So this briefing may be a bit overdue – Radiohead’s album was set free for download as of October 10th – but we needed to let the thing sink in. In fact we needed to roam around inside of it and justify its upbringing and make sense of the ever elusive Thom. And because the other reviews were so entirely accurate, that we would get lost in the muddling.

In short, the album is as transcendent as the others and everyone and their brother should and eventually will be a Radiohead fan. They seem to consistently be the only band that creates a wire mesh of drums, piano and electronics that is so sensitive and fragile that a droplet of water would fray the edges. They have the beats and the melodic intervals down to a science and the vocals are almost translucent in the wake of this all. Bodysnatchers, for instance, has the same lagging Thom vocals we are familiar with, but the fuzzy bass some how energizes them into a tempest.

The morning that all loyal followers woke at 6 am to feel Radiohead’s breath caressing their ears once more, I felt hypnotically twitchy in my half asleep, half fully realized state of mind. I want to be trite and say that my heart beat thudded along after their synthetic rhythm. Once upon a time, long ago, Thom said to the world, “One day, I’m convinced we’re going to be on the Internet and we’ll find an option to download an album we haven’t even started recording yet. Radiohead fans are very thorough.” Congratulations on giving on the the boot to record labels and music franchises, we remain yours respectfully.