Love Them

They won't break your heart. They'll just keep making great music.

Now Radiohead has gone and done it again --- raised expectations, that is. This time, much of the hub-bub is directed not at the music itself, but the means by which it is being distributed. By choosing to release their seventh studio album, “In Rainbows,” as a digital download through their own Web site at a price determined by each consumer willing to part with an email address, the band once again has become the talk of the music world. After two days, sources within the band’s camp were claiming that more than 1.2 million copies had been downloaded.

As Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood said a few days ago, the band’s intent is not to start a revolution or give away its music, but rather to prevent it from leaking out to the public haphazardly over several months before the official CD release next year. In turn, it is the band’s hope that once fans hear the music on compressed MP3 files, they’ll want to buy the sonically superior physical product.

So will the music still matter to non-diehards in a few months? Probably not. Radiohead has evolved into an art-rock band, and lately “art” has trumped “rock” in the band’s internal hierarchy. For the rockers, “In Rainbows” won’t have nearly enough guitar crunch to satisfy. But for sheer chilled loveliness, this album is a keeper. There are guitars all over it, but they weave in and out of the melodies rather than barging over them. Its songcraft is more direct than any album since “OK Computer,” and also more low-key, with the glitchy electronics toned town in favor of warmer instrumental interplay and vocals.

The band’s desire to reclaim the album from rogue file-sharing networks is understandable. Like all of Radiohead’s albums, “In Rainbows” was meant to be listened to as whole, in sequence. The 10 songs create a loose narrative about intimacy, its allure and its traps. They explore humanity’s essential contradiction: the desire to be loved, no matter what the cost, no matter how painful the heartbreak. For a band often accused of being cryptic, that’s about as direct and universal as Radiohead has ever gotten.

“How come I end up where I started?” Yorke sings at the outset. “How come I end up where I went wrong?”

Love Them