polaroids of androids

Regardless of how you feel about the "pay-what-you-want" release strategy employed by Radiohead for their new album In Rainbows - which, depending on who you ask is either the revolution the music industry needed or a cheeky way to make a few million on what is essentially a highly planned and well orchestrated leak, the quality of which is no higher than you would have found on a torrent site had some crafty sound engineer with a bone to pick beaten the band to the web - the album itself, to be fair, should be taken on it's own merits. And in that regard, it's almost faultless.

Not often are bands so consistent. So comfortable working through different genres, layers, levels and facets. So complex yet so effortless. Simply gliding above any competition in terms of composition or production or execution. Quite simply, this album is Radiohead being Radiohead. It's not their "most-accessible since OK Computer". It's not "a return to normality after Amnesiac or Kid A". It's just their natural progression, the only thing they know how to do, and - fortunately for them and us as listeners - the thing they do better than any other band on the planet.

15 Step is a good example. The opening track of the album not only starts the record off with a bang, but could also be included on the next Krumping compilation CD. Bodysnatchers would fit perfectly on Guitar Hero 4, but still sounds like only Radiohead could have written it. All I Need somehow mixes a hip-hop beat into a moody down-tempo number. All this diversity, yet nothing seems out of place and in contrast, every head-exploding moment actually seems to be complimented and enhanced by the ones that have come before it.

But the point is that it's simply par for the course for Radiohead. While it's not hard to get excited about such a high quality album, the fact is that they've been doing this for the better part of 15 years, so we should have expected it. Clever record company bypassing tricks aside, when it comes down to it Radiohead are a band that can be relied upon to make great music. Every time.