Thom Yorke used to scare easily. On 2001’s Kid A, the Radiohead frontman insisted that, “we’re not scaremongering / this is really happening.” But if you start listing the life-threatening demons that have shown up in Yorke’s lyrics over the years, it becomes clear that the guy is a little more paranoid than he should be. Among the things he has freaked out about: car crashes, airplane crashes, suckers of young blood, yen, bullets and being wiped out at any time.

But on Radiohead’s seventh album, In Rainbows, Yorke and the rest of the band seem a little less scared than before. They’ve made their most straightforward, confident-sounding album since 1994’s The Bends. It doesn’t live up to the elliptical, scared-as-hell brilliance of OK Computer and Kid A, but it’s not trying to: Instead of parsing the nature of fear in modern society, In Rainbows is concerned with the ways a person can be released from that fear.

That doesn’t mean In Rainbows is all sunshine and, well, rainbows. It opens with an itchy electronic beat that sounds like something a robotic Stomp (or Boomshaka) would make, mirroring the neurotic twitch of Yorke’s lyrics –”How come I end up where I start? / How come I end up where I went wrong?” The clatter falls away, and Yorke answers his own question with an accusation: “You reel me out, then cut the string.”

“15 Step,” the first song on the album, points out how fleeting human connections are. On In Rainbows, Radiohead makes clear that all good things come to an end – through betrayal, fatigue and death. The remarkable thing, though, is that Yorke says it’s still worth it to fall in love, have a fling, be obsessed. It’s a remarkably hopeful message from a historically pessimistic band.

That helps explain why the music here is so forceful. Most songs reward their listeners with gorgeous passages and ecstatic codas. Radiohead has started living in the moment, left behind fear and rediscovered romance.

“All I Need” slinks and seduces like a Sade song, with Yorke describing a state of abject, unrequited infatuation – “I’m an animal trapped in your hot car / I am all the things that you choose to ignore.” “House of Cards” sways on a breezy, clicking drum beat with poppy guitars as Yorke admits, “I don’t want to be your friend / I just want to be your lover,” before acknowledging that whatever happens won’t be permanent – “No matter how it ends / No matter how it starts.”

Of course, Yorke still yearns for things to last. The most fascinating passage on the album comes midway through “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” a swirling, jazzy anthem where Yorke imagines being pulled through an underwater world by some inescapable attractive force. The drums disappear, and Yorke reaches the climax of his fantasy: “I get eaten by the worms / and weird fishes.” Death, at the bottom of the ocean with love, is Yorke’s ultimate dream. But then – cymbal crash! Reality returns. The drums are back, more driving than ever. Yorke finds his way back to the surface by heading down: “I hit the bottom and escape.” In this unattainable dream of eternal bliss, the band creates one of the most blissful minutes on the album.

Even at its most obtuse moments, In Rainbows is entrancing and powerful. “Reckoner” is the record’s most inexplicable and vital track. A delicate guitar line counterbalances a cloud of clanking metallic percussion as Yorke delivers some of his most inscrutable lyrics yet: “You are not to blame for / Bittersweet distracters.” It’s hard to tell what he’s talking about, but swooping strings and lush harmonies make it sound like love.

Radiohead directly takes on fear in the album’s final, revelatory track, “Videotape.” Yorke again imagines finding eternity, this time in two forms: In the afterlife at the “pearly gates” of heaven, and with some glorious moment of his life playing out on videotape. The tender piano chords of the song’s first half get interrupted by weird, asymmetric percussion that recalls both a tape spinning off its reels and a ticking metronome. With the life he knew over, time marching on, his loved ones gone, Yorke slays fear with a happy memory: “No matter what happens now / I won’t be afraid / Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.”