So imagine my surprise when the heart-attack like electronic opening of 15 Step begins, and Thom Yorke began to sing: “How come I end up where I started? How come I end up right where I went wrong? Won’t take my eyes off the ball again; You reel me out then you cut the string.”

Maybe I was odd, but I was instantly hooked — the music appealed to my then-germinating perfectionist tendencies. It also struck a chord that many artists weren’t hitting anymore: it was possible to do something totally new in both rock and electronic music. It was possible to re-invent yourself.

It’s hard for me to see this album outside of the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, although critics tend to agree with me about the album’s quality. I think it has many of Radiohead’s strongest, but most infrequently acknowledged tracks: the blissfully intimate Nude, the heart-crushingly beautiful House of Cards, and the otherworldly qualities of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.

In a lot of ways, this is Radiohead at their most human: while the album is still littered with the electronic invention the band is now known for, it’s a more organic record than what came before (or since, really). Thom Yorke is at his primal best, but it’s not because he sounds as paranoid as usual. He seems unusually dialled back, this time yearning for any sort of human connection.

It’s as if the band grew tired of sounding digital and instead wanted to be human again — on both musical and personal levels. Its haunting beauty comes from its complete vulnerability; never before has Yorke or the rest of the band sounded so broken. (And Radiohead is not known for being happy.)

For people looking to get into a post-OK Computer Radiohead, it’s hard to recommend anything other than In Rainbows. Its vulnerability makes it approachable; its organic nature reveals its warmth — despite the band’s increasingly cold spirits. If I was absolutely pressured to choose a Radiohead album, this could come out on top.

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But 40 Winks, a Belgian duo, has gone on to have a successful career in experimental instrumental hip hop, using the ideas on Sound Puzzle to realize their sound and lay out the foundations that they would continue to play off for the next decade.

Sound Puzzle is an amalgamation of many influences, which may be obvious from the title, but what’s impressive about the record — and 40 Winks as an artist — is how it manages to merge all these sounds and make something cohesive out of it. It’s weird, but not in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable — that weirdness is what makes it unique. The record makes for a compelling Saturday morning lounging at home.

The music also feels as if it tells a narrative, thanks to some well-placed vocal interludes that tell something of a story behind a husband and a wife. The music follows the narrative thematically, and as the marriage begins to deteriorate, the beats and loops become a little more rhythmic and tense.

This makes Sound Puzzle feel like an incredibly coherent album; you shouldn’t skip tracks or be selective if you want to hear the whole experience. Amazingly, this still holds up despite the deluxe version’s additional tracks.

This could be because the additional tracks were originally included with the release in 2007, but in a limited edition print run of 100 cassettes. Times have changed though: with updated (and much more interesting) cover art, the record is now on vinyl for the first time (an infinitely better listening experience than a tape, of course), and those additional tracks are available for all of us to enjoy.

It’s a good time to be a fan of 40 Winks.

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With New View, Eleanor strives to free herself of the indie rock title that has followed her since her genre-defying work in The Fiery Furnaces. And in all honesty, the result is a record that’s sort of boring.

All of that brings me back to Widow City. After being disappointed by New View, it was easy to go back to The Fiery Furnaces. Although fans will forever argue about which Fiery Furnaces record is the best, I think a safe argument can be made that Widow City is their most rock-influenced. Distorted guitars are everywhere in the album, which was unusual for the band at that time.

Widow City is also the most Bowie-like of their records. It’s inventive in ways that I like to image Bowie would have loved, and since his recent passing, music that reminds me of Bowie has been in heavy rotation. Widow City is positively eclectic, jumping all over the place, unsure of the mask that The Fiery Furnaces wants to wear. And it’s wonderfully Bowie-like in its refusal to be stamped as a single, definable thing.

It’s also an incredibly intricate album. Almost every track starts mid-bar, making it impossible to listen to just a single track. You lose all sense of context. The album didn’t have to be laid out that way; each song does feel sonically different and texturally unique. It’s a very clear choice to separate the tracks that way, making it a unique statement in a time when the future of the album was unclear given the state of the single.

All of that adds up to an unusual album, even for The Fiery Furnaces. It’s the sort of music that I wish Eleanor and her brother Matthew were still releasing.

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I’ve referenced old-school Black Keys a lot, because it’s one of the easiest ways to reference a sound people know. In this case, the comparison between JJ Grey & Mofro stands true, but it doesn’t imply the depth and world-weariness that JJ Grey & Mofro bring to their music. This sounds more like if Jerry Cantrell (of Alice and Chains fame) were to make a country record rock. It’s great, authentic stuff, and a ton of fun.

In that sense, there’s a trend going on right now in rock music to emulate that old-school blues rock sound that country crossed over into for a while. What the bands who are emulating these sounds lack is the experience. JJ Grey & Mofro have been around a long time — since the mid–1990s, in fact — and you can tell these guys have heard it all and they just want to make fun southern-influenced party rock.

Country Ghetto is a record that your Dad could listen to, but it’s also a record you could get in on. It’s more fun than many of the albums today’s imitators are putting out.

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From start to end, All Hour Cymbals enchants with its unusual melodies, savvy beats, and unpredictable chord and rhythm changes. Actually, its generally a polyrhythm all-around. At first, I was a little trepidatious about the record, because it comes off strong. But by the time the album had finished, I had hit the repeat button and left it there for two days.

This is the kind of record you can lose yourself in. Before long, you’ve spent a day gazing into its soul and wondering what it means, trying to unravel it all and apply it to your life. It starts cryptically, ends beautifully, and surprises in between.

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