Dissect - S11E8 - Reckoner by Radiohead

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Our season long dissection of Radiohead's In Rainbows continues with an analysis of "Reckoner" - the song Thom Yorke described as the thematic center of the album, the point that everything leads to and then recedes from. We'll dissect just exactly what he means by that as well as the song's incredible rhythm section and deeply moving lyrics about the human experience. Shop Dissect Season 11 Merch. Follow @dissectpodcast on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Host/Writer/EP: Cole Cuchna Additional Analysis: Dr. Brad Osborn Song Recreations: Andrew Atwood Audio Editing: Kevin Pooler Theme Music: Birocratic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify and the Ringer, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. This is episode 8 of our season-long dissection of Radioheads in Rainbows. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Last time I dissect, we examined In Ramo's sixth track Faustarp, a song we viewed as a kind of beautiful interlude, a moment of rest that functions as a bridge between the two sides of the album. About this division within In Rainbows, Tom York had said, quote, In Rainbows very much explores the ideas of transience. It starts in one place and ends somewhere completely different.

That was the only way we could fit it together, but it turned out to be a real upside in the end. The first half of it is pretty raw, pretty hectic. Even though you have nude, what the lyrics are actually saying is pretty messed up, nasty. After a while, everything calms down and you get it out of your system. You feel better. There's this feeling of elation, unquote. This shift toward calm and elation becomes very clear with the album's seventh track, the subject of her episode today, Reckoner.

Like 15 Step and Weird Fishes, Reckoner begins by establishing the song's foundational percussion group. When asked why so many of the songs on Aen Rainbows begins with drums, Tom said, quote, We wanted to find the good pounding for each track. Instrumentation was less important. We voluntarily spent a lot of time cutting up beats, editing them, mixing different beats from different versions. So it's mostly acoustic sounds, but digitally adulterated. I think it's the best way to emphasize live energy, unquote. The drums on Reckoner are perhaps the album's most extreme example of this cut-up drum methodology, as Phil Selway's drum part has been chopped and spliced into a beat that resembles the original,

but contains oddities that are clearly, as Tom put it, digitally adulterated. I think the best way to show the digital augmentation of these drums is to compare them to what Phil plays when performing Reckoner live. Here's the start of Reckoner as played live from the basement. All right, so one of the main features of this drum part, both live and on the album, is the accent of the ride symbol. cymbles bell, which sounds like this. Now in the first measure of the live drumbeat, Phil hits the bell on each downbeat, 1, 2, 3, and 4. 1, 2, 4. Now in the second measure of the drum beat, Phil once again accents the bell on down beats 1 and 2,

but instead of playing the 3, he waits an extra half a beat and plays the upbeat of 3, in between beats 3 and 4. 1, 2, and. Phil alternates between these two bell patterns to create a 2-measure drum loop. the drum loop. Notice how the first pattern grounds us with straightforward accents, while the second pattern almost feels like a little glitch or stutter after the first. Alright, so that's how the drum part is performed live. Now let's hear how it plays out on the album. Kind of strange, right? You can hear that drum part in there somewhere, but it's not

so clear where it begins or ends or where it repeats. Let's listen to the same passage again, and this time I'll start counting where the drum loop starts. All right, so here I waited one and a quarter measures to begin counting. It's at this point we can find the start of the drum that most resembles the one that's played live. So it appears Radiohead is up to some of their musical trickery again. Specifically, they made two main alterations to Phil's drum part. First, they reversed the symbol bell accent patterns. They start the loop with the altered glitchy pattern, the one that accents the one, two, and the upbeat of three. Now the second thing Radiohead did is a small but incredibly brilliant little detail that changes our entire perception of the beat. And that is, they begin the

song on beat 4. Again, some comparative listening is the best way to explain this, so let's quickly return to the live version of Reckoner. We're going to hear Phil play four stick clicks, representing the four counts of a measure of four-four time. This count as a cue for the rest of the band so that they all begin playing at the same time in the same tempo. So after the stick clicks, the band began playing together on the first beat of the song's first measure, a very standard practice. Because songs so often start on the first beat of their first measure, as listening, We've been trained to expect this. We just naturally assume the first thing we hear is the downbeat of Measure 1 and start processing from there. Radiohead knows this and intentionally

drop us into the Reckoner drum loop on beat 4, knowing that the vast majority of people will feel this as beat 1 and process the drum part starting here. If you recall our episode on Body Snatchers, this is the technique dubbed the metric fake out, where we're temporarily fooled into feeling the beat or meter incorrectly, only to realize we've been faked out when more instruments are added, clarifying the correct meter. Let's hear the Reckner intro again, and I'll count the way most of us interpret it naturally, as if it's starting on beat 1. Notice how at first the count actually doesn't feel wrong. It's only when the guitar enters that the count suddenly feels off. So here when the guitar enters on beat 2, we're forced to realign our feeling of the meter.

Let's now contrast this with counting it in the quote-unquote correct way, beginning with 4. Notice now that the count actually feels incorrect for a while, and only when the guitar enters does it suddenly lock everything into place. It's pretty strange, right? The combination of this metric fakeout and starting with the glitch version of the ride bell accents creates a very convincing rhythmic illusion that obscures the bar lines, resulting in an incredibly fluid and free-sounding drum part. We might not know where we are. We might not know when or where things repeat. but the groove is so strong that it doesn't really matter.

We simply become lost in this blissful rhythm. Alright, so just a few more details to note about Reckoner's brilliant drum part. First, we have to acknowledge the way it's mixed. If you listen closely, you'll notice that Phil's drum set is panned all the way to the right speaker. I'll mute what's happening in the left speaker here, just so you can hear it clearly. This is very unconventional. As a foundational musical element, most often drum sets are mixed more or less in the center, creating a strong foundation onto which other elements are stacked.

Panning the entire drum set hard right is more evidence the band chopped up Phil's drum part, treating it like it was a sample. To balance this out, the left channel contains a shaker and a tambourine. Now let's hear these hard pan channels played together as they appear on the album. It's a very unique stereo image, enveloping us in this immersive rhythmic ensemble. Now the last thing I'll point out are a few very subtle but very cool moments where it becomes obvious the drums have been chopped up. The first comes at 33 seconds in, where the tambourine suddenly jumps from the left channel to the right channel for a few shakes, creating a jarring glitched effect. I'll first play it isolated, then I'll play it how it appears in the song.

The next little glitch comes about 10 seconds later, just before the vocals enter, where the tambourine suddenly changes its accent pattern. As I've mentioned a few times this season, these kinds of little alterations are a big reason why in rainbows and really all radio head albums are so endlessly repeatable. They reward active listening, as you're likely to catch some new detail every time you listen. All right, I've geeked out on this incredible percussion part long enough. Let's move on to the guitars, which enter about 10 seconds into Reckoner. In the left channel, we hear the main electric guitar played by Tom. For the most part, Tom here oscillates between a low bass note and a high treble note, outlining a five-core progression. Tom said this part was

inspired by the guitar playing of John Fruciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In the Chili Pepper song Scar Tissue, we can hear a similar guitar style as Reckoner. Now there's actually an acoustic guitar being played alongside Tom's electric guitar, strumming the chords he's outlining. Now let's hear both guitars together as they appear in the song. It's really hard to hear the acoustic guitar in the full mix, but it's again one of the small, almost unnoticeable details that add depth and weight to the track. It's something you feel more than you hear. Now the chords the guitars play are. are pretty simple, C, E minor, D, C, E minor. Each chord is played for one measure, making this

chord sequence five measures long. This is atypical, usually parts in 4-4 time are divisible by 2, meaning they are 2, 4, or 8 measures long. We talked about this at length in our All I Need episode, where the central bass part was an odd 2 and a half measures long, creating rhythmic dissonance with the drum part. The same kind of thing technically happens on Reckoner, yet the drum part is so unpredictable in its pattern that it doesn't actually matter all that much. I think the more apparent effect of this odd five-measure chord sequence is similar to the metric fakeout. Because we're so conditioned to hearing chord sequences being two, four, or eight measures long, it's hard for us to intuitively recognize when the chord progression actually repeats itself after five measures.

It also doesn't help that the chord progression both begins and ends with a C major moving to an E minor, with a single D major wedged in between. C, E, D, C. Because we're not accustomed to chord progressions being five measures long, it's easy to hear those last two chords I think the part has started over, because the last two chords are the same as the first two. And when the part does actually start over, it's the same two chords back to back again. If I'm losing you here, that's okay.

I think that's the point. Like the drum part, they're blurring the lines. The average listener will not know where they are in the chord sequence any more than they know where they are in the drum sequence. And so like we've discovered time and again this season, in a radiohead song, things are never as simple as they seem. Yet the technicality doesn't detract from the experience of the song. It enhances it, resulting in a fluid, free-flowing, elegant musical environment

that feels less like a song you listen to and more a world you step into. Tom enters the song singing, Reckoner, stretching the word beautifully across four full measures. Now, in terms of its meaning, Reckoner could be anything. number of things, but before getting too far, we should take a moment to hear what Tom himself actually said about it. When asked directly what a reckoner is, he said, quote, actually, I don't know what it is. It's a very typical response from Tom, as he's not one to try and explain his lyrics, and often dismisses them as meaning nothing at all. Interestingly, bassist calling Greenwood chimed in after Tom's response, saying, Johnny and Phil know what it is, it's an old word

from the Bible for Peter at the gates of heaven. Tom then asks, really? To which Colin responded, yes, the one that makes the last judgment, who weighs your good deeds against your bad ones. Tom then laughed while citing the opening lyrics, saying, Reckoner, you can't take it with you. You see how bad I am as a writer. He then opens up about the lyric writing process for the song, saying, quote, I've spent a long time writing these words. I desperately tried to let the melody write the words, even if I had to play it to myself a thousand times before the words came out. I'd rather do it like that than take a notebook and write pages and pages full of words

to choose a few appropriate ones. I enjoy doing that, but I've learned that sometimes it's bad for the end product. Sometimes you have to just say, All right, I'm just going to write whatever feels right without thinking about the consequences. Reckoner was created in this automatic process, and it just got more beautiful that way. If I had sat down to write it step by step,

it would have never happened, unquote. Aside from some great insight into his process for Reckoner's lyrics, this interaction between Tom and Colin is illuminating, as we have members of the band interpreting their own song differently, and in a way that Tom, the author, claims he never considered himself. Thankfully for us, Tom seems to encourage this kind of exploration of his words, as he once said, quote, As soon as the song is finished, it has nothing to do with me anymore.

And that quote, I hope in Ramos puts listeners in a state of mind open to all possibilities, unquote. It's a general philosophy I brought up a few times this season, a reminder that for Tom, there seems to be no right or wrong interpretation, and that perhaps the act of open exploration and personal evaluation is more valuable than attempting to pin down some definitive answer. And so with all that in mind, we'll begin our lyrical exploration of Reckoner right after the break. Welcome back to Dissect. Before the break, we heard Tom Singh Reckoner's opening line, Reckoner, you can't take it with you. Technically, Reckon means to

calculate, look upon, take account for, or deal with. Over time, the word has become associated with kind of holistic assessment of one's life, often with implications of the afterlife or punishment for a crime. This is what's implied in the idiom, Day of Reckoning, the time when the consequence of a past mistake or a moral action is experienced. It's also associated with Armageddon, the day God decrees the fates of all individuals according to the good and evil of the earthly lives. Earlier, we heard Johnny and Phil's interpretation of the word, associating it with Peter from the Bible and the common notion that Peter is the guardian at the gates of heaven, the one who determines your entry based on your actions on Earth. I've also read some interpretations that view Tom's Reckoner

as a reference to Mephistopheles, the devil character from Gerta's story of Faust who bargains for Faust's soul. For our purposes today, I don't think making a case for one specific reference over another is all that important. It doesn't appear Tom had one in mind anyway. Rather, I think what's best for us is to view Reckoner as a general personification or representation of a holistic account of one's life, possibly when faced with or contemplating your death. Because at its heart, a reckoner, be it Peter or Mephistopheles or God, is meant to encourage active, ongoing introspection and self-evaluation about the choices we make, the morality that influences our decisions, and the meaning we cultivate through our actions, all the things that comprise the

totality of our life. Thus we get the following line, can't take it with you. This is an idiom that traditionally alludes to the fact that you can't take your money or possessions with you when you die. It's usually used to inspire someone to enjoy their life today or live in the moment and often de-emphasizes the pursuit of wealth when that pursuit leaves a person unhappy. These notions would seem to align with Tom's thinking about wealth, especially when wealth is prioritized over the well-being of people in general. Tom one said, quote, for the most part in the West, we worship a certain type of economics, which is like worshiping a false god. It's like the Incas sacrificing children to try to get a mortal life.

politicians are willing to sacrifice the well-being of the people in their country in order to fit into this economic straitjacket which doesn't actually benefit anyone." With this kind of thinking in mind, Tom seems to make classic use of the can't take it with you idiom, a reminder that in the accounting of our lives, our over-evaluation of wealth individually and as a society might cost us our very well-being. In the same interview, Tom was asked what he'd like to be remembered for, which in my mind relates to these ideas of personal accounting and what we take with us in the end. He responded saying, quote, I don't expect to be remembered for anything. Maybe when I was a teenager, I think that part of the reason you want to get famous initially is that

it's a way of becoming immortal or whatever, but that is just such a scary, fucked up view of the world. And I think what happened is that once that was achieved, I went into complete meltdown. It's like, okay, I've done it, so I may as well die now. But then you realize that actually, other than the work you've done and what it produces, everything else is a very little consequence. You can't say that to people because they don't believe you, because we all participate in the system that believes that being famous is of consequence. So you give up trying to persuade people otherwise. As Reckoner continues, Tom sings his third line, dancing for your pleasure. For me, the meaning of this line changes depending on who he's addressing. The previous line, you can't take

it with you, seem to address the universal you, humanity at large, a perspective Tom, Tom, will formalize later in the song. If this line is consistent with this perspective, then dancing for your pleasure might allude to our attempts to find joy during our time here, with dancing being a classic symbol of uninhibited elation and perhaps representing those rare moments of pure joy. If yore is addressing the Reckoner figure, then we'd be dancing for the Reckoner's pleasure. In this reading, dancing might represent our attempts to appease this omnipotent entity, the one who controls our fate in the afterlife. Personally, I'm more drawn to the first universal U interpretation, especially when we consider Tom's lyrics in verse 2.

But first, as we just heard, Reckoner takes a five-measure instrumental break, where a piano enters for the first time played by Johnny. It accents the chords being played by the guitars with single chord strikes that sustain a full measure. When we isolate this piano part, we can actually hear what appears to be Johnny's foot shuffling around. Now, after these piano chords carry us through this instrumental passage, there's some very cool details that help differentiate verse 1 from verse 2. First, the bass guitar enters for the first time a minute and a half into the song. It's another atypical calculated delay of this primary instrument like we heard in 15th step. It also enters in an unusual spot. Rather than joining alongside the piano right away, it weights

two measures and jumps in on the third chord. Now on the fourth piano chord, which is also the first chord of the second verse, we get the really cool detail, which happens in the percussion section. Recall that the mix of the drums and shakers to this point have been hard panned, the drum set in the right speaker, and the shakers pan to the left speaker. They also both feature a wide, cavernous reverb, making it feel like they're playing in a huge, empty cave or mansion. Now, just when the second verse kicks in, the mix of these drums suddenly changes. First, the spacious reverb is reduced drastically. We'll also notice that those ride bell accents are gone, and the drum set plays standard, consistent eighth notes on the ride symbol. Finally, while the mix is still mostly hard-paned left and right, the kick drum becomes centered,

heard in both channels equally. Let's isolate the percussion track and listen to the contrast when these changes take place. Pretty cool, right? It's like they just suddenly flipped a switch, and the whole feeling of the percussion section changes, even though the parts themselves don't change all that much. These changes to the mix allow room for the piano, bass, and backing harmonies in verse 2. Like we've heard throughout this season, it's another example of Radiohead making subtle changes, to keep the song continually progressing. They easily could have repeated the verses verbatim, just with new lyrics, which is what most bands tend to do. But again, it's these nuanced details and carefully considered alterations that make in rainbows so replayable.

Alright, before we get into what Tom says here, we have to acknowledge the beautiful backing harmony that is sung beneath the main vocal line. First we'll listen to the harmony on its own, then we'll hear them together. Gorgeous, right? The words Tom sings during this verse are, You are not to blame for bittersweet distractors, dare not speak its name. This latter phrase, dare not speak its name, is similar to elephant in the room, and that it implies something that is understood but not formally discussed or acknowledged.

To speak its name is to formally acknowledge its reality, and would therefore mean you'd have to reckon with that reality. Within the context of the song thus far, it seems pretty clear Tom is referring to the bleak reality of death, that thing we often avoid discussing or thinking about. Instead, we pursue bittersweet distractors, temporary pleasures that divert our attention from our mortality. In this way, they are bittersweet.

There are things that please us momentarily, but ultimately cannot mask the reality that our time here is limited and that we don't really have any idea what we're doing here, floating on a speck of dust in an infinite universe. Saying you are not to blame makes clear Tom is not casting judgment. Rather, he's empathetic to these pursuits, which could be any number of things, like wealth, material possessions, and status that we discussed before, or even things like drugs, alcohol, sex, or any other temporary pleasure we might find momentary

escape in. Without a clearly defined purpose, it's no surprise that we seek joy where we can, that we all, in a sense, are chasing rainbows. The universality of these sentiments are seemingly confirmed when Tom sings the subsequent verse. Tom here sings, dedicated to all hue, all human beings. Well, in the first phrase, he's technically cutting himself off in the middle of saying human. It creates a slight homophone, at least to my ears, because I always hear it dedicated to all you, all human beings. In any case, the universal address is made abundantly clear. Tom is speaking to all of us. Typically, a dedication is made in reverence.

For example, an author might dedicate a book to a loved one or someone influential in its creation. And it would seem Tom is dedicating this song, perhaps this album, to us. to all of humanity navigating blindly in the dark, sharing this experience of life with all of its beauty and its horror together. Tom will continue this emphasis on the universal in his next line, which are recited over a brand new section, the first major musical change since Reckoner's start. To be quite honest, I'm a little intimidated by the thought of even talking about this next section, as it's without a doubt one of my favorite moments in all of music, one that moves me tremendously every time I hear it. Let's first listen to the section and then I'll try to talk about it.

And if it's possible for you right now, I would encourage you to stop whatever you might be doing and try to immerse yourself completely. It's absolutely stunning. Now there's a few ways I want to talk about this section, but let's first go over what we're actually hearing. Instrumentally, everything drops out except the electric guitar, which abandons the oscillating low to high plucking and moves to a strumming pattern. On top of these strum chords, Tom sings two backing harmonies, hard pan left and right, respect to. Compared to the guitar alone, Tom's voice instantly and dramatically elevates the emotional resonance of this section. He just has one of those voices that, at its best, evokes the divine, and this section of the song is proof. Over this minimal yet arresting musical texture, Tom performs the top line vocal.

When this first vocal phrase end, there's a brief two-court instrumental passage. where Tom adds a third, very high harmony to his backing track, heard faintly straight up the middle. The real star of this moment are the gorgeous strings composed by Johnny that enter here. I'm going to play the entire string part isolated so we can fully appreciate just how a resting, cinematic, and moving they are all in their own. Breathaking, it's all the adjectives we try to reserve to describe this kind of transcendent beauty, yet none of them do it the slightest justice. Now when Tom begins singing the top line again, his backing vocals sustained the three-part

harmony beneath. Only now these backing vocals actually say words. Two words to be exact. See if you can hear them. It's here in what's arguably the album's most transcendent moment that Tom gives voice to its title, in rainbows. It's likely a lot of you never caught this. I didn't for years. Yet to my mind, the obscure, almost hidden nature of the title aligns perfectly with the theme of the title itself. Recall from our last episode, Tom said in rainbows meant reaching for something you can't quite touch, with a rainbow being a beautiful image that might as well be a mirage, since you can't technically touch it. Even when you know Tom is singing in rainbows here,

it's still difficult to hear. It's there, but it's distant, just beyond reach. Yet if you were somehow able to inhabit a rainbow, I imagine it might feel the way this sounds. The album title in Rainbows augments the top line lyric sung here, which is because we separate like ripples on a blank shore. It's a beautiful image, as we imagine a completely still body of water

disturbed by a breeze or a single rock, causing ripples to gently spread across the water's surface. With Tom's dedication to all human beings just before this line, it's safe to assume the we and we separate continues this address, comparing humanity to the water. It's a stunning and profound symbol of our underlying interconnectedness. Just as ripples create the illusion of separation in water, just as colors are divided in a rainbow, we two separate ourselves from each other, through our beliefs, our cultural values, our political alliances, through religion, class, color, sexuality, or any number of things we view as differentiating one person from another. At our best, we value, celebrate, and learn from these differences.

At our worst, we use them to justify violence, oppression, and murder, losing sight of the fact that just as a ripple is still water, just as a single color is still a part of a rainbow. We are the same. United as human beings. temporary inhabitants of physical bodies blessed with the breath of life, doing our best to make sense of what the hell we're all doing here. This beautiful, unifying sentiment is reserved for perhaps in Rainbow's most beautiful musical moment, one that Tom formally acknowledged was the centerpiece of the entire album.

The thing that I found really strange was there was no, it didn't seem to be a center to this record, didn't seem to have a certain sense of focus. You know, with previous, if you go back to, say, hail to the thief, Lyrically, there's various sort of themes running through it, fatherhood, maybe the political landscape outside of, you know, the family home. Okay. But it was something sort of holding it together, less so with this record. Do you think?

No. No, the centre is Reckoner, I think. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because that's where it goes into a space of its own. The central point, because we separate like ripples on a blank shore, the, that's where it goes into a space of its own, the central point, the central point, the, that's the center. Right.

Yeah, everything's leading to that point and then going away from that point. Aside from Tom acknowledging this specific section of Reckoner is the album's centerpiece, I think what's most revealing here is what prompted Tom to share this insight was the interviewer's claim that, unlike the overt political emphasis of Hail to the Thief, in Rainbows lacked an obvious thematic center. We can therefore assume that the unifying theme of, We Separate Like Ripples on a Blank Shore, addressed to all human beings, and crucially accompanied by the album title beneath it,

is the thematic center, the soul of in rainbows, a reminder that we'll forever have more in common than we do differences, that we all are striving toward the same aim of making it through this life the best we can, hoping to experience glimpses of joy along the way, hoping to, at least for a moment, inhabit a rainbow. The unification and articulation of these central themes through a transcendent musical moment like this is to me the pinnacle of artistic expression.

It's no wonder Tom sees it as the album's centerpiece. It's these kinds of rare, incredibly special moments that artists spend hours, days, months, years hoping to discover through their art. Tom talked about this phenomenon on multiple occasions, noting how the best musical moments feel as if they're discovered, not made. Quote, all the good bits are received, all the bad bits I've had to hammer out with my own tools, fill in the gaps. I don't think any of us in the band quite understand what exactly is happening

musically when things click. It always feels like someone's given you a nudge, and there it is. That's why you can't really take glory from it, because you're just chipping away all the time, hoping that something is forming and you've got no idea how it happened or where it came from, unquote. And for Tom, experiencing these special moments in art are essential to the human experience. Quote, that's what we should be aiming at. A good piece of music is like knocking a hole in a wall so that you can see another place you didn't know existed. If your consciousness is not constantly evolving and you just keep going around the same room again and again, then you're sort of trapped, and every good piece of music or art or writing stops you feeling trapped, unquote.

Now it's hard for me to overstate how all of these ideas are truly represented in this 45-second passage of music. I mean, everything Tom is saying about music and art is true of life, the way we're constantly chipping away, grinding through the monotony of most days, suffering through periods of sustained grief, surviving through the stresses of work, politics, war, relationships, and the overarching anxiety that death looms over all that we do, that one day, any day really, all of this will suddenly vanish. But it's through this chipping away that we also experience love, joy, exhilaration, and fulfillment. We travel and explore, we meet a new friend or lover or mentor, we spend time with family, we walk in the woods,

we hold a newborn child, pet a dog, we experience a new food, we see a great film or go to a concert or removed by a piece of art. And every so often, when timing and circumstance and experience a line just right, you touch a rainbow. You experience something so pure or beautiful or transcendent that it changes you. It reveals to you a color as yet unseen, opens a window into a world you didn't know existed. As Tom said, this is what we're always aiming at. It's how we evolve. And eventually these moments find us, or they're discovered, or they're gifted to us. But they're only possible because we're all here trying, every day, chipping away. And this to me is what's so elegantly captured in the centerpiece of in rainbows. In their own shipping away, itself symbolic of

the journey of existence, Radiohead discovered a glimpse of the divine, and then offered this rainbow to the world, dedicated to all human beings, so we too may inhabit its fleeting beauty. And this artful exchange between humans about what it is to be human, symbolizes the union among us, which is, of course, sentiment expressed in its text. For me, this 45 seconds of music is why music exists. It's why art exists, because it momentarily materializes the immaterial, inexplicably capturing in sound the revelation that we are but refractions of the same light, ripples on the same blank shore. Now, there is just one more thing. One more thing about this section that we have to talk about. And it has to do with where exactly this section occurs within the entire 42 minute and

38-second album. Recall that in his remarks about this section of Reckoner, Tom said, quote, everything is leading to that point and then going away from that point. Now, in mathematics, there's something known as phi. Like pi, phi is a number that goes on forever, but it's commonly abbreviated as 1.618. And in the same way pi or its abbreviation 3.1415 describes the ratio of a circle, phi refers to another kind of ratio, what's known as the golden ratio, the golden mean, or the divine proportion. It's a little tricky to explain without visuals, but the golden ratio occurs when a line is divided into two parts so that the longer part to the shorter part is the same ratio as the longer part to the full undivided line. I know that's a little

abstract, so try it this way. Imagine in your mind a stick. The exact middle of this stick is 50% or 0.5. And if we break the stick exactly at 0.5, we would end up with two sticks of equal length, right? Okay, so instead of breaking that stick at 0.5, imagine breaking it a little more over to the right at 61.8% or 0.618. You'd be left with one stick a little longer than the other. But what makes breaking at 0.618 special is that the ratio between the longer stick and the shorter stick is the exact same as the ratio between the longer stick and the entire stick you began with. This unique symmetry is what makes the proportion, divine, or golden. Now, a common way 5 or the golden ratio is implemented is in creating what's called a golden rectangle. For example, let's say we drew the longer

horizontal lines of a rectangle 10 inches long. To figure out how long our vertical lines need to be, we multiply 10 by 0.618 or 5 to get 6.18 inches, making our golden rectangle 10 by 6.18. This rectangle is golden because if we draw a line to divide the rectangle into a square and another smaller rectangle. That smaller rectangle is exactly the same ratio as the original rectangle, meaning its golden two. And you can keep doing this over and over, dividing each new golden rectangle into a square and another golden rectangle, literally forever, inception style. Part of what makes FI so fascinating is that it shows up in the natural world. For example, the DNA molecule, the program for all life, measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of its double

helix spiral. The ratio between 34 and 21 is 1.619, which closely approximates phi. If you look at your index finger, you'll find that each section from the tip to the base of the wrist is larger than the preceding one by about the ratio of 1.618. Your hand also creates a golden section in relation to your arm, as the ratio of your forearm to your hand is about 1.618. The golden ratio has also been used consciously by some of the greatest artists ever, as it's thought by some that the golden ratio provides ideal compositional symmetry. Leonardo da Vinci himself drew the illustrations for the book The Divine Proportion, another name for the golden ratio, and he used the proportions to construct many of his paintings, including the Last Supper. Michelangelo used the golden ratio over two

dozen times in the Sistine Chapel alone. Now in music, there's something known as a phi moment or the golden section, which refers to the moment that occurs 61.8% of the way through the total duration of a composition. Well, technically every piece of music has a phi moment, the term is used for when something special happens at that precise time, like a climax or a key change. In classical music, where pieces are formally composed and written out on staff paper, you find the phi moment through the total number of measures. For example, in Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony, the first movement is 600 measures long. Multiply 600 by 0.618 to find the golden section or phi moment, and you get 372. It's precisely at this measure that the piece's main model returns in its most triumphant,

climactic version of itself. In a recorded song or album with a fixed duration, the FI moment is found by taking the total number of seconds of the song or album and multiplying it by 0.618. This will result in the exact second that marks 61.8% of the way through the song or album. I'm guessing you can see where this is going now. Radioheads and rainbows has a total of 10 songs and is 4. 42 minutes and 38 seconds long, which is the equivalent of 2,558 seconds. If we multiply that by 0.618 to find the album's golden section or divine proportion, we get 1,580 seconds, or 26 minutes and 21 seconds. In 26 minutes and 21 seconds into in rainbows puts us directly in the middle of Reckoner's extraordinary middle section, precisely when the strings enter. And so the very section of in

rainbows that Tom described as the point the entire album leads to then recedes from is quite literally its golden section, the mathematical portion that Da Vinci himself considered divine, and that some of history's most revered artists and architects used in their work. But wait, there's more. If we take the total length of the song Reckoner on its own, four minutes and 50 seconds, and we multiply that by 0.618 to find the song's golden section, we get 2 minutes and 59 seconds. This is only six seconds away from the album's golden section, which in the grand scheme of things is a pretty minor difference. So we essentially have a golden section within a golden section.

And by the way, let me play Reckoner starting precisely at two minutes and 59 seconds, the song's golden ratio. And listen to what happens exactly at this moment. Reckoner's phi moment occurs precisely when Tom says in rainbows for the first time, to the very second. Now, some of you might be wondering, was this intentional? Did Radiohead actually compose Reckoner and or in rainbows as a whole according to the divine proportion? The answer seems to be a definitive no.

Here's Tom in the same interview we heard earlier addressing the theory directly. Yeah, everything's leading to that point and then going away from that point. Right. So literally, it's quite like dropping the payable. And then I tell you what, though, we did something, we were talking to somebody this morning and there's all these mad theories on the net. I mean, I don't know. I'm not one of these people who ever reads them, but, you know, someone read one out to me.

It's all about tens, and apparently, mathematically, that is the centre point. Is it the Golden Section? Yeah, was that, was that? Is it the Golden Section Theory? Yeah, the Golden Section Theory. So if you're really, really, really, really stuck for something to do, you could always read up about that. For me, Reckoner's Bridge, unintentionally occurring at the Alms' Golden Section raises some interesting questions about art, art analysis, and the individual subjective relationships

we build with the art we love. For some of us, the fact that was unintentional is grounds for immediate dismissal. If the artist themselves were not consciously aware of it, then why should we look into it any further than they did themselves? It's of course a fair point. There's enough in Reckoner's Bridge without the divine proportion stuff to appreciate and cherish. On the other hand, intentional or not, it is mathematically true that Reckoner's Bridge occurs at the Alms' Golden Section.

For some of us, this could enrich our appreciation for and connection to the art. It's something you can use to help explain why this moment of the album is so powerful, why Tom himself admitted it's the moment the entire album builds to and recedes from, which is a pretty accurate description of exactly how the golden section is used in art. After all, the artist's intuition seems just as important and valuable to the creative process as their calculated efforts. I mean, some artists have no formal training or theoretical knowledge and create based on intuition alone.

Does that mean their art is excluded from analysis, or that are, our interpretations of the art are by default invalid because what we see or experience or find value in was not quote unquote intentional. It brings up an idea now known as death of the author. First conceived by literary theorist Roland Barth's, the death of the author concept argues for the primacy of each individual's interpretation of art over any definitive meaning intended by the author. For Barth's, allowing the author to provide a single absolute interpretation of their work is to make a secular version of a sacred text, where the author is a God who has imbued the text with a single meaning. He argued that this approach severely limits the art, because we always have to view the work

and its meaning in relation to its creator, their life, and their intention. As an alternative approach, Barth's proposed that art is eternally created here and now whenever it's experienced by an individual, and that meaning is created through the relationship between the art itself and its impressions on the individual consuming it. Tom York himself seems at least open to this idea, as he said, quote, as soon as a song is finished, it has nothing to do with me anymore, and that he hoped the lyrics on In Rainbow's quote, delivered the widest range of interpretations. Ultimately, I think it's pretty clearly up to the individual to decide the best approach to analysis and interpretation for them. Whatever approach deepens their appreciation for and connection

to the art, which is to me the entire point of art analysis. My personal approach, what I attempt to employ on this show is to be guided as much as possible by the artist's intention while still allowing my heart and mind the freedom to wander. To explore the pathways art creates that connect experience, circumstance, history, and emotion, as it's often in making these connections that I feel most connected with the art itself. And so with that being said, I personally find the knowledge of Reckinor's bridge being the album's golden section incredibly additive to my experience of it. And I find this knowledge additive precisely because, it was unintentional. Because to me, it relates perfectly with the ideas of discovery we discussed earlier,

how Tom himself believes the best moments of music are found. And in this sense, Radiohead found a perfect moment and happened to express it at a moment deemed mathematically perfect. And it was the active listeners of in Rambos, those who opened themselves up and experienced this art that made this discovery. And this to me exemplifies the very relationship between art, artist, and audience, an ever-evolving eternal exchange, each made better and more complete because of each other, which is itself symbolic of the reciprocal relationship among all of us ripples on the same blank shore. Beautifully, Reckoner returns to its A-section, its impact made more powerful coming after the

percussionless bridge section. Tom repeats Reckoner, but rather than saying, you can't take it with you as he did in the song's opening, he now says, take me with you. It's a clever twist on the initial phrase, and seems to represent a significant in progression or change in tone from the song's opening stanzas. Tom or the song's narrator is submitting to the Reckoner, which after the revelation of the song's bridge feels like a gesture of acceptance. Recall at the top of this episode, we discussed Tom's quote about the two sides of in rainbows, where he admits the first half is raw and hectic, musically and lyrically. We think of 15-step

and its panic and fear of death. We think of body snatchers and its feelings of being trapped. We think of nude and going off the rails, of weird fishes hitting bottom, of all I need's unhealthy obsession, fantasizing about escaping through another person. Now firmly cemented in the album's second half, Reckoner Take Me With You, addressed to what appears to be some kind of representation of death, feels like an evolution from the sentiments of the first half, illustrating what Tom described as elation after letting all that tension go. Indeed, Tom's submission or acceptance of death expressed here feels guided by the revelation of the connectedness among all human beings, an understanding of our impermanence that perhaps allows our narrator to live more fully

while granted this opportunity at life, content to return to the soil whenever they might be called. Now as Reckoner continues, Tom will repeat, dedicated to all human beings, only now the strings introduced in the bridge returned to accompany him for his final words on the song. Because we can, let's isolate these gorgeous strings and hear them on their own. Now let's hear these strings in the context of the full arrangement, appreciating how once again Radiohead is adding new elements to a section we've heard before, keeping the overall composition feeling active and alive. As Reckoner works towards its conclusion, it enters a coda section, where the guitar oscillates between two chords, E minor and C major 7, in a new rhythm.

Over this Tom sings a wordless three-note rising melody, and when isolated, we can hear its process through a pretty aggressive delay effect. After two cycles of this two-core progression, the strings returned, matching Tom's three-note ascension. At the same time these strings enter, the drum and percussion section return to the ride-bell accent pattern. This is the first time the drums have returned to this ride-bell centered part since the song's beginning. It's a small detail, but one that I really feel brings the song full circle. It evokes a common film technique in which an opening scene is returned to or mirrored in its closing scene,

leaving us with a final impression of all that we've experienced and all. all that has changed as we now fade to black. I end each episode with a conclusion, where I talk about some of the broader takeaways inspired by the song after completing our formal analysis. But honestly, I feel like I've said all I can about this beautiful piece. I think the only thing I might add is that episodes like these are the reason I do this show. They're a reminder to myself and hopefully to you of the meaningful rewards that lie waiting to be discovered in art.

If only you make yourself available to them, if you give to them as much as they give to you. And so in lieu of the typical few minutes I would spend talking during this conclusion section, my hope is that you'll use this time to now listen to Reckoner in full. Really listen. Give it your full attention. Open yourself up and allow it to grace upon you what it can at this particular moment of your life. Because if the timing's right, if circumstance and experience and history and emotion are all in alignment, you might just touch a rainbow.