This thread got me listening to In Rainbows again after a long break. It's really fucking good.

yeah i really dont like them. Specially that king of limbs crap, but its been a long fucking time since i heard the others, honestly i prefer to hear those songs live...im not a radiohead diehard fan.

Gotcha. Just curious because our rankings are so similar. But I adore Amnesiac. Was going to recommend it to you if you hadn't heard it. But if you don't like it, you don't like it.

I need to listen to King Of Limbs again. It's the only Radiohead album I quit on after two listens. I really didn't like it.

What about 'Hail To The Thief'?

HTTT has some great songs, man. I remember being baffled when it came out. And I HAD to listen to it. Like a code I had to crack. I needed to understand that album and I listened to it eight, nine times a day for the first month that I owned it.

Ill give it another try because you know about this shit. I was really young when kid a and amnesiac came out, i was thrilled about having another good rock album and they gave me some electronic thing...at the time i didnt know what to do.
Still Kid A was the weird difficult record i know it was good ( kinda like when Binaural came out), but Amnesiac didnt do that for me.
Ill give it another try..

[/quote]What about 'Hail To The Thief'?[/quote]

Again, i thought it was going to be something else...didnt like it at all.

I love HTTT. Absolutely one of my favorite RH albums.

When is the last time you listened to this:

Shit, man. I don't know anything. It's all just opinions. But I remember being pretty let down by Kid A when it dropped. That album took longer to grow on me than any other Radiohead album. But Amnesiac grabbed me immediately. I thought, "see, this is what the last album should have been!" Now, maybe Kid A prepared me for Amnesiac more than OK Computer prepared me for Kid A. I don't know. But I've never been one of those fans that likes when bands repeat themselves.

Kid A
OK Computer
In Rainbows
Hail to the Thief
Amnesiac
The Bends
King of Limbs

I admittedly have not heard Pablo Honey. To my ears, they've never made a bad record.

I'll tell you one thing... 2+2=5 is fucking gorgeous. That should be at the top of my 'best-of Radiohead' list, for sure. Wow.

In Rainbows
OK Computer
King of Limbs
Amnesiac
Hail to the Thief
Kid A

The Bends
Pablo Honey

I'm giving HTTT a spin.

So far the first three tracks are even better than I remember. This thing is kinda kicking my ass right now.

I Will.... ? MAN!

And right into Drunken Punchup. I actually smiled because of how cool that transition is.

Joey (and anyone else), what was it about The King of Limbs that didn't resonate with you?

I'm honestly not sure. It's been a long time. I downloaded it the day it was officially released in the US. I listened to it and it didn't do anything for me. I gave it a few days and tried again, but still nothing grabbed me. I haven't listened to it since.

Truly, I don't remember a single thing about a single song on the album. I just remember that it sounded bland, repetitive, boring, and played out upon first listen. Sorry, I can't be more specific.

The absence of any memorable melodies. Melody is one of Radiohead's strongest suits, even in their deliberately "difficult" records, and in TKOL it was more-or-less abandoned for an emphasis on dense textures and rhythm.

That makes sense. I tend to value melody. Even in cheesy songs. So the absence of melody might be a major reason why nothing stands out to me and the album is largely forgettable.

Good call, Jorge.

Do you mean that the song structures are repetitive or that each track on the album sounds the same? If it's the latter then I couldn't disagree more.

Weird. I've never thought that. I mean yes, I have certainly thought that there are dense textures on TKOL, but a lack of melody?

I'm not sure TKOL is a great record as a whole, but Bloom and Lotus Flower are easily some of my favourite songs these guys have produced. Feral is really fantastic too.

I like some of the material on the semi-contemporaneous singles better than that on the album proper, particularly The Butcher, The Daily Mail and Staircase.