Top 25 Albums Of The Decade (#10)

10) RADIOHEAD – In Rainbows (2007)

The ondes Martenot is a strange instrument. Invented in 1928, this organ-cum-theremin-cum-WTF has been used in a handful of movie soundtracks from the 1950s, obscure classical pieces and “Good Vibrations.” The playing technique is similar to that of a stringed instrument—a metal ring is placed on the player’s index finger, which is slid laterally up and down the base of the keyboard. The notes correspond to the ring’s placement (i.e. if the ring hovers in front of the C note, a C note will play), while the opposite hand fiddles around with a control box called a tiroir (the harder you push, the louder it plays). The actual sound produced by the ondes Martenot depends on the setting that the player selects, but typically sounds a lot like a ghostly violin, or a mutant clarinet, or high-pitched female vocals, or a UFO landing. It has been called “the most human-sounding electronic instrument ever invented.” Or, possibly, a “violin for people who don’t know how to play violin.” But as I was saying, the ondes Martenot seems to be a perfect avatar for what Radiohead has stood for in the oughties—electronic, alien, arcane and yet somehow still pumping hot blood to a four-ventricled heart. Maybe it has a lot to do with Thom Yorke and his wailing four-year-old histrionics—“Come on man, tell us how you really feel!” I often wonder what he’s like at parties, or if he is even invited to them after pissing off just about everybody in the music business from Miley Cyrus to Kanye West to The Fiery Furnaces. Yeah, the band are huge assholes from all accounts. But who cares? They deserve to be. I mean, come on, they released this album for free—two months before the physical CD hit stores (I admit that I still don’t own it), which further pissed off other artists (most of whom don’t sell millions of records and therefore look like corporate whores for not doing the same thing). But I digress. Ondes Martenot, pouty Thom Yorke, music business—all of this smacks of a writer who doesn’t have anything important to say because everyone else has already said it. Or because Radiohead’s music is pretty much impossible to talk about in terms of celestas, ondes Martenots, sequencers and whatever other instruments they’re using. I guess I could have talked about the headbangingly-danceable “Bodysnatchers,” or the terrifying lounge music of “All I Need,” or the soul-vortex of “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi,” or “Videotape” in general. But fuck it. I’ve got shit to do.