With Radiohead as happy as a dog with two penises following their move to British indie label XL Recordings, ex major EMI look to remember (i.e. cash in) the good times they had during their 12 year relationship with the sonic innovators, bringing together the singles, key album tracks and live favourites that saw them shift in excess of 25 million records worldwide, achieve multi platinum status in nine countries and earn two Grammy Awards.
But not everyone is entirely happy about this multi million pound walk down memory lane. Thom Yorke recently told Word Magazine: “We haven’t really had any hits so what exactly is the purpose? There’s nothing we can do about it.
"The work is really public property now anyway, in my head at least. It’s a wasted opportunity in that if we’d been behind it, and we wanted to do it, then it might have been good.”
Radiohead: The Best Of is available as a double CD package and 4 piece vinyl set. CD 1 will also be available as a stand alone CD.
They say:
NME: “The hardcore faithful will sniff, but in the light of In Rainbows this feels like a timely trace through the chaotic, demonic, socially displaced mind zones that our greatest band have inhabited.”
We say:
Given how downright easy and affordable it is to put together your own compilation album in this digital age, it’s questionable whether or not there is a marketplace anymore for so called official best of releases. And as Mr Yorke himself has acknowledged, especially one for a band not known for providing hit single after hit single.
Indeed, with regard to that latter point, Radiohead have often written and composed their albums in a story like fashion, an engrossing, madcap 40 minute plus journey about the human condition that can not be fully appreciated or comprehended when cut to shreds for mass single production.
So while all the favourites are here – such as the grungy, lustful ‘Creep’, the soul haunting ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’ and the man vs machine epic ‘Paranoid Android’ – they often feel like they’re missing a limb.
It’s an excellent collection of work, phenomenal even. But one we can only recommend to the iPod illiterate and those still not privy to the Radiohead story in its full melancholic splendour. All three of you.
Like this? Try these:
Pink Floyd – Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd
REM – In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003
U2 – Achtung Baby
RELEASED
Out now
LABEL
EMI/ Parlophone
POSTED...
Tue 3 Jun at 10:19am
