Radiohead – Supercollider / The Butcher

Nice! An unsolicited email from Radiohead’s W.A.S.T.E. arrived this morning announcing “two tracks for your listening pleasure” which (it seemed at pains to point out) were “not part of a new loyalty points scheme, a Radiohead clubcard or even an air miles redeemable reward type thing... just a big old-fashioned thank you!”.

Supercollider and The Butcher were released on limited edition 12” vinyl (very limited - 2,000 copies only!) to mark Independent Record Store Day on Saturday April 16^th. In keeping with their rather singular approach to disseminating their music the band has opted out of reselling them in any form just yet (even the “pay what you like” approach used for In Rainbows) and instead mailed a completely gratis link to their subscribers – or, at least, those of us who’ve shelled out for the yet-to-be-received “Newspaper Album” version of The King of Limbs (previously reviewed here).

So what do we get? Actually, a couple of really good tracks.

Supercollider opens with a sharp, crisp electronic pulse-beat followed by a canon of swirling synths fading in to lay down the backdrop for a rather lovely melody. The lyrics are typically oblique (and hard to catch, if I’m honest!) but the theme seems to be about dust, particles, pixilations “in a blue light, in a green light, in a half light, in a work light”, building up to what sounds like Thom trying to convince us that he’s upbeat at the end (“I have jettisoned my illusions, I have dislodged my depressions, I put the shadows back into the boxes”) – I, for one, don’t buy it! This is a long (over 7 minutes) workout for a song that doesn’t adhere to a verse/chorus/middle-8 structure but it rides its time well; layer upon layer of instruments are added including (yes!) Jonny’s guitar. It all puts me in mind of the better moments from LDC Soundsytem’s This is Happening.

The Butcher is driven by a heavier marching drum loop and deep deep bass, along with creepy organ, wailing backing vocals and a far gloomier vocal – but it all works really well! Lyrically this is much darker territory – quite visceral horror, really: “Cut out, chop, liver on the block, my heart still pumping” ending with the frankly unnerving refrain “he's a warrior, warrior, he's a little bitch coming out of him”.

The email informed us that “The Butcher was recorded and mixed during The King of Limbs sessions but we couldn't make it work on the album; Supercollider was started during those sessions and finished off in March of this year”. It’s hard to see the logic in the former statement (it is neither wildly different from, nor overly similar to, anything else on the album) but second-guessing Radiohead’s motives is a pointless exercise. Supercollider would definitely have fitted nicely into the album’s overall soundscape and opened up some space in the flow. In this “digital age” though it’s easy to tack them onto the end of the album on one’s mp3 player – and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Thanks very much guys… now, when do I get my “Newspaper Album” edition of The King of Limbs? 

Supercollider & The Butcher are available for download from W.A.S.T.E. by email invitation, or you could try buying a vinyl copy on eBay if you've got £100+ to spare. Alternatively I'm sure they will be available in other purchasable forms soon.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Radiohead do not like to make things straightforward. An email arrives early on 16^th 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?).

The King of Limbs is now available to download from www.thekingoflimbs.com.