Current Best Song in the World: "We Suck Young Blood" - Radiohead
It's the handclaps that sell it - the relentless move deathward, the flatness of it. The bass flops like a dark joke. Thom Yorke is absolutely broken: the bravado of "You and Whose Army" has been crushed by "Life in a Glass House." The daring was shown to be foolishness - there's no one left to laugh at (to taunt) but himself. It's an inevitable move towards oblivion, now: Yorke's hope was fully, grotesquely, hilariously wrong. "Pyramid Song"'s black angels now swarm - they're everywhere - singing sweetly, lulling, staring with whiteless onyx eyes... The piano breakdown in the last third - feverish, a desperate assertion of life - suggests the horn-led revolution of "National Anthem," but here it is oh-so-quickly halted by the malachim. The blue stained-glass windows rise into an infinite night: "young blood" plummets from the heavens, fast asleep, falling into the angel's open mouths, onto their moonwhite teeth.
The record, as I said, is good, but it is not astonishing. I have quite a lot of faith, however, that the finished, mastered version (which this is not) may be possessed of that missing secret.
wolf at the door is a better song. well, more fun. is this "not the real mix" thing true? Couldn't I just log on as Nigel Godrich onto the message board and tell them the opposite? I'm glad you liked this week's column, too bad it turned cliche for you. But reality can't be cliche, that really happened. Love, Nathan.
Posted by: Nathan at April 3, 2003 03:36 AM