Radiohead do not like to make things straightforward. An email arrives early on 16th February thanking me for waiting (was I?) and announcing the release of their new album on Saturday 19th February. Within the mail there’s a pre-order link to their website with a bewildering array of options: mp3 for 6 quid; wav for 3 quid more (like – why?); “Newspaper Album” with immediate download plus shipping (in May) of “vinyl, CD, many large sheets of newspaper artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic to hold it all together” (sigh – I fell for it and ordered this). Then they decide to make the download available a day earlier anyway!
Their last album was released in October 2007, so the discovery that the new effort consists of only 8 tracks, lasting under 38 minutes in total, suggests either that the band has been very judicious in their selection of material or rather work-shy. On first listen I found myself tending towards the latter view; the tracks seemed to merge into one long mellow electro vibe, rarely changing pace or tone, with only the excellent Little by Little (“Little by little, by hook or by crook, I’m such a tease and you’re such a flirt”) standing out at all - think a third-cousin-twice-removed of There There or Knives Out delivered by early Stone Roses.
How wrong I was.
Radiohead’s best work (probably more than any other "stadium act") is not always immediate. Upon repeated listening I remembered that I was similarly initially underwhelmed by In Rainbows only for it to keep ringing in my head when I thought I’d condemned it to the file-away-pile, eventually ranking it up there with OK Computer as their defining moment (conversely, I realised that Hail to the Thief, which I loved from the get-go, had quickly waned in my affections to the point that I hadn’t listened to it, before this morning, for over 5 years).
The King of Limbs is certainly a slow-burner, but soon it becomes apparent that it’s been meticulously plotted to the point that there isn’t really a weak moment on it. Bloom is a jerky assortment of stuttering beats with trademark plaintive vocals; Morning Mr. Magpie - so similar in tone to the opener that at first I didn’t realise it was the second track - reveals itself as playful and almost psychedelic (“You stole it all, give it back... Good morning Mr Magpie, how are we today?” - can the similarity in its title & lyrics to Revolver-era Beatles be coincidence?); Feral is possibly the most difficult thing here to like, consisting mainly of cut-up & echoed vocal samples over a repetitive shuffling beat, but it’s the album’s shortest track and doesn’t outstay its welcome: Codex is just goddamn beautiful and all the more effective for the decision to leave it stripped-down.
For an album so heavily immersed in electronic beats it didn't really feel like "dance music" to me; that was until I saw the video for single Lotus Flower (a question though: what constitutes a “single” in Radiohead’s world? I can’t see any way to buy the individual track from their site, there’s no physical artefact in stores, it’s not on iTunes or Amazon etc.).
The biggest criticism I can find of this set is that it doesn’t really break new ground. If you like any Radiohead album from Kid A onwards you will probably be happy with this one. I think that it’s actually closest, in sound and spirit, to Thom Yorke’s 2006 solo effort The Eraser, but it’s definitely a more upbeat collection than that; on the closing Separator (great title, great song) I could swear that I can actually hear Thom smiling as he sings.
The aforementioned convoluted release schedule seems designed to ensure that The King of Limbs stays in sight for a few months at least. I wonder whether I’ll still be listening to it when I get my newspaper album in May, or I’ll just Give up the Ghost (d’ya see what I did there?).
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