My first time was with a sinewy, tatted record store clerk. Jet-black locks swirled around his glassy eyes. An aquiline nose sheltered sharply shaved lines of facial hair, which converged around his smirking lips. His frame showed no evidence of strain from pulling a dolly loaded with several boxes: his shirt, more fitting on a mechanic, hung loosely on its wiry mantel. The nametag on his shirt read “Butch.” I was too young to know whether that was supposed to be ironic or flippant posturing. He contorted his wraith-like body around a worn wooden counter, which was laminated with promotions, posters of shows of now-defunct bands, and a hand-written note about the merits of washing your hands before handling merchandise. Butch pulled out a box cutter, slicing open the first box to reveal several dozen black jewel cases. Each case had the whitewashed silhouette of a distorted mountain peak with the large, blanched KID A text hovering above it. I approached Butch and could focus only on his hand as he held out the case. As I accepted his offer, he drawled, “You should just wait for the vinyl.” I promptly threw down exact change and rushed out. My wait for the midnight release of the new Radiohead album had ended.

I have always considered the record store release as a rite of passage. Even in an age of leaks and iTunes-exclusive peeks, there is still a redeeming quality in the purchase of the physical album. In the best cases, it acts as visual accoutrement to the music; in the worst, it is excess wrapping and an eyesore. Several weeks ago, I sat in front of my computer and downloaded Radiohead’s internet-only release of In Rainbows. This time, like the rest of the devoted, I turned on, downloaded, and tuned out. No Butch, no clammy anticipation fulfilled by fumbling with a cellophane wrapper; just a hollow chime to indicate that the file was successfully downloaded. 

Radiohead exists in a realm where criticism and praise have little to no meaning. They are sailing in unchartered waters, and as captains of their own ship (artistically and financially), they do as they please. They have chosen a Yeatsian path, where self-referential symbolism and traditional structures coexist. The skittering “15 Step” is not unlike “Packt like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Can,” the clanking opener on their 2001 release, Amnesiac. But what had been empty clattering stripped lifeless has been replaced with a gentler, more sanguine tone. Lead Thom Yorke sings, “How come I end up where I started?” expressing a bizarre orbit where danger of the tether being cut seems ever looming.

In Rainbows reveals that Radiohead no longer needs to induce some seismic shift in their crafting of songs. It is a unified, intimate tome of a band comfortable with their artistic selves. This is perhaps because the band has grasped subtlety in their delivery; they need not wrap each song in a dramatic, synthetic skin. Hushed threats on “Nude” become a sardonic, oddly beautiful pledge (“Don’t get any big ideas/They are not going to happen”) set to strings. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is a delicate song that devolves into a series of manic melodies, each layered on top of the other. “Faust/Arp,” for lack of a better comparison, becomes their “Blackbird.”

Yet the real jewel of the album is its emotional coda. “Videotape” starts with a simple piano progression as Thom Yorke’s voice cuts on top of the piano. The song propels forward with Yorke’s droning falsetto repeatedly multiplied and a percussive track that begins to break apart into machine-like gyration as soon as it enters. As the song approaches a fracturing climax, it stalls and then rests itself in the confines of a one-minute long outro. Just as the protagonist sees himself/herself broken down on videotape “in red, blue, green,” and “spinning out of control,” we come to a stuttering halt.