Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

The unveiling of a new Radiohead album has become nothing short of a musical event, one that today carries with it an unparalleled level of press and public scrutiny. The accompanying analysis has been heightened all the more following the innovative and much-discussed ‘pay-what-you-like’ release of 2007’s In Rainbows. Predictably, the surprise announcement from the band on Monday outlining the launch of The King Of Limbs as a fixed-price download album paved the way for a barrage of global comment and debate before a note of the record had even been heard, many critics lamenting the less adventurous release, others relishing the prospect of a ‘collective listening experience’. For most however, it is the musical prospects that have induced baiting of breath; after all, this is one of the world’s foremost bands, renowned for creativity and reinvention, making its next move.

It’s the vital statistics that provide the first surprises; The King Of Limbs comprises eight tracks and spans 37 minutes, making it the Oxford quintet’s briefest studio outing to date. And far from picking up where the notably more accessible In Rainbows left off, opener ‘Bloom’ seems to take its cue from 2001’s experimental Amnesiac, skittering loops slipping gradually into a loose formation, Thom Yorke’s hypnotic vocals emerging above the clamour. It’s a tentative but calculated opening that only begins to stretch its emotive muscles in the wake of a blissful strings passage at the track’s core.

‘Morning Mr Magpie’ continues in the same minimalist vein, albeit with added tension from the jittery muted guitar backdrop. Yorke has complained in the past about the limiting factors imposed by the ‘pretty-ness’ of his voice, yet here he can be heard at his most acerbic, snarling ‘You’ve got some nerve coming here’. Sardonicism becomes malign inevitability on ‘Little By Little’ (sadly not the Oasis cover we’ve all been dying to hear), the creeping guitars marking the most prominent appearance of the instrument on the record.

In fact, it is the production that emerges as the record’s most influential ‘instrument’, Nigel Godrich more than justifying his reputation as Radiohead’s ‘sixth member’. Guitars are blended into textures with more subtlety than before, less a feature, more a facet of the band’s musical vocabulary. The Kid A ethos of regarding Yorke’s voice as an instrument resumes most obviously in the nervous drive of the predominantly lyric-less ‘Feral’, a manic conglomeration of samples landing somewhere between the 2001 album’s ‘Idioteque’ and ‘The Gloaming’ from 2003’s Hail To The Thief. It is both here and in ‘Lotus Flower’ that Philip Selway’s rhythmically impermeable drumming receives the most imaginative treatment, charging and retreating in volume to different points of awareness on the listener’s audio consciousness.

‘Lotus Flower’ represents the closest this album gets to traditional songwriting, slowly emerging as a beautiful album centrepiece and the most accessible point on the record. The descent of the remaining three tracks marks the band at their most relaxed, the tranquil piano-led ‘Codex’ giving way – via birdsong – to the warm aura of ‘Give Up The Ghost’ where looped vocals atop lilting acoustic guitars prove slightly reminiscent of Fleet Foxes and in particular the solo material of their drummer, J. Tillman. Intriguingly, the sense left by the confident tread of closer ‘Separator’ is one of a new beginning, a feeling of strolling off into a sunrise rather than a sunset; a cliff-hanger, perhaps?

Those hoping for a radical reinvention of the Radiohead ‘sound’ will struggle to satisfy their cravings with this record; the amount of back-catalogue allusions here are an indication of that. But the references belie a more subtle change in direction, a shift in orbit rather than relocation to a new planet entirely. The remarkable subtlety found within these blurred edges is one that the majority of today’s mainstream releases lack. Functioning as a cohesive album on levels many of its own ancestors fail to reach, The King Of Limbs emerges as a wonderfully organic, understated work of art, a grower that deserves a significant investment of time from its audience, one it will thankfully get.

The King Of Limbs is now available to download from Radiohead's official website.

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