Radiohead, In Rainbows

"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?