It’s been four years since the innovative release of In Rainbows, Radiohead’s last studio album. Being a band known for their proclivity to experiment with their music and methods for album releases, the bar was set rather high for the follow up. But whose bar is it? The bar certainly is not Radiohead’s, who have displayed multiple times that they don’t cater to the industry or even to fan expectations. The last word there is the key. When it comes to a new record from the Oxford quintet, one must be quick to dispose of any preconceived notions one has about the band and approach the music with a fresh pair of ears. This is no easy task, for Radiohead has a rich musical history spanning since the early nineties, but it is a necessary one.
Allegedly inspired by a thousand year old oak tree in the Savernake Forest in Wiltshire, eights songs here are pure studio creation, made up of intricate tapestries of woven drum loops and samples. In fact, The King of Limbs is by far Radiohead’s most percussive and beat driven work to date, drawing comparisons to Flying Lotus’ masterwork Cosmogramma (which also featured Yorke on a track). In fact, this album is so beat-centric that the band has even taken on a second drummer to assist in performing the songs live.
“Bloom” starts the journey with a haunted piano sample before plunging the listener into a thicket of percussion loops and skittering bleeps. As the song progresses, additional loops are added and piled on top of each other until the listener finds themselves surrounded by swirling atmospherics and even trumpets. The next few songs follow this similar song structure of percussion loops and sampled sounds, until the instrumental “Feral”, when Thom’s voice itself gets the sample treatment in the form of chopped up, wordless syllables that sound as if they are trying to escape from the claustrophobic drumming.
The second half of the record can be seen as the more accessible half. Kicking off with the groove oriented “Lotus Flower”, Thom’s falsetto hovers delicately over the hook as maracas shake and hands clap awkwardly in the background. The album highlight “Codex”, easily one of the band’s most beautiful songs, is a piano ballad whose beauty is enhanced significantly by the total absence of a beat. If the album up to this point has had the listener wandering through a dense forest, “Codex” is the clearing with a lake in the midst of it. This imagery is further assisted as Thom sings “The water is clear, and innocent” and the piano and trumpet notes gently wash over you.
“Give Up The Ghost” has probably the only strummed acoustic guitar sound on the entire album, with the percussion being merely a hand tapping the guitar body on the rests. The beat comes back on closer “Separator”, which is one of the more straightforward songs found on the album.
With The King of Limbs, Radiohead has created a paradoxical album. It is both at once challenging and approachable. This album can be listened to both casually and deeply. Due to the nature of the way the songs were constructed one would benefit greatly by listening with headphones all the way through at least once. There are so many patterns and rhythms that develop amidst the variety of loops that there is something new to be heard nearly every time. In addition, despite the digital cut and paste manner of its construction, the album sounds remarkably organic and earthy. It might not have been the immediate album everyone was expecting after In Rainbows, but it’s a great representation of where the band is at the moment and a features songs that are strong enough to stand with some of the best in Radiohead’s rich canon.
