Track #2 is the titular “I Might Be Wrong,” which might as well be a Big Black song for all its metallic grind and muscular pessimism. Far from being crushed into the same static-soup sound-wave spectrum, Radiohead is able to reproduce the studio track’s bottom-end crunch while foregrounding the song’s persistently creepy, Theremin-esque high tone, sustained high in the atmosphere for basically the song’s entire runtime. The album opens with everyone’s favorite itchy-sweater funk banger, “The National Anthem.” The thing that really strikes me about this leadoff track (and throughout the record) is the separation in the mix.
It’s probably best to think of Wrong as a “best-of” this particular tour/era: arguably Radiohead’s peak as a commercial force, critical darling, and-most importantly-concert draw. It’s neither a condensed survey of a single performance (as was our last entry), nor a cherry-picked selection of tracks spanning the group’s entire career. Recorded at various dates along the band’s 2001 tour, I Might Be Wrong-named after the world-destroying Amnesiac track that absolutely crushes here-falls into a unique live-album subgenre.
#WIZ KHALIFA PROMISES INSTAMP3 PLUS#
I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings-released in 2001 and collecting performances of seven Kid A and Amnesiac tracks, plus one comparatively upbeat acoustic outlier-presents the best of Radiohead’s prescient early-‘aughts future-panic in one slim, approachable package.
But it’s the band’s ability to stay true to each song’s sonic intent while simultaneously injecting an extra layer of twitchy, thrilling energy for live performance that truly strikes me as impressive. Such world building is achievement enough in the studio. The Oxford eggheads-frontman Thom Yorke, multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood, guitarist Ed O’Brien, drummer Phil Selway, and bassist Colin Greenwood-are fucking great at conjuring atmosphere, using dense soundscapes and atypical song structures, along with nonspecifically ominous word-salad nonsense lyrics, to summon an all-encompassing vision of nerdy, numbed-out dystopia. This, I think, is also why I love Radiohead. Their stories may make little logical sense, but they make perfect emotional sense, honing in on indescribable psychological states and acutely reproducing them with pictures and sound. It’s why I revere filmmakers like David Lynch and Terrence Malick. The same goes for music.Ītmosphere-how a piece of art feels and whether or not that feeling is clearly and consistently sustained-is way more interesting, in my opinion, than characters or plot. And when writing about movies, the thing I’m most drawn to is atmosphere. But now that I’ve done it a bit, it’s clear that thinking critically about music really isn’t that different from thinking critically about film. I was afraid I wouldn’t have the vocabulary to properly unpack what it was I actually liked about the albums I’d be writing about. After all, I’m not really a musician (unless fumbling Peavey-practice-amp covers of “Miserlou” count) and I don’t know anything about music theory (just what I remember as third-chair French horn in our awful high school’s awful band, 20 long years ago.) Lambusta on the idea for this column, I honestly wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. The truth is, when I pitched Great Albums Majordomo B. But until now my blogging background has centered solely on the topic of movies. Writing about music is new territory for me. I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, Radiohead (2001, Parlophone/Capitol)
0 kommentar(er)
