Why In Rainbows is better than HTTT even though I haven't heard it yet.

I'm going to be honest here. I'm a rabid Radiohead fan.

If the title of the new album is any indication, then I'm probably gay for Radiohead. Like any fan, I await each release with eager anticipation, and this is probably one of my most anticipated. People attach memories to historic events - as with the "where were you when such and such happened?" questions. I do that, only with Radiohead albums. I remember staying up all night on my 56k modem connection downloading a pre-release of Amnesiac. I remember sitting in Regan's car after he finished a long day at the Brewhouse, listening to an entire leaked, unmixed version of Hail to the Thief.

Recently I've come to realize the genius of HTTT. For a while I had only seen its flaws - some of the songs are based around reoccurring, monotonous progressions and a lot of the lyrics seemed somehow unfinished or obvious in their delivery. Looking at the album now though, I see HTTT as quite an accomplishment. Myxomatosis and Go to Sleep are both amazing compositions, with complicated time structures and great melodies. Perhaps the largest weakness of the album is that it is in fact not an album at all, but more or less a collection of songs. HTTT's length and strange tracklisting have always presented a challenge for me. There's songs I skip and songs I wish were shorter. There's very little about the disc that's fluid, especially in light of albums like Kid A, which demand one, solid listen all the way through. It's disjointed and unforgiving in one sense. On the other hand, HTTT taken as a kick-in-the-face rock-record works much more in favor of the disc'c challenging dynamic. The cd has more energy than a lot of the more modern works the band has done. It has attitude and energy that makes Amnesiac seem like an auditory Vallium.

With the advent of In Rainbow's release however, I think we'll soon see a new shift in Radiohead's sound and feel - perhaps not dramatic, but certainly new in many aspects. The reason I know I'm going to love this album lies partly in the fact that after having heard most of the material, my love for these new songs has only grown stronger with time. The rest is, well, my gut. And my gut never lies. Boosh.