Radiohead
The King of Limbs
[self-released]
Rating: 8.0/10
(This review originally was posted on Audiosuede)
Hit the jump for the review.
It will be a week ago today that The King of Limbs, seminal experimental rock act Radiohead’s eighth record, was announced. Their last record, the lush and sensual In Rainbows, received similar “Holy crap Radiohead has another album finished” / “Oh my God it’s out like right fucking now” fanfare in 2007, when Radiohead finished the record and then quickly released it as a pay-what-you-want download. The King of Limbs received a much more traditional self-release, with the band releasing the record for purchase on their website, starting at nine bucks; there will be no great “Did Radiohead change the music industry” think pieces built into King of Limbs reviews. That’s a good thing, probably. At times, In Rainbows‘ release strategy overshadowed the actual content. Because of the comparably “normal” method of The King Of Limbs‘ release, one would think the actual songs will be allowed to stand out on their own.
But here’s something interesting: People were able to see the critical reaction to The King of Limbs almost immediately upon its release a few days ago. With Twitter, everyone of certain subgenre interests can gather together and come up with a consensus on something within hours. What that means is that anyone who cares about Radiohead probably had already heard someone’s opinion on it before they had heard that. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it’s far different than how people are used to consuming an album, especially from a band with the kind of cultural pull that Radiohead has.
Radiohead has a history of doing this. In 2001, when the band released Amnesiac, they were just on this side of the Napster revolution. In many ways, Amnesiac was the exact wrong record for the Napster generation. It demanded patience and thorough front-to-back listening to truly get a sense of, while Napster’s long download times meant that fans wanted immediate payoff for the hour or so they put into downloading each individual song. The King of Limbs operates in a very similar way to today’s culture. Twitter and Facebook, Tumblr and the blogosphere have created a shout-to-be-heard atmosphere, where the loudest, most outlandish voices demand the most attention. But The King of Limbs refuses to cooperate. At every turn, the latest Radiohead record is more whisper than shout.
This is apparent from the very beginning. The opening cluster of “Bloom”, “Morning Mr. Magpie”, and “Little By Little” all operate on subtle, small shifts. Their dynamics very rarely reach toward either extreme. Instead, innovative and artfully rendered rhythm sections operate in stopwatch gearwork, melodies and harmonies are considered more for how they build and release tension than how well they relate an emotion or convey a lyrical idea. Consider the “Pull/Pulk”-esque “Feral,” wherein it sounds as though individual grains of sand are being dropped next to the microphone. Or de facto single “Lotus Flower,” where sometimes Phil Selway’s drums are supplemented not by a chorus of children shouting, like on In Rainbows opener “15 Step,” but merely by a single person clapping along to the off-kilter rhythm.
The entire first half of the short (eight songs, thirty-seven and a half minutes) record is dominated by tracks of this nature. Skittering, insect leg percussion pulls and pulks against Yorke’s tortured, anxious chatter. In many ways, Amnesiac is most cloesly analogous to the opening half of The King of Limbs, specifically Amnesiac’s “Knives Out” and “Dollars & Cents.” Adding the kitchen sink rhythms prevalent on The King of Limbs‘ first half to either song would net you something akin to “Little By Little,” and if you added a little bit of song structure to Amnesiac opener “Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box,” you could certainly end up with “Lotus Flower.”
But like many of those classic vinyl records, The King of Limbs is a tale of two halves. The last three songs on the album, “Codex”, “Give Up the Ghost”, and “Separator”, subvert the formula of the first half, turning in three tracks that are among some of the most devastatingly beautiful in the Radiohead canon. The biggest weakness of the Limbs‘ first half is its tendency to sound too Radiohead-y. That is to say, the innovation and singular styling that made them so striking and instantly classic has become almost predictable at this point. Truthfully, no one would put up too much of a fuss calling “Bloom” Radiohead by-the-numbers. But on the second half, Radiohead sounds about as straight-forward a rock band as they have since The Bends, and by freeing themselves of their experimental confines, the last three songs on The King of Limbs sound completely revitalized.
Consider “Give Up the Ghost,” which may be the greatest Neil Young song ever recorded; for the first time since “Fake Plastic Trees”, Radiohead uses acoustic guitars as a tool for melody in earnest, as opposed to using the bare-bones sound of the instrument’s steel strings as a method to induce tension. Even Yorke’s voice sounds indebted to Young, as he turns his typically tortured yowl into a swooping croon, pulling hope out of the song’s rustic, yearning sentiments. “Codex” is a gorgeous, contemplative piano ballad in the vein of “Pyramid Song”, where thick modulations threaten each note’s stability, and the underwater chords pull Yorke’s powerful voice down like an anchor. And closer “Separator” is about as frills-free as Radiohead gets, and about as cheerful as they get, too. Jonny Greenwood’s and Ed O’Brian’s guitars dance joyously around Yorke’s delicate meditations.
While the first handful of songs on The King of Limbs may seem like Radiohead’s bag of tricks has finally run dry, that closing trio reminds us that Radiohead is still– has always been– a very, very good rock band before all else. They don’t do it by shouting a new, instant Greatest of All Time record down from their metaphorical mountain peak. Instead, they whisper it in your ear, delicate and subtle, but just as powerful. In a world dominated by the loudest voices, it may seem like a record this unassuming is a failure. But, as Yorke sings on “Separator”, “If you think it’s over, then you’re wrong.”
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