Fractionals

Just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there


Hey, sorry I'm late. You know how it is. Sleep, and all that.


What am I going to talk about? I don't know. Do you know how hard it is to do this column? Not that I can't come up with ideas - I have too many. You know me, one thousand times as many enthusiasms as executions. Already I've got ideas that will never see fruition, as will some of the stuff I've already mentioned, I'm sure.


So what to write on? The apocalyptic encounter at the end of Sarah Harmer's 'Lodestar'? How, on Trust and specifically on 'Little Argument With Myself', low have moved from writing about what they believe to why they believe? An alternate history of Blur? Scott Walker's Tilt?


Ah, you caught me - the title gave it away. 'There There', the first singe from Hail To The Thief. Interesting song, isn't it? It's been a while since I've seen a Radiohead single so divide critical opinion, everyone's been saying it's either the best of the worst thing on the album.


So we were sitting around in the apartment of a friend of Pete's, and somebody's popped on Hail To The Thief, and the conversation turns to Radiohead. Everyone there is a fan, which I personally thought was odd.


At one point a guy named Zen pointed out that Radiohead is today's Pink Floyd. I'm not sure how I feel about that; I certainly think that in terms of actual music it's a bit off (Radiohead thanfully have no equivalent of Ummagumma or Atom Heart Mother and haven't yet begun experimenting with 20-odd minute long songs), but in terms of their role it's getting closer to the truth. Radiohead and their music is remarkable, not so much for any level of innovation or quality by itself, but because they do the things they do while being one of the biggest, most written about, rock bands in the world.


What this says for everyone else I'm not sure. Does that make the Mars Volta our generation's King Crimson? Who gets to be Gentle Giant or Van De Graaf Generator?


But anyway, what 'There There' itself means to me is entirely seperate from that. One of the criticisms levelled at Radiohead again and again after OK Computer was that they stopped being a rock band making rock music. What 'There There', and 'Optimistic', and 'Dollars And Cents', and even 'Idiotique', says to me is that they never abandoned their rock side: They got rid of their pop leanings.


I mean, listen to The Bends again. Listen to those choruses! If pop is ultimately accessability and to some degree predictability (and there's nothing wrong with that), then Radiohead have slowly worked to eliminate most of that from their music.


'There There' itself is a sturdily constructed rock song, built on a solid drum thump, pealing guitars, and Thom Yorke's vocals. So far so standard, but by the end we have a howling, surging beast, Yorke wailing We are accidents waiting to happen. The man actually cried when he first heard the final version of 'There There'. The only other time I've heard of that happening was with Abba and 'Dancing Queen'. Both times, I think, the emotion was a result of hearing exactly what you wanted to hear, exactly what was in your head (and anyone who has tried to make music can tell you how hard that is).


But that snippet of lyric brings me to the other issue I have with 'There There' - the assumption of negativity. I don't think 'There There' is a negative song, and I don't think Radiohead is a negative band. Which is why it frustrates me so that my favorite record critic, Glenn McDonald, should view OK Computer as suicidally depressing and consider Hail To The Thief such a failure that I don't think he's even going to review it.


The key couplet in 'There There', I think is not the one quoted above, but rather There's always a siren singing you to shipwreck/Steer away from those rock, you'd be a walking disaster. He's not bemoaning the existence of sirens, the dangers of life; he's warning you about them. He's trying to help. I can't see that as being negative. And as for the lyric at the top of this page, Just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there, isn't negative either. What if this is directed at a depressed person (as Thom himself has been)?


My problem is that Glenn has liked and will like records that are manifestly more depressing, more defeatist, more poisonous, than OK Computer. Sometimes he's even liked them because they are depressing on the surface. Why? Because in each case he's managed to find a rationale that makes that album inspire thought, or growth, or hope. But I think that follows from his liking the other albums, and not vice versa. Otherwise, why would he have not been able to do the same for Radiohead? He was able to for Kid A and Amnesiac, because he kind of liked them, I guess.


I'm not trying to pick on Glenn, he's basically my stalking horse for all the commentators that have been trying to nail Radiohead for depressiveness. Yes, some of the songs are sad or down (but some aren't - 'Airbag' is a song about surviving car crashes and how good it makes you feel), but the knack of picking out only those aspects from the songs, and ignoring context (listen to the way Yorke sings Just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there, or You fell into our arms on 'Backdrifting', or even Somewhere I'm not/Scatterbrain on 'Scatterbrain').


And most importantly, to close out the least coherent WES yet, once those extra guitars kick in and Yorke is claiming Heaven sent you here to me, 'There There' is musically irresistable to me.


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