  The application of music information retrieval techniques in popular music
studies has great promise. In the present work, a corpus of Radiohead songs
across their career from 1992 to 2017 are subjected to automated audio
analysis. We examine findings from a number of granularities and perspectives,
including within song and between song examination of both timbral-rhythmic and
harmonic features. Chronological changes include possible career spanning
effects for a band's releases such as slowing tempi and reduced brightness, and
the timbral markers of Radiohead's expanding approach to instrumental resources
most identified with the Kid A and Amnesiac era. We conclude with a discussion
highlighting some challenges for this approach, and the potential for a field
of audio file based career analysis.
