Critics pay for In Rainbows like everyone else, and mostly love it

Radiohead sent out no review copies of In Rainbows, so the critics got the download on 10 October with everyone who had ordered it, and paid whatever they chose like any other buyer. Pete Paphides of The Times paid £9 and gave it four stars; Andy Gill of The Independent paid £5.45 and called it money well spent. Paul Morley, on the Observer blog, put its fair price at £3.03.

The band's order page left the price to the buyer with the words No really, it's up to you². The files went out in a staggered release from about 5.30am UK time; a Cleveland Scene writer had his link at 12.30am Eastern, in an email that signed off WE HOPE YOU ENJOY 'IN RAINBOWS'¹¹.

Alexis Petridis, in The Guardian, suggests it may be the strongest set of songs the band have made in a decade. What is new, for him, is the wit and warmth: the children's cheer that undercuts Thom Yorke at the end of “15 Step”, and “Nude” and “All I Need” as romantic songs. Robert Sandall in the Daily Telegraph welcomes back the melody that went missing in 1999, when Yorke came off the road exhausted and said he had had it with melody. The Guardian's round-up the next day found the papers' notices unanimous.

Michael Hubbard of musicOMH says there is no filler on it at all. Stephen Ackroyd of DIY calls it a refinement of the path the band have taken since Kid A, owing a lot to Yorke's The Eraser.

“Nude”, about ten years old and first played live in 1998, is finally on a Radiohead record. Boston University's Daily Free Press calls it the album's high point and the band's best work since Kid A, and The Badger Herald in Wisconsin notes that the finished version is built on a bass line, where older ones leaned on piano or organ.

The doubters were few. Craig Hlavaty gave it a week on the Houston Press blog before calling it the band's first merely serviceable album, and wonders whether the rushed release was a way to pass off leftovers. Dave Mekelburg, in The Michigan Daily, puts the band's best days behind them.

Ernest Simpson made it Treble's album of the week. He suggests it may be the band's best album yet, knowing most fans would name The Bends, OK Computer or Kid A. Pitchfork's Mark Pytlik rates it above Hail to the Thief and calls the band user-friendly for the first time in years. Paphides and Hubbard picked “House of Cards” as a highlight; to Pytlik it is the one weak link, and “Reckoner” is among the most beautiful things the band have recorded.

First-week verdicts