It’s hard not to feel like a part of history when Radiohead releases a new album. The band is pop royalty, probably the closest our generation has to a Beatles — fearless experimenters whose music has shaped the popular soundscape while remaining utterly unique.
The band’s latest release, The King of Limbs, is highly textured yet paradoxically minimalistic, blending the subdued, organic sound of In Rainbows with electronic overtones that hark back to leadman Thom Yorke’s 2006 solo album, The Eraser. Cliché as it sounds, you run the risk of missing the intricacies of the album if you play it through laptop speakers. The King of Limbs deserves at least one full listen through good headphones.
Opener “Bloom” fades in with an icy flurry of piano punctuated by electronic swells and the insistent tattoo of a snare drum. The song comes on like dark clouds rolling in from the distance, and Yorke’s voice — strong and authoritative, yet haunting — is like rain rushing down from the sky.
Whereas “Bloom” is a cohesive musical experience, “Feral” is sonic splatter paint. Yorke’s vocoded lyrics pulse between the crisp but minimal rat-a-tat of a snare, giving the impression of being chased by an animal through an underbrush, catching only glimpses of its pelt between leaves like breathing brushstrokes.
Then, of course, there’s the first single, “Lotus Flower.” Sophisticated and challenging, highly electronic and with Yorke’s strong falsetto, the sound could easily be an outtake from The Eraser. The lyrics are delicately howled, delicately hopeful: “Slowly we unfurl / as lotus flowers / ‘cause all I want is the moon upon a stick / just to see what if / just to see what is.”
The track, like most of the others on the album, drops off — another similarity to The Eraser— and yields to “Codex.” The song is quiet, melancholy, like sitting inside on a rainy day in a room lit only by the light emanating from soft, gray clouds. A piano muses thoughtfully over a drum like a soft heartbeat, and Yorke’s vocals, ghostlike and delicate as wisps of smoke, follow a poignant melody. “Sleight of hand,” he sings tenderly, “Jump off the end / into a clear lake / No one around / just dragonflies / flying to the side / No one gets hurt / You’re doing nothing wrong.”
The song wanders slowly, like someone moving reverently through a forest’s low-hanging fog, stopping occasionally to place their hands on wet, black bark. Occasionally, the lovely dreariness is warmed by horns, like the sun illuminating the clouds and infusing the day with golden-gray light.
The album ends with “Separator,” a solid song in its own right, but also the source of rumors that The King of Limbs may only be the first of two new albums. Music news website NME presented a few compelling arguments: the significance of the name “Separator,” but also the fact that orders from the site were labeled “TKOL1” (potentially paving the way for “TKOL2”) and that the physical album comes on two 10-inch records. It can also be argued that it’s unlikely that a band as prolific as Radiohead has taken two years to record a mere eight tracks.
But perhaps it has. Yorke and the gang are at the point in their career where they can make the albums they want to make without worrying about criticism. Radiohead may not be defining the direction of popular music anymore, but its releases are still almost universally renowned. The band, like the Beatles before it, continues to prove that fads may come and go, but quality has a lasting impact and will always strike an essential chord.
