21st century Radiohead (through the CDs in the car)

It's taken me a few decades, but I think I'm finally ready for 21st century Radiohead.

I will always regret the fact that I missed a very early Radiohead concert at a South Island pub that all my best mates went to, but it took me a while longer to get onboard. The first album was 20 percent too whiny for me at that time of my life, and The Bends was lots of fun, but it was the eerie way that OK Computer felt like it was beamed in from the future - even with the odd duff song - hooked me in.

And that enthusiasm carried on to the next few albums, but then I dropped away, and have barely listened to the past three or four albums.

There was no conscious reason for this, I still liked the band as much as I ever did, I just never quite got around to it. I still always enjoyed the singles, but it was the full esoteric breadth of the albums that somehow put me off.

Fortunately, we still live in the 1980s here in my corner of the arse end of the planet, and still have CD players in our cars, so when there's nothing good on the radio - or when they sync up their ads to all run at the same time - we play a CD. I don't have the very modern laziness of not wanting to keep changing the discs, so if one goes on, it needs to be something I can listen to a lot, and the past few Radiohead albums are good for that

I'm also a bit over the playlist thing, and just crave full albums, and I need ones I don't get sick of after a couple of listens during the week. And I've been listening to In Rainbows, and Hail to the Thief, and even the most 'difficult' songs make an easy soundtrack for driving around town, and I can listen to them over and over again, in a way I haven't listened to albums since I was a teenager.

I still don't know what they're on about in a lot of these songs, and I'm still struggling with some of them, but I'm not skipping through anything. If I can listen to Throbbing Gristle enough times to find the beauty in Hamburger Lady, I can handle Pyramid Song.

There are rumours of a new project from the Radiohead crew, and I don't know much about that, but if they do, maybe I can get into it before we get too much closer to the 22nd century. Or maybe I'll just save it till then.