The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Radiohead · produced by Nigel Godrich and Radiohead · Parlophone · fourteen tracks, about 56 minutes
Mode
Rock and electronic idioms joined in one quickly made record; protest told in the forms of the nursery
Mythos
A children’s book of terrors in the bracketed titles, with the Flood beneath it; the wolf, the king and the little man named, not built
Phase
Fourteen tracks; a waking at the start, There There at the centre, private songs set as pauses inside the alarm, a wolf at the door at the end
Presentation
Album; fourteen tracks, about fifty-six minutes, every track with a second title in brackets; a sleeve of road-map paintings by Stanley Donwood
Register
A voice from murmur to howl to falsetto; stacked toms, fuzz and synthesiser bass, laptop textures, piano ballads and a spoken rant over a waltz
Scale
One parent in a frightened year: a child, a bed, a marriage, and the state heard as slogans through the wall
Governing Proposition
A band at the height of its standing brings its guitar records and its electronic records into one room, makes the album quickly and close to live, and gives every song a second title from the nursery, so that a year of manufactured fear is told as a fairy tale for a frightened child. The record wakes with a plug going into an amplifier and ends with a wolf at the door.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with a plug going into an amplifier. A guitar is switched on, a voice comes in murmuring, half awake, as if it had been dreaming, and the first song, 2 + 2 = 5, keeps its murmur until, at its midpoint, it breaks into a howl. The title is Orwell’s arithmetic of the enforced lie, and the bracket beside it, The Lukewarm., comes from Revelation, where the lukewarm are spat out. Before a listener has made out a line, the record has stated its terms: a citizen waking late into a lie he has half accepted, and a voice that rises from drowsiness to alarm in one vertical turn.
Radiohead released the album on 9 June 2003, on Parlophone in Britain and Capitol in the United States, produced by Nigel Godrich and the band: fourteen tracks in about fifty-six minutes, in a sleeve of road-map paintings by Stanley Donwood. It followed records that had set the band’s guitars aside for electronic sound, and it brings the two idioms into one room. Guitars, drums and laptops share the same songs, and the record was made quickly and nearer to live playing than its predecessors, so that its surface is rougher and its energy more direct.
That joining is the record’s method more than its discovery. Myxomatosis and Backdrifts carry the electronic language into band songs; There There makes a rock song of massed drums; Sail to the Moon and Scatterbrain return to the ballad. The devices had been proven, most of them by the band itself, and the record wagers little on them. What is new is not the sound but the frame laid over it. Every track carries a second title in brackets, and the second titles change what the record is.
Movement II
Sit Down. Stand Up. is also Snakes & Ladders. Where I End and You Begin is also The Sky is Falling in. There There is The Boney King of Nowhere, and A Wolf at the Door is It Girl. Rag Doll. Many of the bracketed titles come from the nursery, from children’s games, rhymes and fairy tales, and set beside the adult titles they turn the record into a children’s book of terrors. Each song is read twice: once as news of a frightened year, and once as the story a parent tells a child about a world he cannot explain.
Over that frame lies a second, older one: the Flood. Sail to the Moon is sung to a newborn who will build an ark; rain falls through Sit Down. Stand Up. as the song builds; cold water runs through the closing tracks. The goblins of The Gloaming belong to the first frame, the ark and the rain to the second, and the two meet in the fear for a child. The fairy tale bears load. It is how a parent shields a child, and it is also how the powerful tell the citizen that all is well, so that one form carries both the comfort and the lie.
What the frame does not do is make a figure. The wolf, the boney king and the little man of Go to Sleep are named, not built; no song lets one of them act out the pattern the titles promise. The frame lives in the titles and in Donwood’s maps more than in the songs, and many songs could take another bracket without loss. The record builds a mythic field that holds and leaves it unpeopled: myth made structural in the frame, and evoked rather than built within the songs it frames.
Movement III
Sail to the Moon is the record’s private counterweight. Piano and a high, unstrained voice float a song to a newborn: he may grow up to be president, and should know right from wrong; he may build an ark when the waters rise. It is the warmest height on the record and the one place where the public dread is answered rather than suffered. Its placement, third, early inside the alarm, sets the terms for everything after: whatever the songs report of the world, they report it with a child in the room.
What the record discloses can be stated, and the statement holds: in a time of manufactured fear the citizen is made complicit by drowsiness, and the private life, a child, a bed, a marriage, is where the public lie arrives. Go to Sleep sets the little man being erased to a jaunty acoustic figure, so that the erasure sounds like a song for falling asleep. I Will imagines a bunker underground. Where I End and You Begin carries the same condition in its alarm figures, and the guitar in Backdrifts that will not resolve carries it without words at all.
The disclosure is carried by sound as fully as by words, and the sound is credited. What holds it back is how much of it stays dread. The words come as fragments and as slogans overheard, and what they state about complicity and fear was common ground in 2003. The record is a mood with a target. It knows what it is afraid of and whom it blames, and it puts the fear where fear is felt, in the nursery and the bedroom, but it renders that condition more often than it articulates it.
Movement IV
There There, ninth of fourteen and one of the two longest tracks, is the record’s summit. Toms are stacked beneath a guitar figure that circles for minutes, the song held back and held back until the release comes, and its warning turns into a hymn. The drums are placed so that the song moves forward as one body; the making and the height are the same thing. Its bracket, The Boney King of Nowhere, gives the centre of the record to the fairy tale, and its double mood, comfort and warning in one breath, is the record’s in small.
Elevation comes often elsewhere, mostly dreadful. Where I End and You Begin rides a driving bass under keening synthesiser, its bass and drums locked; Myxomatosis rises on a ground-shaking fuzz and a pressed menace, a sound that is its content; 2 + 2 = 5 breaks vertically at its midpoint. Six or seven of fourteen tracks rise, and the highest is high, though not the highest the medium has reached. Godrich and the band keep this dense, quickly made record legible, and where idea and sound are one, in There There, Myxomatosis and Sail to the Moon, the making carries the song.
Between the heights lie duplications. Backdrifts and The Gloaming are two takes on one electronic unease, set on stock textures, and the record survives losing either. We Suck Young Blood holds one idea for five minutes; A Punchup at a Wedding is a grudge in a groove, arranged as a sketch; Scatterbrain is lovely and slight. The speed of the making shows in a flatness of some mixes. The record’s length is not the charge. The charge is that these pairs do the same work, and that the second half runs as a sequence of strong single tracks more than as a passage.
Movement V
The record ends at the door. A Wolf at the Door is a spoken rant over a waltz, the words tumbling against the lilt of the waltz, and its bracket, It Girl. Rag Doll., keeps the nursery to the last. The threat that has hung over the record since the first plug is at last on the step, and it is delivered flat, terror without a climax. The close is compelled: the fairy tale has been warning of a wolf since its first titles, and here it arrives, so that the record’s frame and its sequence end on the same figure.
The record was taken at first as a lesser successor and has been reheard since. There There became one of the band’s standard songs, and 2 + 2 = 5 is heard and played; the album as a whole is heard less, and it is often held the middle child of the catalogue. Its frame was among the earliest large-scale rock responses to the war on terror. Twenty-three years on it survives whole, in continuous print. Its title and its frame belong to 2003, and some of its laptop textures to their year, but its songs rarely name their moment, and the drowsy fear they hold is not fixed to it.
The record is a children’s book of terrors made by a band that knew its means. Its frame is built and its disclosure can be stated; its heights are real, There There above all; and one law, the public lie told as a fairy tale for a frightened child, reaches from the fuzz of Myxomatosis to the lullaby of Sail to the Moon. But the turn it made was onto proven ground, its figures are named and not built, and the world it holds is a mood more than an order. It does not define the music it belongs to. It is a serious record that has lasted, and it ends where its titles said it would.
Act III · The Twelve
Fourteen tracks in fifty-six minutes, and the spine is compelled. 2 + 2 = 5 must open, a plug going into an amplifier and a voice half awake. There There is the centre and the one long ascent. Sail to the Moon is the private counterweight to the public dread, and A Wolf at the Door, a spoken rant over a waltz, is the close the titles have promised, the threat at last on the step. Length is not the charge; duplication is. Backdrifts and The Gloaming are two takes on one electronic unease, and We Suck Young Blood and A Punchup at a Wedding each hold one idea past its use. One of each pair could go, and the argument would stand.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: in a time of manufactured fear the citizen is made complicit by drowsiness, and the private life, a child, a bed, a marriage, is where the public lie arrives. 2 + 2 = 5 takes its title from Orwell and its bracket from Revelation, the lukewarm spat out. Go to Sleep sets the little man being erased to a jaunty acoustic figure; Sail to the Moon tells a newborn he may grow up to be president and should know right from wrong. Sound carries it as fully as words. Held back because the words are fragments and overheard slogans, and much of what they state was common ground in 2003.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Elevation comes often, mostly dreadful, sometimes tender. There There is the summit: toms stacked under a guitar figure that circles for minutes until the release, a warning turned into a hymn. 2 + 2 = 5 breaks from its murmur into a howl at its midpoint. Sail to the Moon floats on piano and a high, unstrained voice, the warmest height on the record. Where I End and You Begin rides a driving bass under keening synthesiser; Myxomatosis has a ground-shaking fuzz; A Wolf at the Door is terror delivered flat. Backdrifts, The Gloaming and We Suck Young Blood have force or atmosphere rather than height. Six or seven of fourteen rise.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Myth is built in the frame. The bracketed titles turn the record into a children’s book of terrors: snakes and ladders, the sky falling in, a boney king of nowhere, a wolf at the door. Over it lies a second frame, the Flood: the newborn of Sail to the Moon who will build an ark, the rain of Sit Down. Stand Up., the cold water of the closing tracks. The fairy tale bears load: it is how a parent tells a child about a world he cannot explain, and how the powerful tell the citizen that all is well. What holds the axis is that no figure carries it: the wolf, the king and the little man are named, not built.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own: the guitar records of the 1990s, OK Computer among them, and the electronic records that began with Kid A. The turn is modest and was meant to be. The record joins the two idioms, guitar and laptop in one room, made quickly and nearer to live than before. Myxomatosis and Backdrifts carry the electronic language into band songs; There There makes a rock song of massed drums. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is the stake: each device had been proven, mostly by this band, and a group at the height of its standing returned to a path its audience knew. A wager on a proven path is not a swerve.
Score: 7.1 / 10
Change the form and some of the knowledge goes, because the form doubles every song. Each track carries two titles, one adult news and one nursery rhyme, and that doubling is the record’s argument: the same event heard by the citizen and told to the child. The sequence has a shape. It wakes with a plug and a dreaming voice, rises to There There at the centre and ends with the wolf at the door, and the private songs, Sail to the Moon, I Will and Scatterbrain, are set as pauses inside the alarm. What holds the figure is the second half, a run of strong single tracks more than a passage, and an electronic cluster whose songs do not answer one another.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Evidence first, and twenty-three years supply some. The record was taken at first as a lesser successor and has been reheard since, its standing rising rather than settling. The return in the record is real. The double titles ask for a second hearing, each song heard again under its other name; the drum and guitar parts of There There and Myxomatosis open on close listening; Sail to the Moon deepens with time. Against this, the words are fragments that yield what they suggest and not much more, the political frame has been read as plainly as it was meant, and part of the return is the pleasure of known songs.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The field is the album of the 2000s, rock and its neighbours. The record showed that a band could fold electronic textures and rock playing into one quick, live-made album, and could make protest out of nursery rhyme, telling a frightened year in the forms a parent uses at bedtime. That widened what a rock record could carry, but it reorganised little: it consolidated what the band had opened. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: There There became one of the band’s standard songs, and the record’s frame was among the earliest large-scale rock responses to the war on terror. No school or later record is traced to it.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Survival is weighed over twenty-three years. The form is whole: the record survives as issued, in continuous print, its order and double titles intact. Presence is wide but second-order. There There and 2 + 2 = 5 are heard and played; the album as a whole less, often held the middle child of the band’s catalogue, and popularity is presence, not proof. The fabric bears its year twice. The title and the frame of the war and the terror alerts are topical satire of 2003, lightened because the songs rarely name their moment; and the laptop textures of Backdrifts and The Gloaming are of their time. With both charges it stands level with Turn On the Bright Lights, of the year before, a tenth below In Rainbows, whose presence is wider, and below Fight Club, the novel, at 8.4 after thirty years.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with invention weighed elsewhere, is real and load-bearing in places. Nigel Godrich and the band keep a dense, quickly made record legible: the stacked toms of There There move the song forward as one body; the distorted synthesiser bass and pressed drums of Myxomatosis are the song’s content; Sail to the Moon balances piano and voice exactly, its falsetto the best singing on the record. The faults are several: the speed of the making flattens some mixes, Backdrifts and The Gloaming sit on stock electronic textures, and two songs are arranged as sketches. A rung below The Dark Side of the Moon and Low, each at 9.0.
Score: 8.4 / 10
One law governs the record: the public lie and the private fear, told as a fairy tale for a frightened child. The two most distant elements obey it. Myxomatosis, all fuzz and pressure, and Sail to the Moon, a piano lullaby, are the oppressor’s judgement and the parent’s reply; Go to Sleep’s folk figure and The Gloaming’s electronic murk are the same drowsiness, once dressed and once undressed. The range is wide, from rock and ballad to a spoken rant over a waltz, and the law reaches across it. What holds the figure is how it governs: by frame more than by sound, so that the guitar songs and the electronic songs are joined by their titles rather than fused.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, as dread, insomnia and complicity; the family, in Sail to the Moon and the fear for a child beneath the record. The state and war are present as slogans, a bunker, a judge and an executioner, and the media as the voice overheard in the last track. The natural order appears as weather, the sky falling, rain and leaves, and the sacred as the Flood and the lukewarm. One frame, the parent’s fairy tale, joins them. What holds the figure is that the public orders are glimpsed more than held: the state is a mood, history a year, and labour and the city are absent.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.4, then The Imperishable at 8.3, The Sublime at 8.2, The Unconcealment and The Archetypal Deep at 8.0. A making that is load-bearing where idea and sound are one, in the stacked toms of There There, the fuzz of Myxomatosis and the balance of Sail to the Moon; a recording whole after twenty-three years, in continuous print; elevation on six or seven of fourteen tracks, dreadful and tender; a disclosure that can be stated, the citizen made complicit by drowsiness and the public lie arriving in the nursery; and a frame of nursery titles and the Flood that bears load.
Limiting Dimension
The Swerve at 7.1 and The Encompassed at 7.2: a joining of two idioms the band had already proven, a wager on a known path; and the public orders glimpsed more than held, the state a mood and history a year, with labour and the city absent. Then The Inevitable and Pressure on Tradition at 7.5, where pairs of tracks do the same work and a large reach redirected little.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.5 against a threshold of 7.5, on the line and with no room. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.6, The Made at 8.4, The Inner Law at 7.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.3, The Unconcealment at 8.0, The Archetypal Deep at 8.0, Pressure on Tradition at 7.5 and The Swerve at 7.1 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Swerve, 7.1, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.8, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as released by Parlophone in Britain on 9 June 2003 (Capitol in the United States), fourteen tracks in their original order with each track’s bracketed second title as printed, about fifty-six and a half minutes, produced by Nigel Godrich and Radiohead, in a sleeve of road-map paintings by Stanley Donwood; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words in outline and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. Songs are cited by title; no lyric is quoted, and the images described are paraphrased. Facts that could not be verified, among them where and when the basic tracks were cut, the source of the album’s title, the record’s appearance online before release, its place in the band’s contract, its chart positions and awards, later reissues and later uses of its songs on stage, are not given.