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CD choice:rock

Radiohead In Rainbows Radiohead.com (digital download only) ****

We find our bespoke angst heroes passing around the digital busking hat for this curious release. Four years on (their biggest-yet gap between albums) from the slightly underwhelming Hail to the Thiefand out of contract with EMI, Radiohead decided to release this album initially as a download only. It has been available since Wednesday. Unusually, downloaders can pay whatever they choose, or even download it free if they wish. It will be released later as a conventional CD.

The nature of this release will always be more remarked upon than the album's 10 tracks. Ironically, for a band who have such a dour Calvinistic approach to something so vulgar as publicity, Radiohead will probably win a PR award for the number of column inches In Rainbows generates.

Yorke has described the lyrical thrust of the album as "being like that anonymous fear thing, sitting in traffic, thinking 'I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something else'." Good news, then, for M50 commuters.

Musically, In Rainbowsis bass- heavy and bleakly minimalistic. There was never going to be a return to the melodic lushness of The Bends. Instead, it's a continuation of the free-form, let's-take-the-scenic-route-template of their previous three albums. The overall mood is one of mild-mannered melancholia, as if Nick Drake was fronting Kraftwerk.

Wait! Before you press the cancel button on the download, pause to consider the sepulchral tones of Nude and Arpeggi, which out-creeps even Creepin its miserabilism. Things get a bit slushy (by Radiohead standards) on the quite lovely All I Need, while Reckonersees them unleashing the cock rock guitar riffs. Elsewhere, the tremulous House of Cardsis the nearest they get to revisiting the singles chart, while the closing track, Videotape- an "ode to antiquated technology" - sounds like Brian Eno producing Sigur Rós. (That's a good thing, by the way.)

Not an album for the karaoke machine, then, In Rainbowsis still tense, nervous Radiohead, but the solicitudes here really soar. It's more quietly confident than triumphant. Not as specious as Amnesiacor as vaporous as Hail to the Thief, In Rainbowsfinds our warriors in unchartered territory. And while they're not waving, they're certainly not drowning. www.radiohead.com BRIAN BOYD

Download tracks: All I Need, Videotape