Introduction to Rock

From 1968 to 1971, while other Bay Area musicians were getting lost in the ozone amid hour-long psychedelic jams, Creedence Clearwater Revival released a series of brilliantly concise hit singles that owed more to Sun Records than Sun Ra. The evocative lyrics of CCR songs like '"Proud Mary," "Green River" and "Down On the Corner" drew heavily on both leader John Fogerty's working-class background and his love of American folk mythology. Combined with the band's unpretentious fusion of country, R&B and early rock & roll roots, the songs offered down-home comfort to draft-age Americans yearning for a return to the simplicity (real or imagined) of rural life. Though 'Fortunate Son' was CCR's only overtly political hit, 'Bad Moon Rising,' 'Who'll Stop the Rain' and 'Run Through the Jungle' all reflected the tensions of the times, and were embraced by many listeners as anthems of protest. But despite its myriad Vietnam-era associations, CCR's music still sounds as timeless and magical as it did upon its original release. Chronicle Volume One, which collects all of the band's big singles, demonstrates why such diverse artists as John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Nirvana and Kings of Leon have been inspired by CCR's swamp-rock sound.

"Don't get any big ideas," goes the first line of "Nude," the third song on Radiohead's haunting seventh record, "they're not gonna happen." This is, of course, hogwash — a willful bit of Thomfoolery designed to accentuate a theme by understating it. In Rainbows is a record full of big ideas, ideas about solitude and desertion and depression and dislocation — to say nothing of its notions about record distribution.

And let's, please, say nothing of its notions about record distribution. For weeks after its arrival all anyone could talk about was how much (if anything) they paid for it, obscuring any discussion of what Rainbows actually is: a stunning sustained consideration of loneliness set to a somber, underplayed score.

Musically, In Rainbows — like Hail to the Thief before it — finds Radiohead winding their way back towards something like conventional songwriting. That an album where the opener boasts jazz guitar, drum 'n' bass rhythms and bursts of cheering children can be considered even remotely "conventional" is a testament to how far afield Radiohead were before this. They're calmer now, constructing songs from blue bands of synthesizers and delicate, twinkling arpeggios. With the exception of the ragged "Bodysnatchers," which hurtles forward on the back of briny guitar, most of Rainbows is disturbingly serene. The songs maintain a kind of steady cruising altitude: "Faust Arp" threads solemn strings through Brit-folk finger-picking; "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" speeds along on galloping percussion and swooping, sine-wave guitars. It's a welcome reminder of how good Radiohead still are at writing plain old pop songs, even if those pop songs are full of ruminations on loss and mortality.

Which, of course, is where Thom Yorke comes in. His writing has grown more direct — on In Rainbows he's fonder of plain old declaratives than on much of his past work — but most times that superficial glibness conceals a deep-seated unrest: "I don't want to be your friend," he sings at one point, "I just want to be your lover," a sentiment that sounds sexy until you realize what it means is that he's not going to call you the Day After. Ditto "All I Need," where he unspools a series of distressing pledges of devotion ("I'm an animal trapped in your hot car" is one) only to end up at "I only stick with you/ Because there are no others." Not the valentine everyone hopes to get.

In the album's final scene, Yorke finds himself before God who, apparently as resistant to new technology as he is sin and death and canoodling, plays back Yorke's life for him on a VCR. As he is for most of Rainbows, Yorke is there by himself, but instead of rifling through his regrets, he has an eleventh hour epiphany. "This is one for the good days," he croons as the piano death-marches behind him, "And I have it all here in red, blue and green." It's a startling redemption, ending album-length isolation with the refrain, "I know today has been/ The most perfect day I've ever seen." This, to say the least, isn't what we were expecting. Where's the longing? Where's the dread? Where’s the hopelessness? Who's the wiseguy? What’s the big idea?

Like several other (but not all) key Sun artists, Johnny Cash came to the label with his signature sound already intact. Over that boom-chicka beat created by bassist Marshall Grant and guitarist Luther Perkins, Johnny's stark baritone carried the songs; even when he soloed, Perkins' rudimentary boogie lines did little more than restate the rhythm. It was minimalist music that couldn't have been simpler, and once heard it was impossible to get out of one's mind. Johnny's extraordinary voice was the key, but it didn't hurt that he had such evocative material, from the giddy Southern pride of "Hey, Porter!" to the doominess of "Folsom Prison Blues," from the eloquent hillbilly poetry of "Big River" to the unwavering devotion of "I Walk the Line." With its weird-sounding chords and ever-shifting keys, that song's extension of the Cash sound resonated like nothing before or since. Even as his material became more conspicuously targeted for the teen market, Cash remained his own man; "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" may have been lightweight by his standards, but "Guess Things Happen That Way" has a fatalism and finality that are unnerving. Cash's earliest Sun singles were country music for people with raw nerve endings, very much in the emotional vein of the Carter Family's fabled line, "It takes a worried man/ To sing a worried song."

Doolittle is the Pixies album that endures — virtually as harsh and radical as their earlier Surfer Rosa, but balanced with production and melodies to match; proof that leader Black Francis cared as much about Brian Wilson as Charles Manson. Titles along the lines of "Debaser," "Waves of Mutilation," "Gouge Away" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven" don't exactly evoke a party in the woods, but Francis, like another of his favorites, David Lynch, had a knack for draping the psychopathic and sexually repressed in overlit sweetness. Only "Here Comes Your Man" arguably tries a little too hard, coming off as an attempt at R.E.M.-style jangle pop. So many elements went into the Pixies' desert flower sound: the roll of Kim Deal's bass, Francis' Spanish-tinged vocals, the guitar attack choking off cold. Deal doesn't really have a standout lead vocal this time, but she and Francis use their harmonies (more back-and-forths) to evoke an eternal war between the sexes: the passion sounds they turn into a bridge on "Tame" are rote, robotic, numbed — anything but sexy. Does "Hey" sum up Black Francis' view of romance? "Uh/Said the man to the lady/Uh/Said the lady to the man she adored, and the whores like a choir/Go uh all night." A foul worldview, but here, at the height of postmodernism, it made for sublime pop.