just want to be your lover”.

Released on the internet in the absence of a record label: In Rainbows is a flowing triumph for one of Britain’s best ever bands. These songs will not knock you off your feet; they’ll just bore their way into your head instead.

Available now at www.radiohead.com Discboxes available 3rd December 2007

VIBE PREDICTION 5/5

You can listen to one of the standout tracks, House of Cards, by clicking on the video below:

So the rhyme goes like this:

“Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot… I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot”

Today is the 5th of November, which to most of the British is just as significant as Halloween, which we all celebrated last week. The story behind the rhyme is an interesting one and outside of the UK, it is not perhaps as well known as it should be. It all goes back to a chap called Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up the King of England.

Catholics and Protestants

The 16th century was not one of the best for people interested in religion. Martin Luther got fed up with the Catholic Church and nailed his 95 thesis to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in what is now Germany. This got everybody all worked up for a few years and this new protest movement (which soon ended up with the name protestants) decided to fight against the power of the Catholic Church. For the next eighty years, the protestants became more and more powerful, whilst the Catholics relatiated by burning as many of them as they could lay there hands on. And if they couldn’t burn them they excommunicated them (which in the 16th century was about as bad as it got).

Bloody English

England was one of the most troublesome of all the countries. Henry VIII started everything off, when he used the protestant cause as a good chance to get rid of his Catholic wife: Catherine of Aragon. He then stole all of the money from all of the monasteries and got Pope Leo X in a very bad mood indeed.

Even when old Henry died in 1547, things didn’t get better. His daughter Mary seized the throne and tried to restore the Catholic faith in England. She did this by force and ended up burning so many Protestants that she earned herself the nickname, “Bloody Mary”.

Happily for the protestants in England, Mary died of cancer in 1558 and her little sister Elizabeth (of the Armada fame) took over the top job. She tried to keep both the Protestants and the Catholics happy, which she did (more or less) for the next forty “glorious” years.

King James

Anyway. all good things come to an end, and Elizabeth finally bought it in 1603. The Virgin Queen had rather unsurprisingly managed not to produce any children (any suggestions as to why) during her reign and so therefore a distant Scottish relative of hers took over instead. King James I was a funny old man: he was fat, suffered flatulence and was worried that he was going to be assassinated by a mad man carrying a knife.

He sort of got it right. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who was annoyed with the treatment of other Catholics in England. He blamed the King for this and therefore became part of a plot with a number of others to blow the King into the sky. The plan was to wait until the state opening of Parliament and then ignite a large pile of gunpowder. Scientists have suggested that if Fawkes had been successful he would have blown a hole the size of the Bernabeu in the middle of London.

As you’ve probably guessed, someone foiled the plan. Guy Fawkes was chopped up into lots of pieces, and every year the Britons celebrate the fact that their king was not murdered. They do this by making a large fire and exploding lots of fireworks. It is a little like the British equivalent of the Valencian festival of Las Fallas.