Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

Only Radiohead can finish an record on Sunday, announce that they will release it the next Saturday, then actually release it via download on Friday. They don't need you, music press, and they're gonna make you scramble to keep up with them.

On their eighth album, the band has managed to keep up their trend of sounding like Radiohead while making a cycle of songs that sound unlike any that they've made before. That's not to say that The King Of Limbs is groundbreaking - its no "Ok Computer" - but it takes their signature sound and softens it up a bit. The staccato guitar/bass/drums are still combined with fitting ambiance from the digital era - blips, bleeps, beats, and old recycled textures are layered often and appropriately. Only this time, the whole combination adds up to something much more subtle that washes over you. It feels deeper in its subtlety - the instrumentation is less fragmented, and the mood is more singular. Many times during the record I feel as though I'm listening under water... or that state of half-awake and half-asleep. This is what makes this record stand out from their others.

The first half of the record has a singular mood, with the slightly dancy "Morning Mr. Magpie" and (the only song that sounds like it belongs on another Radiohead album) "Little By Little". There is a dynamic shift after the excellent first single "Lotus Flower" (video below): we dip into the depths with what seems to be many listeners' favorite track, "Codex". To me, its a bit too spacey, but it leads nicely into the slightly folky "Give Up The Ghost". The closer ties us back nicely to the slightly more uptempo beginning of the record with "Separator". Thom Yorke urges the listener to wake him up. We awake from this dream with a positive outlook...

Maybe this is a new Radiohead after all.

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