By Will James

When Radiohead’s “OK Computer” emerged in 1997, critics and fans called it “the future of rock.” Ten years later, in 2007, when Radiohead announced that their seventh album, “In Rainbows,” would be available on the internet on a “choose your own price” system, the international media lauded it as “the future of the music industry.”

Since the release of “In Rainbows” yesterday, it has become apparent that Radiohead has embodied a third, more subtle future – one that will delight some listeners and doubtlessly frustrate others.

This future is most apparent in the contrasts between “In Rainbows” and 2003’s “Hail to the Thief,” Radiohead’s last album. “Hail to the Thief” was an exercise in atmosphere – an atmosphere of despair, paranoia and, more than anything, a ghoulish creepiness that was present in the lyrics, the composition and the production. “Hail to the Thief” was unified by the nightmare landscape it evoked. Each song contributed to a single (although somewhat vague) impressionistic vision – a collage of the grays, browns and blacks of a haunted forest. Less substantial songs that might be deemed “skip-able” on their own were present because they contributed to the unification of the album unit.

“In Rainbows,” on the other hand, rings like a short “best of” collection. It features a stylistically diverse field of largely stand-alone tracks. The record, after all, is a collection of songs written over ten years – “Nude,” for instance, dates back to the “OK Computer” era. But this disjointed quality, industry scholars say, will be the future of the album.

The advent and evolution of the Internet has transformed the way people consume music. With peer-to-peer downloading software and more legitimate systems like iTunes, the emphasis has been taken off the “album unit” and put on the individual song. Extremists might herald the death of the “art of the album” altogether, and prophesize a future of artists toiling solely in pursuit of singles. This would indeed be a cheapening of the art of music, however unlikely it is. But it demonstrates the direction in which things are moving.

While “In Rainbows” is also an apt example, I acknowledge that its “futuristic” quality is probably accidental. But it’s hard to ignore. Abstract little skip-over tracks have been part of Radiohead’s identity since “OK Computer,” which featured “Fitter Happier,” a two-minute foray into a strange universe of computer-voice poetry and distant, haunting sounds. Every album since – “Kid A,” “Amnesiac,” Hail to the Thief,” – has been leagued in some sort of thematic cohesion, building a distinct atmospheric identity.

The ability of the newest album to borrow so eclectically from each of its predecessors defies our efforts to consolidate its ten tracks, and package them neatly into the “In Rainbows” part of our brains. The aurora borealis, “sunlight through glass” quality that unified “Kid A” is present in some of the best work on “In Rainbows” – “Nude,” “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” and “Reckoner.” The heavier, more straightforward styling of “The Bends,” constantly rears its head, surprisingly, after a 12-year hiatus. “In Rainbows” dredges up old things, like the introverted, personal themes of early Radiohead, and introduces new subtleties, like a fixation with string orchestration (probably a result of guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s recent tenure as a composer).

But there is almost nothing that allows our subconscious to reign in these ten individualists, each of them weighty and substantial. They would almost beg to be consumed as individual digital packages by casual listeners, if the entire album weren’t already (potentially) free (although Wired would disagree). After listening to “In Rainbows” from start to finish for the first time, it’s only natural to skip around – no quality of the album sparks the urge to experience it in any specific order, or as a unit. After all is said and done, it seems all too reasonable to sort the tracks on “In Rainbows” based on what previous album they could have fit on, rather than recognize their federation.

This quality might excite the demographic of casual fans who, over the years, have complained that shifty abstractions like “Treefingers” and “Hunting Bears” have stolen away from albums like “Kid A” and “Amnesiac.” But, in a way, Radiohead has been a master of “the art of the album” since “OK Computer,” and, at first, it’s a little sad to see them squander the potential in this case. It is painful to see Radiohead distancing themselves from an artistic tradition (the “art of the album”) that could benefit so much from their experience and their vision. But I’d like to think that Radiohead, in this case, found that they had the perfect pallet of songs – a circle of cutting identities and glowing personalities – that thematic unification wasn’t necessary. After all, a thematic piece like “Kid A” or “Hail to the Thief” requires that certain tracks acknowledge their own weakness, and submit themselves to stronger ones.

To put it another way, no matter how many times I listen to the album, “In Rainbows” remains, well, a rainbow. After each play, the tracks reveal undiscovered depth and beauty, but they each remain a distinct color, a sovereign stripe. The growth is purely in the vertical dimension. In the end, despite initial skepticism, I can admit this works very much in Radiohead’s favor – while no stripes blend, enough listens allows you to see them side-by-side, and the resulting imagine, in the horizontal, shares the glorious artistic symmetry of a physical rainbow. “Bodysnatchers” is a deep toxic green, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” a crystal blue, “All I Need,” a soft red glow.

But I fear a lesser band would fail where Radiohead managed to succeed. And so, I do not give my official endorsement to “In Rainbows” as the model for the album of the future. The structure is unstable enough to ruin countless potential albums, and dangerously alter the context in which we think about music. A market reluctant to consume whole albums yields artists in pursuit of “the single” which, in turn, results in the loss of “album” as an “art.” Radiohead, in my opinion, earned their right to forsake, (or transcend?) the “art of the album” – they’ve spent most of their career paying tribute to it. Anything but a full rainbow, in all its glory, and the structure collapses, degenerating over time into a trite artistic economy. In the end, something is lost.

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