To continue the countdown of my Top Ten Albums of 2007, let’s talk about Radiohead’s In Rainbows…

My first real introduction to Radiohead, aside from being bombarded with the music video for “Creep” every time I turned on MTV in the mid-90’s, was two burnt CD’s a friend of mine handed me during my sophomore year of college. As with many bands, I was a late adopter. Even though I was really into music from a very young age, I lived in an insulated music vacuum growing up. It wasn’t until I reached college that the doors were blown off and I started to realize how much great music had been kept from me. In a two year period, I was exposed to the greatness of Radiohead and Wilco and The Replacements (thanks, Kelly), the bedrock of my musical tastes to this very day.

Those two discs weren’t even proper Radiohead albums, per se. They were the collection of all the B-sides that the band had released on their singles and whatnot, a rag-tag collage of the band from their inception thru the release of OK Computer and beyond. My friend, Adam, described them to me as the two greatest Radiohead albums ever, and while he had a tendency to overstate things, every single one of those songs was a gem that I cherish to this very day.

Since I received those two CDs, I’ve collected every album that Radiohead has ever released, searched out live bootlegs and rare tracks. I downloaded Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief before their proper releases (I bought each of them once they came out, honest) and I was ecstatic when the band announced that they would be releasing their latest, In Rainbows, for download before it was available in CD form.

Now, I’ll freely admit that I was a bit let down by Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief. They both had their moments. “Knives Out” is a great track and “There, There” leaves me speechless, but as albums, I never thought that Radiohead had met the expectations they set with OK Computer and Kid A. I know that those are lofty expectations, being that both of those albums are insanely great, but a guy can dream, right? So, when I downloaded my copy of In Rainbows, which I paid for ($9), I was a bit apprehensive. I wanted it to be great from start to finish.

I was not disappointed.

While In Rainbows is no masterpiece, it is surely the best Radiohead album in years. For a band that is constantly searching out new and different avenues for their music to explore, you can’t really use the term “return to form,” but this is certainly another step forward.

For the first time, Radiohead has some soul in their music. While the motif of cold, precise execution is still found throughout this album, it swings a bit more, especially on tracks like “Reckoner” and “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.” There’s a warmth to much of this album that has been missing. Instead of holding the listener at arms length, it invites you in and wraps itself around you. Every track sounds different from the next and all the songs have so many layers that you could listen to this record for days on end and still discover new things to love about it.

Songs like “Videotape” and “All I Need” just didn’t show up on previous albums. They tear at your emotions and beg to be placed prominently on a mix tape you give to someone you love. If you had told me a few years ago that I’d even think about doing something like that with Radiohead song, I’d have called you crazy. But, here I am, saying just that. I cherish being surprised by the musicians and bands that I love, and that’s exactly what has happened with In Rainbows.

Not only do I look at this album differently that I have other Radiohead albums, but listening to this record has made me go back and re-listen to all of the other albums they’ve released and hear them in a new light. In a weird way, my odyssey with Radiohead like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, all that time spent searching for a heart, only to realize that they had one all along.