AudioShocker

I've never been one to pride myself on topicality, preferring to analyze cultural on-goings from a safe hermeneutical distance (I think I was a sophomore in college the first time I heard the word "hermeneutic;" it was in a talk about new advances in understanding the psycho-physiology of deafness and interpreting Beethoven with computers (or something like that), at Carnegie Mellon. Which was mostly a bunch of fuzzy musicological clap-trap, but did cause me to then go home and look more into what hermeneutics were, and then to spam the music school's dlist with a definition of hermeneutics (having been fairly well convinced that most of us in the audience had no idea what the aforementioned musicologist was talking about), but here I am now, using the word "hermeneutical" in an ironic sense, but in a sense that sincerely carries an understanding of what hermeneutics are (so I'm not sure if I'm thanking that musicologist or not)), but with the release of their newest album in pay-what-we-say online format--as I emailed to my friend Dan, whose favorite band is Radiohead, this morning--I've got to say it: your favorite band sucks.

Exhibit A

For a long time, I really prided myself on my thorough-going ambivalence to The Radioheads. By the time I was aware of their presence on the pop music scene (via friends listening to "Creep" or those animated videos from OK Computer) I understood to write them off as "whiny post-grunge opportunists" and "tools of the corporate hit-making apparatus." So even tho OK Computer came out at a time when my susceptibility to such things should have been quite high (I was a sophomore in high school), I never even bothered to listen to the album straight through.

In fact, I made it all the way through college (when Kid A and Amnesiac were released to massive accolades) without ever listening to OK Computer all the way through (though I did give at least cursory listends to the aforementioned smash electronica hit albums). It wasn't until I went to graduate school for the first time (Fall 2004) that I finally listened to OK Computer straight down (due in some part, I'm sure, to the fact that one of my roommates that year was the aforementioned Dan, whose favorite band The Radioheads are). To put it succinctly: I didn't realize what a good band Radiohead was until Coldplay came out.

And then Radiohead did their whole In Rainbows thing, which liked more for the "pay what you want" model of its release. The album itself was pretty lame, and I was sad to read/see interviews where the band talked about how much they liked it (I thought Hail to the Thief was way better). But it was nice to see some anarcho-socialist principles in play with an album self-released outside of the accepted corporate-driven control structures of pop music, with consumers empowered to pay what they believed the content of the album to be worth. And some of the tracks were fine.

But now, with The King of Limbs, we're back to paying standard-issue fees for digital versions of the album ($9? Get out of here...). And Radiohead have proven themselves as just another pop band churning out singles (see the above video), not really interested in pushing forward their music stylistically, or continuing to sit on the forward guard of the new music market. Oh well. A band that was pretty interesting there, for a few years, is boring again. Yawn.