Radiohead's In Rainbows bonus disc reaches the reviewers

In Rainbows Disk 2, the eight-track CD that comes only inside the £40 discbox, has been reviewed this month by Uncut, Treble and the UCSD Guardian. It is in neither the download nor the shop CD. The box, made to order, holds the album on CD and on two 12-inch records as well, in a hardback book and slipcase. The download closed on 10 December and no more boxes are being made, though, according to Treble, the band's store is still selling what is left.

Every song on the disc except “Last Flowers” has already been played live. “Up on the Ladder” goes back furthest, to the Coliseu in Lisbon on 22 July 2002, where it was one of eight songs played for the first time that night, alongside “There There”, “Sail to the Moon” and “Myxomatosis”. Unlike those three, it was left off Hail to the Thief. The rest arrived with the 2006 tour, “Bangers + Mash” and “4 Minute Warning” on its first night in Copenhagen.

Peter Paphides reviews the discbox in Uncut and gives the package a 4. He hears “MK 1”, the first of two short linking pieces, pick up on the piano note that ends the album, and argues that the extra songs carry the album on rather than being cast-offs. Ernest Simpson, whose box reached him weeks after the 3 December due date, hears something nearer an EP than an album in Treble, and picks “4 Minute Warning” as the best thing on it. He knew “Down Is the New Up” as Thom Yorke alone at the piano; the finished version adds drums and strings.

The UCSD Guardian's unsigned review grades the disc 3 and hears odds and ends, but rates “Bangers + Mash” the strongest track, funk over grinding guitar loops that it says began as a straight rock song. It also hears “Go Slowly” borrowing the chords and guitar figure of “There There”, with the drums taken out.

In Rainbows Disk 2