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Review NEW ALBUMS RADIOHEAD T The King Of Limbs XL. VINYL/CD/DOWNLOAD. OUT NOW ★★★★ Their eighth, and most understated, studio album. LIKE THIS? hese days experiments. The kind of complex, processed rhythms that TRY THIS... Radiohead don’t used to seem stiff and alienating (not a criticism, by the way) just release records; are now lithe and fluid, with bassist Colin Greenwood the they spring record’s quiet hero. The flocking strings and woodwind ambushes. Last which dive and then ascend midway through Bloom are month, they utterly gorgeous, even if the overall effect is so understated managed to that it makes Everything In Its Right Place sound like condense the whole hype cycle, from rumour to reception, Swedish House Mafia. CAN into a five-day flash of activity which generated an overnight Running to just eight tracks and 37 minutes, The King Of Future Days online cottage industry of remixes, mash-ups, cover Limbs can’t afford any filler and it loses ground in the first UNITED ARTISTS, 1973 versions and feverish discussion. As anyone with an half with Feral and Morning, Mr Magpie, which combines ★ ★★★ internet connection, a spare £6 and the faintest interest the goading anger (“You’ve got some nerve coming here”) The German in Radiohead will already know, this subtle, slender album and dislocated nursery rhymes (“Good morning, Mr Magpie, adventurers’ last was an unlikely vessel for so much attention - a very public how are we today?”) of Yorke’s early ’00s work to an almost album with frontman outing for a very private record. At the last minute, the band self-parodic degree. Frequently, the first half sounds like Damo Suzuki was also cancelled a launch event in the Shibuya district of Tokyo a more supple follow-up to Yorke’s The Eraser, barely their most restful and due to fears over crowd safety, an idea that is almost sounding like the work of a five-man band at all. spacious, flooded with impossible to square with the slippery clatter of opening It’s tempting to see the album as two twinned EPs, air and sunlight. song Bloom. Imagine how bad you’d feel if you’d trampled because the second half is a different entity in which the a fellow fan to the Tokyo pavement for a record that band, to quote one song, “unfurl as lotus flowers”. The sounded a bit like Four Tet. sinister undertones of Morning, Mr Magpie and Little By The King Of Limbs makes cavernous the gap between Little drain away; the lyrics teem with trees, birds and water. where Radiohead are and where, according to the laws of For anyone who equates Yorke with apocalyptic gloom, the rock gravity, they should be. When sonorous piano ballad Codex can In Rainbows came out in 2007, be heard as an invitation to suicide “It’s tempting TALK TALK industry pundits pondered what but it could just as easily be about Spirit Of Eden other bands could learn from its a refreshing swim, segueing into to see the EMI, 1988 surprise release and honesty-box the backwoods reverie of Give Up ★★★★★ pricing. The truth is: not much. It The Ghost in a warm mist of Mark Hollis and Tim worked because it was Radiohead, album as two birdsong. The closing Separator is Friese-Greene’s the world’s one and only officially positively idyllic, with the guitar retreat from pop is designated Serious Rock Band, twinned EPs.” tracing Balearic shapes around the a quiet masterpiece uniquely worthy of the listener’s skipping, Can-like groove as Yorke with a unique, patience, and where they lead sighs, “Wake me up”. Where Hail otherworldlymystique. nobody else can really follow. To The Thief was at war with the Hugely influential, The question that lurks unanswered within The King Of world, this, even more so than In Rainbows, is the music pioneering post-rock. Limbs is what they should do with such extraordinary Radiohead make once the smoke has cleared - escapist, artistic privilege. reflective, profoundly beautiful avant-garde pastoral that’s Contrary to the promotional photograph opposite, this spiritually akin to Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden. As Yorke sings is not their folk record, though it is interested in nature. And on Codex, “No one gets hurt”. contrary to the Lotus Flower video, in which a cavorting This is why The King Of Limbs is both a very good record Thom Yorke spawned (as he must have predicted) dozens and a disappointment. Leaving aside the drama of its arrival, of YouTube spoofs, it’s not a particularly physical record, it’s not a major statement in either commercial or artistic FLYING LOTUS though it is in thrall to the rhythms of producers such as the terms. Radiohead’s ambitions here are so modest that it’s Cosmogramma aforementioned Four Tet, Caribou and Flying Lotus. hard to tell whether this is just creative throat-clearing (it’s WARP, 2010 Basically, it sounds like Radiohead. After the giant leaps and not impossible they’ll have sprung another album on us by ★ ★★★ bold reversals of their career so far, the surprise this time is the time you read this) or the quieter path they’ve settled A fidgety, that there is no surprise. for. If it’s the latter, well, Radiohead sound calmer and more unpredictable tour It’s a longstanding Radiohead tradition to talk about the content than ever, but will their audience feel the same, and of hip hop, j azz and blood, sweat and tears spilled over each album but The King will they be quite as patient next time around? People will techno with occasional Of Limbs - intimate, opaque, slow-burning, almost forgive the world’s official Serious Rock Band anything at guest vocalists perversely low-key - feels like it was made under minimal all, except predictability. DORIAN LYNSKEY including one pressure and, if anything, might be an attempt to ThomYorke. deliberately downsize expectations. Rather than being DOWNLOAD: Bloom // Little By Little // Lotus Flower experimental, it absorbs and refines the results of previous El 50IIC odex // Separator MAY 2011 qthemusic.com Radiohead: their Countryfile audition wasn’t going well.