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Album Review: Radiohead's 'The King of Limbs'

The British band's excess of atmosphere is surprisingly uncomplicated

By Katie Hasty Friday, Feb 18, 2011 3:19 PM

<p>Radiohead's "The King of Limbs"</p>

Radiohead's "The King of Limbs"

I was planning a whole day on Saturday for Radiohead’s “The King of Limbs,” but since it arrived early, it claimed most of my morning. I took a run with it, and because New York isn’t Godless after all, the weather allowed for a walk with it; I headphoned and looped it after lunch.

What I should do next is take a train ride with it: despite the excess of atmospherics and intricate tricks of the studio, the British band’s eighth full-length is surprisingly uncomplicated and a head-clearing brain-eraser, for its listener and, I suspect, for the band.
 
“The King of Limbs” is Radiohead’s first release since 2007’s magnificently moody “In Rainbows,” and in that time, Yorke’s made more strides as a solo artist, Jonny Greenwood has scored some films, “Harry Patch” and “These Are My Twisted Words” were released as standalones, Phil Selway released his first solo set, and so forth.
 
Reconvening after a period of separation clearly demanded some recalibration or unfurling. While Yorke’s coo and ambiguous lyrical codes haven’t seemed to change much, the band on the whole structurally threw a lot out the window; rather, they don’t lack structure, but their structures remain remarkably simple.

[More after the jump...]

Opener "Bloom" goes and goes with the same five notes, the repeating maneuverings, until it crescendos to a natural exhale. The one-two punch of the album’s only real rockers – “Morning Mr Magpie” and “Little by Little" – rev with similar fervor, though slight alterations in their percussive, machine-like core.
 
The former uses a reminiscent device, the nah-nah-nahs and quick breaths of “Kid A” cut "Everything in Its Right Place," as guitars loop and build. "Good morning Mr. Magpie / How are we today?” Yorke greets his omen. “Now you stole it / all the magic / took my melody.” That melody doesn’t really change chords, but wavers between major and minor. On the latter, it’s mostly the constant chugging of drum machines, bright cymbals, hand percussion and kit built around a “complication” of guitar ascents. Little by little the volume is pushed up, the girth of noise starts exploding through its third minute, Yorke’s high-register voice helpless in battling the static.
 
"Feral" hardly qualifies as a rocker, despite the higher tempo and scuttling beat. Its an almost-experiment in trance, really, poking and prodding at the keys and other typical dancefloor elements but keeping an air of untested waters, a series of happy accidents, with notes falling over on themselves, starting too late or too early, uncomfortably leashed.
 
To me, it’s a palate cleanser before the album’s real triumphs, the sequencing and execution of the final four tracks. Beginning with “Lotus Flower,” which flourishes conceptually in the band’s first music video from the album, we start with a new canvas, Yorke “empty inside my heart.” There’s a letting go in “Codex”: “Jump off the end / into a clear lake / no one around… the water’s clear / and innocent ” Yorke encourages, the piano and strings cool against its dragging pulse like a late-night stoner anthem. Birds chirp into the abandon of “Giving Up the Ghost” – even in its title, a death to the sound of bat’s wings; and closure, the end with “Separator.” “Wake me up,” Yorke demands on the latter, contrasting the easy-going refrain “Don’t worry / don’t hurry” is sleepily panned on the other side. The acoustic-thumping track has a distinctly uplifting sound, as straightforward of a song as the band's allowed itself in some time.
 
Whether its with a bird or a flower, a clear lake that acts as the start of life or death, there’s ciphers in the lyrics, as well as in the expert collaboration within the rhythm section or the weird backtracking of a six-string. Outside of the mixing, Godrich has continued his ability to make a stereo album, using the front and the back of the room, as it were. There’s plenty of familiar ground covered in “The King of Limbs,” so nothing’s going to shove a Radiohead fan off his tracks; maybe that, too, is a reason to take it on the train.

 

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  • Default-avatar

    norm

    It's their 8th album:
    1. Pablo Honey
    2. The Bends
    3. Ok Computer
    4. Kid A
    5. Amnesiac
    6. Hail to the Thief
    7. In Rainbows

    February 18, 2011 at 6:11PM EST Reply to Comment



  • Sorry, but this review is way off. This is album is too simplistic and very mundane. Each song is repetitive, and the lyrics are forgettable. I find no emotion in this album. I love Radiohead, but find it hard to consider this a real album.

    February 19, 2011 at 12:36AM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      Artemis A review is opinion. Differing opinions do not mean that a review is 'way off.' I think this album is great and I emotionally connected with it in a profound way. Thinking this doesn't make me wrong - I just had a better experience than you.

      February 20, 2011 at 6:34PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    Andy

    Here's a review that looks at the band's strategy behind this release: http://bit.ly/f32fH9

    February 19, 2011 at 2:13AM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      I Don't Like Spam Is this spam? It looks like spam.

      February 19, 2011 at 8:55AM EST
  • Default-avatar

    dreamer

    I come to the reviewer's conclusions from an opposite direction. To me the record (so far) is disjointed and fractured, and there are no thrilling grand gestures at first. It's not a difficult record, but it's not a conventional record. In Rainbows has become for me, Radiohead reconciling themselves with making as conventional music as Radiohead can make. This record is (so far) for me Radiohead trying to reconcile themselves with their legend. It's interesting, there is something intutive for me about this record. I am able to say, here is where Radiohead will do "this" or "that" (if that makes any sense). But then Radiohead do exactly what I would expect for them to do, and when they do, it sounds tense, unsettling and unexpected. I think this is another great Radiohead record -- they are always challenging and interesting. There are quick blips of gorgeousness and then it's gone. But it's not really gone, it's just out of my reach. This is another record I will have a relationship with. I'm also amazed that it's definitely an album, it's not a bunch of single songs slapped together. I am over 40 so I remember albums. The sequencing of the tracks is brilliant, especially when the sequencing, just like most every other thing on this record, sort of disappears. Not like In Rainbows though. In Rainbows, things sort of evaporated upwards. Here things sort of seep into the ground and the record sort of buries itself. It haunted my dreams all last night. The most standout part for me is the beats and the drumming. How can they be so fractured and disoriented, and fragmented, yet still be so dead on? It's not really like any other Radiohead record, yet it is unmistakably Radiohead. There's a structure in the un-structure. It's very subliminal. I'm sure I'll both love and hate this record in several cycles. It's interesting how this record is where I am right now spiritually. It's like the world was coming together and everything would be ok, and now it's all unravelling and I don't know where I stand in this world and with myself and with God. I guess, maybe that is the best thing about this record -- it is definitely Radiohead, but at the same time, it feels like it's only in my head -- it's the second I wake up, when the pretty dreams and the nightmares are receding, and the beauty and harshness of reality is starting to creep in.

    Just my take. And the strange rhythms and beats guarantee that any remixes will be spectacular, can't wait to hear these sounds reinterpreted.

    February 19, 2011 at 4:33PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      dreamer May I add, listening to this on a train would be perfect. The sounds of the train and the rails not quite drowned out by the earphones, mixing with the beats, that would be an amazing way to listen (I'm not in the parts of the US that have train or subway service).

      February 19, 2011 at 4:37PM EST

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