Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainard Jalen
Disagree entirely. Radiohead are not so inaccessible such that their albums are worthy of being characterized "slow burners". Radiohead is, essentially, pop. Even Thom Yorke would say so. Pop is the aim. It's supposed to be gratifying without too much effort on the listener's part to see "beyond the surface" so to speak.
It is, I believe, a very grave misunderstanding of Radiohead to see their music as being difficult. This is born witness to by the general reaction to it. For example, most people either loved or hated In Rainbows from the word go. If anything, what was more commonly seen was that people were waxing lyrical over it to start off with, only to be saying a few months down the line that it wasn't quite so great as they'd initially felt.
Neither was Kid A difficult. It was only judged as such because it wasn't what OK Computer fans had expected or wanted. Hail To The Thief is a bunch of easy tracks. Amnesiac is perhaps 'difficult', but simply because it's mostly a bunch of rubbish B-material from the Kid A sessions.
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I personally think a lot of those who immediately 'love or hate' a Radiohead album are doing so insincerely. Their material is released to such fanfare these days that everybody just has to have an opinion asap. And if you look back in this thread, you'll see a good few people who, like myself, cannot commit to a definitive opinion on KOL.
At the very core of their compositions, on CERTAIN albums and songs, may be a pop sensibility, but even then that merely constitutes the skeleton of the song, the band layers it in texture, rhythms, electronics, atmospherics, studio manipulations, warped melodies/progressions... there is just too much to take in with just a couple of listens, too much subtext to decipher. This certainly applies to King of Limbs. It generally takes me a couple of months to fully absorb a Radiohead album.
And I completely disagree with your opinion of Amnesiac but I'm not going to get into a debate about that.