The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Radiohead · produced by Nigel Godrich · self-released · about 42 minutes
Mode
Art rock returned to song; the band’s electronic language absorbed into a band playing in a room
Mythos
The body in time; a descent to the sea floor, and a life read at heaven’s gate with the devil beneath
Phase
Ten tracks in two halves of almost equal length, the shortest at the hinge; from a pulse in five and a children’s cheer to a recorded farewell
Presentation
Album; ten tracks, about forty-two minutes, released first as a download from the band’s own site at a price the buyer chose
Register
Warm, close and string-lit; falsetto, melodic bass and rhythm set restlessly against the beat
Scale
Two lovers, a suburb at night, the sea floor and the gate of heaven
Governing Proposition
A band free of its label turns back to song, warmth and a band in a room, and sets love in middle life against the knowledge of death. What cannot be said directly is carried by substitutes, a refrain, a night’s drinking, a recording, until the record closes on a farewell made for playback at the gate of heaven; and the work itself reached its listeners on trust, at a price each of them chose.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with a programmed beat in five, Philip Selway’s drums joining it, handclaps, and a children’s cheer on the off-beat. Five beats to the bar make a dance pulse that cannot settle, and the title counts it. That pulse is the record’s subject stated as a rhythm: a body keeping time, wanting, and knowing that the time will run out. Forty-two minutes later the record ends on a piano ballad whose percussion will not keep time with the piano at all. Between the two it loses the pulse by degrees.
It was the band’s first album after its contract with EMI ended with Hail to the Thief (2003), produced by Nigel Godrich, and it turns back from where the three records before it had gone. After Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief come guitars and strings, a band playing in a room, the electronic language absorbed rather than displayed. Some of the songs had waited a long time. Nude was written by 1997, played live in 1998 and seen in Meeting People Is Easy that year, and many of the others were played on the band’s 2006 tour before the record was finished.
The architecture is exact without announcing itself. Ten tracks run about forty-two minutes, seven of them four minutes or longer, and the first five and the last five each take almost exactly twenty-one. At the hinge stands the shortest track and the only one without a full arrangement. Eight songs from the same years were left off and issued separately on a second disc, and the album is the better for every absence. One track the record could spare: Bodysnatchers, the one full-band rock song, on distorted, driven guitars, a paranoia about a body not one’s own.
Movement II
Nude comes third, a song carried for ten years and finally reduced to what it needed: Thom Yorke’s falsetto, Jonny Greenwood’s strings, and Colin Greenwood’s bass, which carries the melody under the voice. The bass is the discovery of return. On a first hearing the song is a long held beauty; on later hearings it is a duet in which the lower voice does the singing. The strings avoid the romantic wash for close, moving voicings, and the restraint is the height.
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi follows, two titles joined, the second named for the guitars. Three interlocking arpeggios circle over Selway’s drums, and go on circling, for minutes, until the song tips forward into its descent and the voice falls to “hit the bottom” and escapes. It is a descent to the sea floor, being eaten and getting away, a katabasis in small, and it is built in the sound as well as the words: the cycling guitars are the undertow, and the song is pulled under by its own form.
All I Need gives desire its shape. A bass synthesiser holds the floor, and the song builds once, slowly, to a crash in which piano, cymbals and strings break together. The love it describes is unequal, the lover as a moth or a trapped animal filling the other’s space, and the single build that breaks is that love. Three heights in a row: the record’s elevations are of beauty and release, and they come often.
Movement III
The hinge is Faust Arp, about two minutes of acoustic guitar picked fast, strings, and a rapid, wordy vocal. It is the record’s one moment of a mind racing with no band behind it, and its title names the devil before he appears. Reckoner follows and floats: falsetto over percussion and piano, and in its bridge the strings enter on the phrase that gives the record its title. The rainbow is the covenant sign and the spectrum of a separated light, and the record names itself at its gentlest moment.
The condition the record discloses can be stated: love in middle life, conducted under the knowledge of death, and conducted through substitutes because it cannot be said directly. House of Cards, all washed guitars and long reverb, sets an affair among suburban adults inside its own refrain of “denial, denial”. Jigsaw Falling into Place is a quick night out on acoustic guitars in which drink lets the words come. All I Need had given unequal love its exact shape. The last track will hand its farewell to a machine.
The disclosure is narrow, and the record does not pretend otherwise. Its condition is private: a bedroom, a party, a pub, a deathbed. The state, labour, history and the family do not enter, and the social world is glimpsed only on a night out. About half the record carries its condition as mood, the drowning dread of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, the paranoia of Bodysnatchers, the lull of Reckoner, and the moods are held beautifully. Its meanings are reached on a first hearing, and nineteen years of return have deepened them without overturning them.
Movement IV
On 1 October 2007 the band announced, in a short post on its blog, that the album was finished and would be out in ten days, at a price of the buyer’s choosing. On 10 October it was released as a download from the band’s own website, without a record label and before any physical edition, with artwork by Stanley Donwood and Yorke. The band published no figures for it. A record about what cannot be said directly was sold on trust.
The release was the wager, and it belongs to the work, because it is the act that published it. With no label and no contract, the band risked its income, its relation to retail and the measure of its worth in public, and bore the cost alone. Pay what you want, from the artist’s own site, became a reference point for the industry within months, and the surprise release, announced days before it arrives, owes something to it. The turn in the music was smaller: toward a style partly recovered from the band’s own songs of the 1990s, on a path it had walked before.
What the music did was consolidate. It joined the band’s electronic and band languages into a warm, songful whole, better than anyone had, and the warm, string-lit, rhythmically subtle band record became a model; Reckoner and Weird Fishes/Arpeggi are widely covered and cited. The episode of the price is now history, and the album is heard without it. The sound has not dated, because Godrich’s production avoided the loudness and fashionable textures of its year, and a generation born after the release has taken up Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, Reckoner and Videotape as its own.
Movement V
The last track is piano and voice, and a sparse figure of percussion that enters off the piano’s pulse. On a first hearing it sounds clumsy. On return it is the point: the piano keeps its chords and its time while the rhythm stumbles around it, so a plain ballad of farewell is heard as unsteady, like a heart missing beats. Regularise it and the song becomes sentimental. The pulse that opened the record in five has been lost, and the record lets the listener hear the losing.
Here myth is built inside a song. A man records his farewell, rather than giving it, to be played back at the “pearly gates”, because it is a goodbye he cannot manage face to face, and “Mephistopheles” waits beneath. A life presented on a recording at heaven’s gate is the book of deeds read at the last judgement, and it is carried by a particular object, a videotape, which stays particular. The song closes on its claim of “the most perfect day”. From a pulse and a children’s cheer to the gate of judgement: the frame is there, but it is the listener who assembles it.
What holds the record below the summit is not its making, which is load-bearing on every track. It is the shortness of its span, nineteen years, which can show a record lasting but not that it will last; and it is that its myths are built inside songs and not across the record, that its departure lies more in how it was published than in the music, and that it holds a few orders closely rather than many together. Within those limits it is complete. It ends at its plainest, on a close that is grave and withheld, a farewell left for playback because it could not be said.
Act III · The Twelve
Ten tracks in about forty-two minutes, and almost nothing can go. The band’s own subtraction is on record: eight songs from the same years were left off and issued separately on a second disc, and the album is the better for each absence. Within the songs the form is economical. 15 Step states its pulse and its argument in under four minutes, Nude has been reduced to a voice, a bass line and strings, and Videotape is little but piano, voice and a few percussive strokes. Faust Arp, the shortest track, looks removable and is not: it holds the hinge between two equal halves. The test bites once, at Bodysnatchers, the one track whose loss the record’s argument would survive.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The disclosure can be stated and it holds: love in middle life is conducted under the knowledge of death, and conducted through substitutes because it cannot be said directly. Four songs state it in audible words. Videotape records a farewell for playback at the “pearly gates” because it cannot be given face to face; House of Cards sets a suburban affair inside its refrain of “denial, denial”; in Jigsaw Falling into Place drink lets the words come; All I Need gives unequal love its exact shape. The moods carry the same condition: the drowning dread of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi is that knowledge felt in the body. Held there because the condition is private, not social, and half the record carries it as mood.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Height and frequency are both high, and the heights are of beauty and release, which count as fully as terror. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi circles for minutes and then tips forward into its descent, the voice falling to “hit the bottom” and escaping. All I Need builds from a bass pulse to a crash in which piano, cymbals and strings break together. Nude rises on falsetto over the bass; the bridge of Reckoner, where the strings enter, is among the purest moments on the record; Videotape rises by withholding, grave and plain. House of Cards sustains a haze that makes a sixth. 15 Step, Bodysnatchers, Faust Arp and Jigsaw Falling into Place stay level, and hold it off the top.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Myth is built in two places, inside songs, and evoked elsewhere. Videotape builds the judgement: a life presented on a recording at heaven’s gate, with “Mephistopheles” beneath, is the book of deeds read at the last, carried by a particular object, a videotape, that stays particular. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi builds a descent to the sea floor, being eaten and escaping, in its form as well as its words. The rest is allusion: Faust named in a title, a figure of reckoning, the rainbow as covenant sign. The frame from a children’s cheer to the gate of judgement is one the listener assembles. Nothing is built across the whole record, and that holds it short.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The departure lies in two places, weighed together. In the music the turn is real but small: after Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief the record turns back toward song, warmth and a band in a room, on a path the band had walked in the 1990s; Nude dates from 1997. The release is the work’s own wager. With no label and no contract, the band put out a finished album at whatever price the buyer chose, ten days after announcing it. That risked income, the relation to retail and the band’s measure in public, and the cost was borne alone. What holds it short is the music, whose turn is smaller than the turn in how it was published.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Change the form and several songs lose what they know. 15 Step sets its anxiety in five beats to the bar, a dance pulse that cannot settle. The cycling arpeggios of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi are the undertow, so the form is the drowning. All I Need is a single build that breaks, and the obsessive love it describes is that build. In Videotape the rhythm enters off the piano’s pulse, and a ballad of farewell is heard as an unsteady heart; regularised, it would be sentimental. The sequence counts once: two halves of almost equal length, with Faust Arp at the hinge, a mind racing with no band behind it. Bodysnatchers and Jigsaw Falling into Place are containers more than instruments.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Evidence rather than promise: nineteen years of return, and the record keeps yielding, chiefly as sound. The offset rhythm of Videotape is heard first as clumsy and then as the point. The guitars of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi resolve into three separate parts. The bass of Nude turns out to carry the song, and the string writing shows voicings missed on a first hearing. The return is documented: the separate stems of Nude were released, opening its making to anyone, listener analysis has been sustained, and a generation born after the release has taken up Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, Reckoner and Videotape as its own. The semantic yield is thinner. The meanings are reached on first hearing, and return deepens them without overturning them.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The contest is with the band’s own records and with the means by which records reached listeners. The intrinsic force is a consolidation, not a reorganisation: the record joins the band’s electronic and band languages into a warm, songful whole, better than anyone had, without opening a new possibility in the music. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the release from the band’s own site, with no label and at the buyer’s price, became a reference point for the industry within months, the surprise release announced days ahead owes something to it, and the warm, string-lit, rhythmically subtle band record became a model, with Reckoner and Weird Fishes/Arpeggi widely covered and cited.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Survival is weighed over nineteen years. The form is whole, and the record has outlived the surface most fixed to its time: the episode of the price the buyer chose is now history, and the album is heard without it. Presence has been continuous: it has stayed in the band’s live sets, its standing has risen since 2007, and a generation born after its release has taken it up. The fabric has not dated; Godrich’s production avoids the loudness and fashionable textures of its year, and nothing in the words is topical. What holds the figure is the span itself: nineteen years, level with films of its year such as No Country for Old Men and far below what has lasted centuries.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is load-bearing on every track, with the words weighed elsewhere. Selway’s drumming, played and programmed, holds three rhythmic worlds: the five of 15 Step, the driving four of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi and the stumbling figure of Videotape. Colin Greenwood’s bass carries the melody of Nude under the voice. Jonny Greenwood’s strings on Nude, Faust Arp and Reckoner avoid the romantic wash for close, moving voicings. Three guitar parts interlock in Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, and Godrich’s production keeps every instrument in its own space. The costs are specific: the command is held within one sound, no track standing in a different world, and two tracks fall below the rest, Bodysnatchers less finely made and Jigsaw Falling into Place shapely but conventional. That is the degree of A German Requiem, weight borne throughout with its costs in the score.
Score: 9.2 / 10
One law governs the record: the body in time, wanting and afraid. The two most distant elements obey it. Bodysnatchers, a distorted rock song of paranoia about a body not one’s own, and Videotape, a piano ballad of farewell, are each a body losing hold of itself, one in panic and one in acceptance. 15 Step, programmed and clipped, and Faust Arp, acoustic and rushed, both set a mind running against a clock. The sound is one sound throughout: warm, close, string-lit and rhythmically restless. There is no break in the law and no strain on it. The range is narrow, since no track stands in a different world, and that narrowness, not any breach, holds it off the top.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Six orders are present: erotic love and desire, in four songs; the body and its mortality, throughout; the sacred, as heaven’s gate and the devil in Videotape; the natural order, in the sea floor of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi; the suburb and the social night, in House of Cards and Jigsaw Falling into Place; and the recording medium itself, in Videotape. They are held closely, since love and death bear on each other in nearly every song. What holds the figure here is absence: the state, labour, history and the family do not enter, and the social world is glimpsed only at a party and a pub.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.2, The Sublime at 9.1, and The Inner Law at 8.9. A making that is load-bearing on every track, elevation on six of ten tracks, and one law held without break or strain.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.6: six orders held closely under one law, with the state, labour, history and the family absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 8.0, then The Swerve and The Imperishable at 8.4: two myths are built inside songs and none across the record, the departure lies more in the release than in the music, and nineteen years is a short span for survival to show.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.7 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.8, The Made at 9.2, The Inner Law at 8.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: Pressure on Tradition at 8.8 clears the bar of 8.5, and The Unconcealment at 8.5 meets it exactly, but The Swerve at 8.4, The Imperishable at 8.4 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.0 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met, since no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.0, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.6.
Basis · the complete album as released on 10 October 2007, ten tracks in sequence, about forty-two minutes, judged from knowledge of the recording, its making, its release and its reception. The eight songs of the second disc, the singles and the live performances of 2006 are evidence, not the work. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words or fewer.