No Words is in heavy rotation and has quickly become an important reference track for critical listening here at Hi-Fi Materials. It’s a fantastic song first and foremost—beautifully written, arranged, and produced.
As the track opens, sonorous percussive tones introduce a smattering of drum bits in a wide soundstage — they layer in wonderfully with a rhythm guitar riff as the drums form up their own plans.
Then around 0:41 the bass guitar shows up, with a gorgeous line that, in a system resolving enough, feels like it’s right in front of you.
Thom Yorke’s vocals join in dead centre in the soundstage — prominently, but also clearly separated from the rest of the elements.
No Words is eminently enjoyable and, because it’s so well produced — with an expansive soundstage, well-localized instruments, and excellent dynamic range — it’s a superb reference track for evaluating system/component performance. It’s also decidedly not compressed to death, as so much modern music is1.
In addition to those qualities, the song has complexity that grows as the song progresses. As the complexity increases, it can reveal how well your system allows you to hear individual instruments and sounds in the mix, or how much they start to blend together (e.g. when it starts to get busy, can you still hear the backing vocals clearly and the guitar pick on the bass strings?).
The New Aja (ha)
The title track of Steely Dan’s highly-acclaimed album Aja (1977), is reportedly highly overplayed in Hi-Fi shops and Audio Shows, becoming the hallmark of an “audiophile” who might be seen as being stuck in a certain era. It’s become a humorous shorthand among my crew [shout out to OEM!].
In any case, or at least specifically in my case, No Words is the new Aja.
Lots of modern music can be highly compressed during the mastering phase of production. This NPR article and the ancient YouTube video it links to get into it.