Number Sign 10 - In Rainbows - Radiohead

Like many Americans, I got caught up in Radiohead fever, I guess sometime 'round Rocktober, and ended up paying a strange amount of money for 10 good songs. For many review outlets, this album was treated as if it were a gift from God or something, and people talked about how great Radiohead is and blah blah blah.

Ultimately, what you have here, is a good album. Like Modest Mouse though, it's really nothing new. It's safe. Radiohead doesn't play it safe, and now they have on their last two albums (as has the Mouse) so it appears as if these turn-of-the-century heavyweights are fading.

I heard The Bends for my first time this year (on my own). It's such a fantastic album, and this new one is good, but that's it. It's not a classic. It's marketing scheme? Well, that obviously won't be forgotten. So ultimately, it's think this album is a gimmick. I know you could find song by song reviews on just about any music website, but those stories were always accompanied with the packaging, and how much one paid for it. That's great I guess, but I live in an era where the packaging of an album doesn't really matter. It's a bit sad, with the birth of the portable storage music device, album covers don't matter anymore. In fact, all my albums on this list, I barely even know what the covers look like. Ofcourse, my ipod is vintage now, but still.

As some of us debate whether albums will continue to give way to the playlist, or single, or group of songs, or whatever is going to happen, it's going to be equally interesting to see what happens with the evolution, or creationism (let's keep it balanced), of the album cover. Shouldn't Marilyn Manson have a cover with Mohammed's image on it by now? Some band will eventually do this, right? Maybe Toast will have a reunion album just so we can have an album cover that features a Royal Rumble with the participants being prophets and wrestlers from the 80s. Seeing Hacksaw Jim Duggan cracking Moses with a two by four, while George the Animal Steel is eating a turn buckle and Jesus is giving the Iron Shiek the business would be priceless.