See but skipping tracks is such an arbitrary metric. I skip "The National Anthem" on Kid A all the time - I like the song and the concept, and think it has an important role on the album, but sometimes I just want to hear the smooth songs on Kid A so I skip the loud dissonant horns in that track (Really the most jarring part of the album.) Meanwhile, I never skip tracks on In Rainbows, that album has perfect flow, but is it as powerful or have as much impact as a listen through Kid A does? Nah. And even then, I listen to In Rainbows more often, it's more pop sensible and concise and less demanding of your attention, it fits more music moods that I get in, but I still firmly think Kid A is a more significant and unique composition by the band, really the pinnacle moment of their career, and that makes it my favorite.
setlist from yesterday Setlist: Burn the Witch Daydreaming Decks Dark Desert Island Disk Ful Stop Morning Mr. Magpie There There The Daily Mail My Iron Lung [first performance since 2009] Videotape Identikit The Numbers The Gloaming Lotus Flower Everything in Its Right Place Idioteque Bodysnatchers Encore: Bloom Present Tense Paranoid Android Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief Weird Fishes/Arpeggi Encore 2: You and Whose Army? Reckoner
amnesiac / kid a / in rainbows is also my top 3 followed, in order, by ok computer / hail to the thief / king of limbs / the bends / pablo honey. unsure of where to put a moon shaped pool thus far, but it'll probably end up around httt and tkol
HTTT might be their most diverse, but it's still one of my least favorite. To me, and my conception of what this band is about and their strengths, that record just sounds so meandering and lost; the polar opposite of Kid A, their magnum opus. Several interesting and creative songs on HTTT, but very few that speak to me. It's also gloomy in a way that just turns me off and puts me in a funk, versus the truly terrifying despair of Kid A.
2+2=5, Sail To the Moon, Go to Sleep, Where I End And You Begin, There There, Wolf at the Door are all slam dunk songs imo. And to me there's plenty of accessible stuff to keep interest between the more meandering tracks.
I definitely get what you mean, some musical patterns just irk me. But in that case i think the arpeggios work because it's mostly to build from the opening part of the song to the climax. Keeps the early part of the song/chord changes fluid, building the suspense until it explodes in jarring fashion
word. plenty of people like that track but I never got it scatterbrain on the other hand has a very pleasing chord progression to me. I could go on about knives outs progression for the rest of my life
That's exactly why I love Sail to the Moon though. That is some really complex shifts between all these dreamy sounding chords and it blows my mind they're able to make all those seemingly unrelated chords come full circle. They make it sound so beautiful and natural with the way Thom's quivering voice holes notes and with the effect-heavy guitar work in the background (Johnny makes it sound like a fucking, spaceship landing right before the first stanza of lyrics come in.) I constantly find myself as a musician thinking "how the fuck do they come up with transitions like this?"
Actually it took me forever but I figured out how they count that and "Pyramid Song". Both songs have a similar pattern, except slightly different order. The beginning of "Sail" has two measures of 3 beats followed by a measure of 2 beats - so they do 3, 3, 2 i think four times, which adds up to 8 beats per phrase. That makes it natural for them to shift into a regular 4/4 signature for the vocal parts -- because those 3 irregular measures that created the opening phrase, become two simple measures of 4 beats for the verse phrases (both add up to 8 beats total.) Pyramid is similar except the pattern is 3, 2, 3 and repeats through the whole song instead of switching to a regular one. It's hard to pick this up because the first two notes are not quarter notes, they're slightly longer dotted quarter notes, so it's only two chords but it is a 3 beat measure.
Setlist from tonight they busted out Street Spirit and a snippet of Creep for the first time in forever