Song · In Rainbows era (2007–09)
Down Is the New Up
Vulture's guess was that it was kept off the main In Rainbows album for sounding too much like “Reckoner”.
In Rainbows Disk 2album- 2007released
- 4:59length
2005–06
from the basement, then the tour
Thom Yorke played it alone at the piano for Nigel Godrich's From the Basement in 2005, with “Videotape” and “Last Flowers”, and the band worked it up on the 2006 tour. The full band first played it in Toronto on 8 June, and the archive has it on fourteen nights in all, from Toronto on 8 June 2006 to Avenches on 15 August 2006, most of them in that June swing through Canada and the United States.
At the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago on 19 June, Curt Baran of the Illinois Entertainer rated it the most finished of the nine unreleased songs that night, with two drummers playing at once, Jonny Greenwood hammering at his strings and Yorke singing at full strength.
2007
the second disc
The recording on the second disc of In Rainbows is a piano song at slow-funk pace that stays bare until the strings arrive and turn menacing, and Yorke's falsetto in the last section draws the Prince comparisons that follow him around. At one point it was in contention for the album proper. When the disc leaked in December 2007, Vulture called most of it filler but guessed that this one had been kept off the album for sounding too much like “Reckoner”. Yorke said later that the second disc held some of the band's best work, this song with it, but that it did not fit the main album.
on stage
The whole band, at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, 2006, a year before the record.· ibecomenumbwatch on youtube →
the record(1)
on stage(3)
Live history
| Times played | 14 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Thursday 8 June 2006 · Toronto |
| Last played | Tuesday 15 August 2006 · Avenches |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
sources5
- Wikipedia, “In Rainbows”, for the From the Basement performance, the bonus disc, Yorke's comments and the music.
- The site's own catalogue note, based on Rolling Stone.
- SPIN and NME, December 2006, via this site's news story on the first From the Basement episode, for the Toronto debut.
- Curt Baran, Illinois Entertainer, 21 June 2006, for the Chicago night.
- Vulture, “Leaked: Radiohead's ‘In Rainbows’ Bonus Disc Not the Most Important Bonus Disc of All Time”, 4 December 2007, via this site's news story on the leak, for the “Reckoner” guess.