Radiohead
The King of Limbs
(Self released)
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Creepy, clear imagery and lyrics about alienation, loneliness and the vulnerability in intimacy? Check.
Wafting, moany Thom Yorke vocals? Got it.
Twinkling, hooky Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien guitar playing? Yeah, there’s a little of that in there, too.
General feelings of paranoia and hopelessness and primal reactions presented in the abstract? Yup.
So why is the new Radiohead album — despite all of its very Radiohead-y conventions — so different from everything the U.K. geniuses have previously produced?
Finding the answer is sort of like trying to fish a lyric out of the very blurry fourth, aptly-titled track “Feral.” Once you think you’ve got it, it wriggles free of your grip and splashes back into the torrential mix of clicking drum machines, synthesizers and chopped-up vocal washes.
Here goes my best attempt at picking out just why “The King of Limbs” sounds like it does: Yorke leads a disciplined attempt at recording an album under the influence of true-to-its-roots, honest-to-goodness, pure dubstep.
Longtime collaborator Nigel Godrich’s tightly coiled production is still there. It’s just compacted so densely that the handclaps on “Lotus Flower” catch even the most disciplined electronica-listener’s ears unprepared.
The dubstep influence is clear from the album’s opening track, “In Bloom.” A skittering, focused Phil Selway drumbeat sets the tone and syncs with a high-tone piano and Thom’s vocals, which spread across the whole of the composition’s scope. The band might as well have just titled it “’In Rainbows,’ this album will be not.”
“Feral” reinforces the notion that this isn’t your older brother’s Radiohead album. It’s a marvel this is the very same band — with the same personnel — that recorded “My Iron Lung.” Or “In Rainbows.” Or “OK Computer.”
The listener looking for something to jump out and grab them (the melding of guitar and singing on 1997’s “Paranoid Android,” the garage-fuzz guitar riff on 2007’s “Bodysnatchers,” the imagery in 1995’s “Fake Plastic Trees”) will probably be disappointed, at least initially. “The King of Limbs” requires an engaged, disciplined listening for full appreciation. You’ll be rewarded, but not as much as you hope.
Only 37 minutes in length, the album ends without ever managing to really drive any meaning home. “I’m such a tease and you’re such a flirt” on “Little By Little” is the most memorable lyric in the whole thing and it doesn’t even really seem to link up with any larger point or theme. It certainly sounds cool prodded along by a wall of percussion and some hypnotic guitar plucking but it just doesn’t ring true the way the vague phrases on the much more warm, human tracks on “In Rainbows” did (see: “Reckoner,” “All I Need”). It just feels unfinished, something Yorke even sings on the last track, “Separator” — “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong.”
Maybe it’s that the dubstep thing prevents them from really going crazy and recording something that immediately hooks the listener in. Maybe it’s the sad fact that it requires so much attention to ever figure out just what exactly Thom Yorke is saying. Maybe it’s that the rest of the band was too willing to allow Yorke control for the sake of maintaining cohesion. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. It’s 2011 — a half-dozen different buzz bands are going to scatter across the Internet by the end of the week so I don’t have enough time to decide.
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Radiohead 1 year, 2 months ago
Track one is not "In Bloom"
it is simply, "Bloom" FACT ERROR - 50.
And to think you actually listened to the album more than once? yeah right.
You don't seem to mention the way the bass lines tie the music together, Colin's bass work in this album is better than any other Radiohead work to date, it really exemplifies the mood of the album.
It is not all dubstep, the last four tracks are anything but dubstep. Lotus Flower borders on it.... (Although, this album is rumored to be highly influenced by Flying Lotus). Lotus Flower, is not a dubstep track.
Personally, I don't see the connection to paranoia so much in this album, but to each their own.