Radiohead on NY Times

Thom Yorke tells the New York Times, beside Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway, that putting In Rainbows out the way they did let everyone judge it for themselves and side-step the old promotional machinery, which makes less and less sense to him. Back together after a break, he wanted to carry on with the band, but “I no longer felt I wanted to be answerable to the Radiohead thing at all”.

One of them reckons people shuffle their music as a substitute for radio, hoping for “this mythical DJ that doesn't exist”, and admits his partner can't stand it when he shuffles at home. She is right, he says. One of them explains that the roar of a band playing loud in a room is lost the moment you record it, so on one song they rebuilt it: at the end the strings play every note of the scale, and Yorke can just be heard singing through the chaos.

“Confrontation's never been our strong point,” one of them says, and for a while they all went off into their own corners until Nigel Godrich pulled them back together. Since they were kids they have recorded themselves and listened back obsessively, on four-tracks in bedrooms at first, and a song that survives that is usually good enough to release.