Radiohead | The King of Limbs

Most Likely To: challenge notions about challenging notions.

Watching the release of The King of Limbs play out amongst Radiohead’s massive online fanbase was a bizarre spectacle, not dissimilar to watching a pack of junkyard dogs battle over a scrap of food. The figurative scrap being, in this situation, the consensus opinion of the record, of which everybody wanted their own piece. So a veritable maelstrom of off-the-cuff reviewing ensued, each blogger and commenter wanting to point things out about the album before anybody else did.

By the end of the work day the Friday it was released, major publications were already posting official reviews of The King of Limbs (a pointlessly short amount of time to spend with an album before crystallizing one’s opinion, if you ask me). Over the course of the next week, after just a handful of listens (a fraction of the hundreds of spins previous albums had doubtless accumulated) countless lists appeared on fansites placing the new album in a ranking with the rest of Radiohead’s canon.

Few seem to be asking the question: is this album the same sort of musical object as Radiohead’s other LPs, and should it be compared to them in such a way? For a long time, members of Radiohead — most revealingly Thom Yorke in an awesome interview with The Believer — have discussed a desire to start releasing music in chunks different from conventional LPs. At eight tracks and thirty-seven minutes, The King of Limbs delicately toes this line, and I think the disappointment or anticlimax that some are feeling has to do with the fact that this feels like a decidedly minor entry into Radiohead’s catalog, rather than one of their sweeping, full-fledged artistic statements.

It’s a dangerous game forcing too much meaning onto a record, or claiming it represents more than it actually does. But for over a decade now, a major part of Radiohead’s reputation has been the way their records can function as lenses through which to view the state of rock music, or music in general, or technology, or society. OK Computer and Kid A were intentionally crafted as grand statements about modern technological alienation, and Hail to the Thief seems rather representative, if only in hindsight, of the confusion and stasis setting in during the mid-Bush years. The music of In Rainbows made no grandiose thematic claims, and voilà, that became a statement of its own sort — not to mention the unending stream of press about their distribution method and what it “meant” for the future of the music industry.

So what about The King of Limbs? As it was with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the album has been so thoroughly dissected (but even more quickly this time), that it’s difficult to find anything original to say about the music itself, hence the essay-like — or dare I say “meta-review?” — nature of this review. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to the music in a bit.) Releases by the world’s premier Challenging Yet Popular Rock Band just always seem to provide a good moment to reflect on the way voracious music fans (if you’re reading this, you’re likely one) are currently consuming music. When you’re talking about Radiohead in 2011, you simply have to talk about the way the album was released in order for the discussion to be complete.

But the music of The King of Limbs and the way the band released it (fixed price being a step backward from In Rainbows’ progressive release model) seem to defy attempts to invest them with a grand sense of purpose. (The paradox of a band that cares as much about music as Radiohead is that this begins to seem like a statement in itself — a “we’re done making statements” statement.)

The album’s music also seems like a return to some familiar ground in their career; specifically, the glitchy, skittering experimentalism they first mined on Kid A and continued to fiddle with on Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, and Thom Yorke’s solo laptop adventure The Eraser. In Rainbows showed the group working with somewhat more traditional pop songforms, but The King of Limbs (especially its first half) hews much closer to their paranoid, uneasy tendencies. They’re even a bit reminiscent of some pleasant but rather rudimentary B-sides from the Hail to the Thief era (“I Am A Wicked Child,” “I Am Citizen Insane”), and at worst, critics of The King of Limbs have said it sounds like little more than a collection of B-sides.

But such statements belie this album’s careful sequencing. The third and fourth tracks — “Little by Little” and “Feral” — feel the most “B-sidey” of anything on The King of Limbs; “Feral” is an instrumental with little more from Yorke than some garbled vocal snippets. But its placement at the end of the incredibly dense, jarringly rhythmic first half makes sense — doesn’t every Radiohead album have something like this in the middle? (Think “Fitter Happier,” “Treefingers,” “Hunting Bears,” “Faust Arp.”)

The other six tracks all feel like classic Radiohead. Opener “Bloom” isn’t their catchiest stuff but it’s one of the most innovative tracks here, with looped, arrhythmic percussion, pulsing bass and synths, and echoing vocals and horns. In a way, its structure is informed by the ebb and flow of dance music more than rock’s verses and choruses. “Morning Mr. Magpie” is also quite rhythmically dense, but it’s catchy in its twitchy way and oozes their trademark paranoia. “Lotus Flower,” released with a music video and arguably the most accessible song of the bunch, is obviously meant to function as a flagship track of sorts for the record. It is also the pivot on which the album turns, combining the first half’s hypnotic rhythmic unease with the looser, more expansive quality of the second half.

Album highlight “Codex,” propelled by little more than a bass drum throb and pulsing underwater piano, is clearly more relaxed than any of the previous five tracks. “Give Up The Ghost” continues this vibe, starting out with a distinctly campfire feel, with strummed acoustic guitar and chirping birds, before building a gorgeous chorus of overdubbed Yorkes. (I smell Bon Iver.) Closer “Separator” is a splendid slow-builder that could have appeared on practically any of their albums released this century. Beginning with some great interplay between Colin Greenwood’s bass and Phil Selway’s drums, Jonny Greenwood eventually enters with some lovely, spindly guitar work and another chorus of Thoms coasts us to the record’s end.

(As many have been quick to point out, the repeated lyric near the very end of the album is “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong.” For this to be an actual hint about upcoming music would be a pretty cheesy move on Radiohead’s part, but it’s fun to consider. Prowl around some message boards and you’ll find some tantalizing theories about shipping dates, order tracking pages and URLs reserved on Radiohead’s site for possible sequential download links.)

These tracks pack in a lot of different sounds, and I would argue that it takes a great deal of mental stewing before deciding that the songs you’re hearing are great music or Great Radiohead Music. I’ll admit that I was underwhelmed by In Rainbows on my first few listens, and now I occasionally think (with increasing frequency) that it may be my favorite album by the group. At the very least, it stands on equal footing with OK Computer / Kid A / Amnesiac ( with The Bends close behind), but it took about three years to get there.

The lesson I take away from all this is that we shouldn’t let ourselves become too obsessed with opinion-forming, list-making and canonization when we’re trying to enjoy music. It’s a tough proposition when you’re trying to listen to music with a critical, discerning ear. And it’s even tougher to organically arrive at your own feelings about a record when you expose yourself to the never-ending opining of a sea of bloggers and posters every day. Maybe this isn’t the group of songs that people will remember Radiohead by in 100 years. Or maybe The King of Limbs Part Deux: The Prince of Limbs is on its way to change everyone’s minds. For now, let’s just enjoy these songs for the little marvels that they are.

Watch the video for “Lotus Flower”