Radiohead review

Now that the Radiohead album has been released, here is my view of things:

There was another, overlooked, reason why Radiohead might have put their album out for download with people choosing how to much to pay. It is rubbish.

There are a couple of songs that the most die-hard fan may like, such as the echoes of the peaks in melancholy and the stressful cacophonies that could both be found filling space on their previous albums. But this is nothing like their previous best - none of the achingly good songs that could be found on Pablo Honey, and none of the sense of journey (and also beltingly good songs) from The Bends or OK Computer.

I am left wondering if they put it out in that way as an experiment because they weren't happy with it as an album. Or perhaps they lost it and descended into a haze, taking Pete Doherty's place now that he is rumoured to have cleaned up.

Economists are very good at discussing how something is going to turn out using economic theories, and then - when they are wrong - admitting it and citing another, overlooked, theory about why that was. The academic equivalent of falling in your sword to protect your subject. In that spirit, I suppose that this is another lesson in economics - the 2001 nobel prize winning theory about pricing in used cars. The theory goes that whatever the car, the possibility of it being a lemon (i.e. a dud) is factored in, but to varying degrees according to the certainty. This will have been the case here. If they do publish the purchasing data for people to study, it will be very interesting to see how much the price goes down afterwards.