Musically, the first thing that struck me about In Rainbows was the sheer kinetic drive of some tracks. 15 Step (track 1) opens with laptop flutters from The Eraser, but kicks up with a great Colin bassline. It's a scattered song of mixes and styles, synth guitars and fractured beats mixed around Thom's vocal. And then comes the awesomely heavy guitar riff of Bodysnatchers (track 2). A manically driven song with an urgent near-punk momentum that's physically impressive — as though they've rediscovered the faculty for rhythm, to clear the paranoid head. That guitar almost sounds like a bass.

Lyrically, the ambiguity and vaguely circular despair have set in by now. There are no literal truths to impart on In Rainbows — my feeling is that even though Thom probably does a whole lot of writing and trimming, he nonetheless downplays the importance of lyrics to better accentuate the keening quality of his voice. At times his lyrics hardly seem to matter in terms of literal meaning. Nude (track 3) may be an exception, but then it's also one of the blackest on the album.

At least, in terms of song melody, these cuts are all in the 'classic' Radiohead style (and I don't mean OK Computer) — connotations of paranoia, vaguely despairing doubt, and disaffection. Some of the melodies sound innately familiar — either the Radiohead modality has become part of the familiar world, or the album is skirting the instant classic label. Also, having said that, if this is a classic album, it is so not because of Thom's vocals — emphasis on which this albums depends — he is the voice of the band — more that it's classic because of the way vocals and band interact and complement. No mere backing band, no musical henchmen or associates, Radiohead know how to balance themselves musically, to really service the vocals; the vocals in turn sound completely grounded and contextualised by the band. A hallmark of maturity perhaps, the hard-won interplay and dynamics of a seasoned creative band.

With the Scotch Mist video, you get a real sense of the simplicity of their working ethos: a buncha guys in a studio, no major egos, all collaboration, servicing the music. Lead guitarist on synth? No prob. No drums but a loop? No prob for the drummer. Add some nob-twiddling? OK for second guitarist. I love the way Radiohead just play what's needed. OK, the video might downplay the months and acres of doubt and the two plus years it took to record, but the band sounds unified and more egalitarian than ever — in terms of balance and interplay and also not playing when needed.

It's the whole that matters here, the Radiohead Group Effect, and the resultant album-value. One of the measures of success is that In Rainbows feels consummately like an experience. I don't mean in the concept album sense of musical-thematic unity, but that there's really strong and pronounced feelings at work in it. Identifiable ones, shared but ambivalent impressions, the common disaffections of modernity perhaps. And — several bright shining stabs of beauty.

Take All I Need (track 5) — a dirge-like b-side which Harmonia might've concocted on a particularly bleak German afternoon. But in the last quarter — enter the Radiohead/Pyramid Song piano and sonic strings, the cymbals riding hard — and Thom throws in these beautifully affected notes on the word 'Sun'. It's a near-instant reach for epic beauty.

Thank god their compositional skills are still intact, that they can pull off such amazing emotional arcs in their songs. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (track 4)  is another case in point — the lyrics and melody aren't flash, but musically all the arpeggios carry an amazing, budding beauty that develops naturally. Also note how deceivingly simple the song is — the drumbeat, guitars and perfectly minimal bass —  yet it's textured all the way.  A song about hitting rock bottom (though not in the Robert Wyatt sense, alas,  though for some reason Rainbows reminds of his last three albums; maybe, again, compositionally) that also never quite comes up for air.

A strange paranoid beauty perhaps? If this is Radiohead trying to sound seductive or at ease, I'd be checking their prescriptions. And yet there's a strange optimism in it too, a sense or perspective that aligns with what it feels like to be alive in the world today — a feeling that Mogwai can also deliver acutely.

But there's a definite reach for beauty. Maybe this is its optimism; and maybe this is what will ultimately tag it a classic. It's hard enough talking about beauty in modern music let alone creating it, but I had a small insight listening to Weird Fishes on the bus the other day, looking at all the other commuters scurrying about, young couples kissing and middle-aged ones in a hurry — I thought: the more beauty you hear, the more you see as well. The effect of the song carried over to other senses. There was a new beauty in the anonymous and intimate movements of people. This must be the subjective magic of art.

Sound-wise, there's a nicely consistent use of finger-picked / arpeggiated guitars — I remember several Dead Air Space photos of tiny practice amps being mic'd real close, to give that very up-front guitar sound. There's deep reverb and occasionally dub-y drums, as well as some familiar Godrich glosses. On a related note, I think that British guitarists (and one Irish) make the best guitar-sound sculptors. And for all the OK Computer purists, it's good to point out how much their sound is dependent on guitars, and always will be. Take a look back, purists, at Kid A and count the guitar-based songs. Count 'em. Heaps.

It's a quintessentially Radiohead-sounding album. But I understand better now what that means— especially after I gave OK Computer another listen. Everyone wants that that OK-album value to come back — that OK is the gold standard Radiohead experience. But OK is essentially a guitar-pop record, and everything after was a distancing and widening from that narrow sensibility. People expected pop and instead got Kid A. But what if Kid A is their best album, the one by which all others should be judged? (cf the guitars issue). OK was the perfect continuation of The Bends, and Hail was the confused and doubting/difficult reprise to Kid/Amnesiac. In Rainbows sounds more like the inheritor of the Kid A tradition of sonic experimentation and at times raw or stripped-back mixing — which to me is a welcome return. There's touches of Eraser too, mostly in the primacy accorded Thom's voice, as well as the familiar paranoia and vaguely depressing or off-putting melodies. The distancing element (cf lyrics) might be there just to avert all those pop-saviour/deep-meaningful expectations that plague successful artists, especially in the British presses; people hungry for meaning and answers in a cynical world — with Radiohead as the anti-Beatles, perhaps. But it's definitely not pop any more.

A doubting band that embrace beauty. It sounds contradictory, but it works, no?

In Rainbows is also near-perfect 43 minutes in length too; just right, whatever your listening medium.