Lately, I have been thinking about the “feeling of place” that each Radiohead album gives me. As I have done so, it has become clear to which albums I am most attached. Some of these associations came quickly, without even trying. Others took a bit of thought. One embodies my life experience completely.
A Moon Shaped Pool is almost certainly made for a windy day on the beach by the sea, Daydreaming – “wind rushing around my open heart.” A day that that ends with bon fires on the beach (“the one you light your fires to keep away”) and True Love Waits closing out the night.
In Rainbows is for an evening at a lake, overnight and in the north, with Videotape coming on just as the very first twinges of light peak over the horizon, giving the lake water hues of green and blue.
OK Computer is made to be listened to while in the woods. There is an eerie magic that occurs when you’re listening to Climbing up the Walls and a chorus of birds chimes in. The pairing is something else. But, I also like the juxtaposition of an album called OK Computer and the themes of work and home and the use of technology being brought to bear in the middle of the woods, away from all those things.
The only reasonable way to listen to Amnesiac is lying flat in the middle of the floor, sometimes thrashing to I might be wrong or Hunting Bears, but otherwise just soaking it in.
I struggled a bit on where to place The Bends and Hail to the Thief, but I think, ultimately, both albums belong squarely in the midst of suburbia, daily tribulations, social and political paranoia, a desperate struggle to navigate, and, ultimately, a need to escape the mundanity of it all.
It was difficult to place King of Limbs. But, I have this memory of listening to Codex while overlooking a lake in Tahoe, and I think maybe that’s a fitting landscape for KoL as a whole — in the mountains, valleys nearby, lakes scattered.
I’ve left two albums off of this list at this point: Pablo Honey and Kid A. I truly have no feeling at all toward Pablo Honey. So, I’ll say that one belongs at the MTV Beach House. (Okay, I do like a couple of the songs, but it is definitely on a different tier of my music listening habits than the rest of the albums).
But Kid A. This album has not been saved for last because I don’t know what to feel about it but because I have so much that I feel about it. Kid A, more than any other album, is a journey. Everything In Its Right Place is the start of a day, Idioteque deserves to be blasted from the car stereo as you speed down the freeway, and Motion Picture Soundtrack is a melting of the self into its own grandiose melancholy and self-pity, to be listened to while pressed firmly into the earth by the weight of anything and everything that loves you – that you love.
Kid A is an intimate walk through, what I have always interpreted as, the lifecycle of a depression that you don’t come back from (not the same, anyway) (followed so perfectly by Amnesiac, a defiant proclamation of resignation that can be carried onward into perpetuity).
Everything In Its Right Place (EIIRP) starts the album ironically – “Everything [is] in its right place,” so why do I feel this way – why did I wake up “sucking on a lemon”? It follows, “there are two colors in my head” – voices saying “This is fine,” and “What is that you tried to say.” EIIRP is the start of a meltdown that builds up and leads straight into Kid A, which more explicitly vocalizes the irony in EIIRP – “I slipped on a little white lie.”
Kid A comes in like the pied piper leading the children astray – your thoughts being pulled down this road toward the “shadows at the end of [your] bed” – going through the motions (“heads on sticks”), behaving as you’re expected (“you’ve got ventriloquists”). Kid A is a cool dance into chaos.
Enter the cacophony of a breakdown – “everyone has got the fear.” The National Anthem brings you to this claustrophobic space, everyone crowding around, closing in, anxiety abound, you take a breath but it holds on, leading you to this ultimate let down of feeling – I can’t keep up with this chaos in my head, “that there, that’s not me.”
And so How To Disappear Completely (HTDC) is a desperate cry – I shouldn’t be here, I’m not actually here anyway, “this isn’t happening.” It is a descent into the desire to calmly float away on the current and cease to exist in a reality that has become too much to bear, away from the “strobe lights and blown speakers” into nothingness, a calm, absent existence.
Treefingers is the realization of this, a period of calm that comes with the surrender into absence, but which also strangely makes you forget the reasons you wanted to disappear in the first place, or at least fades the urgency of them, a resignation that somehow leads to optimism.
And there comes a day that you believe it will all be okay, that you are trying, there is triumph in that, cutting through the “flies buzzing ‘round [your] head.” Optimistic is the hope that a repeated mantra becomes truth – “this one went to market, this one just came out of the swamp” and “if you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough.” There is a sense that this is a farce, but perhaps one that you are capable of living with. Maybe.
Still, you find yourself spiraling down trapdoors, away from the appeal of optimism into a no-man’s land, realizing you’ve been “living in a fantasy world.” In Limbo has you teetering on the edge, falling backwards into the futility, the frustration, of feeling removed from understanding your own thoughts (“I’ve got a message I can’t read”).
Dropping into Idioteque, the climax of anxiety and anger that the world (your world, your old world), is coming to an end (“ice age coming”). The development of a detached indifference: “I’ll laugh until my head comes off” and “throw it in the fire.” An ultimate recognition that “this is really happening” in juxtaposition with HTDC, a release that allows you to feel alive in these moments of anguished indifference before fully embracing the freedom this gives you.
Freedom that comes ringing like a Morning Bell, an awakening into the cold comfort of monotony. There is an almost joyous plea, “Release me,” repeating, the protagonist walking, walking, walking, walking…
…right into Motion Picture Soundtrack, a desire to sleep it off, “red wine and sleeping pills,” pulling you to where you belong, crazy as you might be, into the next life.
And, Untitled, the arrival of the final moment, the reunion with your true self, a relief.
– jennifer
Keep it light, and 