Review: The King of Limbs (Radiohead)

I wanted to beat Pitchfork and Stereogum to something, for once.

Last Thursday night, I found myself unable to look away from the gifted video for Radiohead’s “Lotus Flower” which, as it’s just a bowler-hatted Thom dancing like a drugged-out maniac, should not be as compelling as it is. Nevertheless, I watched it a dozen times (that’s sixty straight minutes) before resigning myself to much needed sleep. I’ve watched it two dozen times since. I was immediately infatuated with the song, and still am. The falsetto is a joy to hear and a blast to sing.

But wondered if “Lotus Flower” mightn’t turn out like Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”—one of only two music videos enshrined in the Museum of Modern Art—for which the video, becomes an inseparable extension of the song itself, giving it a fuller flavor and an advantage other tracks don’t have. Despite the fact that it’s The Big Radio Hit and I, as a Nine Inch Nails fan, am supposed to hate “Closer,” I don’t. I think it’s an excellent song, rich and textural, but I wonder if I would find it as rich and textural as I do if it weren’t for that brilliant Mark Romanek video. I made a mental note to distrust my gut—to give the other tracks on The King of Limbs fair treatment, despite their videolessness handicap—and to spin the disc excessively before laying down any sort of judgment upon it.

Incidentally, I’ve also avoided any and all professional or lay criticism of the LP since its release. All I know is that there’s a Fox Mulderesque conspiracy theory that there’s a second half coming to us soon. Ish. Soonish. Or possibly not. Moving on.

I cheerfully pre-ordered the deluxe “Newspaper Album”[1] from Radiohead’s site on Valentine’s Day, the day it was officially announced and offered. I was slightly less cheerful when I discovered, after receiving my Friday mp3 download, that the album was a mere eight tracks—meaning I’d dropped $6.00 a song. Which, in toto, works out to be about $1.25 per minute of the album. The money’s not and shouldn’t be a big deal, but I definitely thought This had better be fucking worth it before I pressed play.

Again, I made a mental note to distrust not only my gut, but my brain. As an avid pop music fan and Pitchfork reader, my brain has been conditioned to believe that if Thom Yorke were to eat Taco Bell, record the sound of his subsequent explosive diarrhea, loop it, and sing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in Pig Latin and over the top of the cacophony, it would be hailed as a Renovation of Sound and Unquestionably the Most Important Album of the Year. And, as for my gut, well, this was, after all, the same gut that made me dislike In Rainbows for close to a year before accidentally stumbling upon “Reckoner” while in a slight Vicodin haze, and realizing that Rainbows, in fact, is the best album Radiohead’s released. And yes, I’m well aware of the existence of both OK Computer and Kid A. But perhaps a statement like that warrants, for fellow music nerds, at least a bit of elaboration, as the reasons In Rainbows so impresses me are part and parcel of my reaction to King of Limbs. I present now, the most condensed version of my almost twenty-year relationship with Radiohead.[2]

I’ve been a Radiohead fan since ’93 and “Creep.” I bought The Bends because I erroneously thought “Creep” was the album’s advance single. Somewhere in the middle of “Planet Telex,” I fell in love with that second LP instead. Every song on that album, for a time, was my favorite.[3] It’s sad, it’s sardonic, it rocks. You can make out to most of it or have a good cry. And the lyrics are brilliantly bleak without being maudlin. The Bends: 4.5/5 stars.

In 1997—a year virtually devoid of decent releases (Tricky’s Pre-Millennium Tension and Portishead’s eponymous disc being among the few exceptions to that rule)—I was taken aback by the glorious chill of OK Computer. A lover once told me that my biggest problem was that I found everything sad beautiful. Later in the week, a friend told me that I shouldn’t be so sad because I was beautiful. That odd dichotomy pretty much sums up the emotional relationship I have with Computer and which Computer, I think, has with itself. It’s one of only 37 albums (out of 619 in my collection) which I’ve given a perfect 5/5 stars. It puts me in mind of the music that one of Kurt Vonnegut’s quasi-sci-fi supercomputers might compose. “No Surprises” and “Let Down” are two of the most gorgeous songs I’ve ever heard. They’re both about sorrow and alienation, but both avoid asphyxiating the listener (like a Bret Easton Ellis novel) because they seem sung and composed by something well-intentioned, but only semi-souled. Ok Computer: 5/5stars.

When Kid A came out, I wasn’t impressed. Not because I didn’t enjoy the disc; I did. But because I’d been listening to Autechre, Squarepusher, Plaid, and all of the other late-’90s Warp Records imports for long enough to see very little in the loops and bleeps that was truly revolutionary about the album. That’s because sonically, it’s not revolutionary (despite being a drastic departure for the band). I’m a Nine Inch Nails fan: electronics, loops, samples, intentional dissonance/disrespect of sound was, by 2000, old hat to me. But at the time, I was also just a kid. Twenty. I didn’t get the social significance of the disc—it’s a record about defiance. What’s exciting about Kid A, was the fact that, after Computer, the band could have released another soundalike album and become the next U2—eternally famous, rich beyond belief, &c. Hell, their EP of B-Sides, How Am I Driving?, scored a Grammy nomination[4]—that’s how willing the wide world was to embrace the auteurs of “Creep” and “Karma Police.” But they didn’t do that, release a soundalike album. The first songs on the Kid A, in fact, feature Thom Yorke’s signature voice chopped into bits, backgrounded, or digitized in such a way that one could argue it, his voice, is being purposively degraded. It’s hard to make out what he’s saying at times. The song “Kid A” is certainly not “Karma Police 2.” It’s as if, in those three opening songs, Radiohead was saying, “This is what we think of your expectations, of your appraisal of our biggest strength.”  It’s four songs in before you hear anything that even remotely resembles a Radiohead song that features a non-degraded version of Thom Yorke’s voice, and that song is not accidentally entitled “How to Disappear Completely.” It’s followed by an ambient number, “Treefingers,” which despite sounding very Warp-influenced (and maybe like the very slow playing of wine glasses), serves to reveal a complete disappearance of Radiohead. Years later, I am, in fact, a little impressed. And I think I get it: Kid A was and is remarkable for its irreverence, not its content. Kid A: 4/5 stars.

But I still think Amnesiac’s the better of the pair.[5] It’s equally innovative, but better blends experimentation with accessibility. It’s a defiant and self-determined evolution that doesn’t have to be so in your face about it. “Packt Like Sardines” is excellent, nothing like old Radiohead, but not quite the “fuck you” that “Everything in Its Right Place” was (and maybe needed to be). “You & Whose Army” is spare and gorgeous; “Life in a Glasshouse” is baroque, sad, sexy, and fun; “I Might Be Wrong” was the band’s most aggressive song ’til 2003’s “Myxomatosis.”[6] And then there’s “Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors.”[7] The third song on Amnesiac, “Pull/Pulk” is one of the highest concept, finest songs Radiohead’s ever cranked out. Spectacular lyrics—simple, maybe, but insightful and well-phrased. It’s incredibly aesthetically challenging, too (still derivative: closely recalling a few Aphex Twin songs, right down to the sound of the vocals). And yet I don’t know anyone besides me who doesn’t skip the track when it comes on because, well, it’s so good at being aesthetically challenging that it’s pretty much unlistenable. In that fashion, it’s more irreverent than Kid A. Later on, a similar experiment—“Like Spinning Plates”—is just a touch more accessible, while still being high-concept, and aesthetically challenging (i.e., the music is actually “I Will,” released on their next disc, but played live often enough to be immediately recognized by fans, played backwards—again, irreverent). I don’t know anyone who skips that one. And because of it, I know a number of people who discovered all of the other slightly less accessible artists who helped influence the sound. Amnesiac needed Kid A to precede it for it to be interpreted as something new and not just a colossal let down after Computer. Kid A just cleared the way so Amnesiac could shine. Amnesiac: 4.5/5 stars.

Hail to the Thief definitely pleased me, not least of which because it was the first album in a long time to realize that LPs, despite Napster and mp3 files, should still have interesting and engaging cover art/inserts. A friend’s lover once said of it, “Ugh, it’s just too formulaic,” and this made me want to slap her.[8] Unfortunately, perhaps because I couldn’t forget what she’d said, I ended up overthinking and, eventually, understanding the idea she so poorly phrased. Hail to the Thief isn’t formulaic, but it does seem to me like a bit of a tour through Radiohead’s career (Pablo Honey: “Scatterbrain”; The Bends: “Go to Sleep”; OK Computer: “I Will”; Kid A: “The Gloaming”; Amnesiac: “We Suck Young Blood”); a very intentional collection of everything they had been and assimilated. “Sit Down, Stand Up” followed by “Sail to the Moon” screams “Look, we can be avant garde AND still play piano ballads!” Nevertheless, Hail to the Thief is a killer disc, it really is. But it was also a gesture: if one imagines each “style” of Radiohead song as a trophy, the LP functions as a sort of display case. Despite being loaded with great songs, (“2+2=5”; “A Wolf at the Door”; “There, There”; “We Suck Young Blood”; and the LPs sole synthesis—an integration of those styles instead of a display of one “style” juxtaposed for effect with another “style”—it’s sole real step-forward, “Backdrifts”), it does feel a touch contrived, and is definitely bloated. If “Go to Sleep” and “Where I End & You Begin” were left off, nothing would have been lost. In fact, the album would’ve gained a bit, I believe. Hail to the Thief: 4/5 stars.

So when In Rainbows was released with all that fanfare regarding its distribution model (which, for the record, was done better on several occasions by Trent Reznor, and Trent at least made available the data he collected about purchases vs. thefts so that all musicians could benefit from the insights gained through his experiments with the marketplace), I expected what I’d come to expect since OK Computer: lovely, entertaining, exhilarating showboating. The sort of thing you get when you hang out with any creative and talented hipster with both something to say and something to prove.

I remember reading a 2003 Spin[9] article that began with the sentence “Radiohead reads more than you do.” Which not only pissed me off because it was probably untrue on a personal level—at that time, I was cruising through 100 books a year, one every three days, and they weren’t Hardy Boys or Danielle Steel—but because it seemed unnecessarily braggadocious. Obnoxious, really. America’s always had too much of an obsession with the artist and it usually ends up negatively affecting the art. I remember reading that sentence and thinking at the writer and (probably misguidedly) at Radiohead, “Guys, the art is good. There’s no need to be a bunch of arrogant prats; just let the music speak for itself. You don’t have to call me stupid to get me to understand that Radiohead is fucking clever.” And it’s this sort of sentiment that, in a way, dulls my love of Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief. No matter the irreverence or evolution, all of those records feel to me as if they were crafted to impress someone else—like they have something to prove first, and then something to say second (Amnesiac feels least like this which is why I like it best). October 10, 2007, I calculated the price of an average CD in pounds sterling; I chose to pay that amount; I downloaded the new Radiohead record; and then I promptly forgot about it for a very long time. In Rainbows didn’t impress me at all, at first.

When I rediscovered it, I realized that it’s an amazing effort. Yes, because each song is, in itself, an outstanding composition—again, for a time, each of them has been my favorite[10]—but because In Rainbows doesn’t seem built to impress anyone. Many of the songs had been kicking around a while in different versions during live sets, or as demos—at least one for over a decade. Rainbows was what Thief wanted to be: a synthesis of all the registers and styles the band had employed and absorbed. It wasn’t a shuffled deck of cards, it was blent paint. A grown-up act, a fundamentally different entity from the five guys behind Pablo Honey and which—unlike on Thief—seemed very comfortable in its own skin. In Rainbows, I discovered, was the result of five open-minded and extraordinarily talented collaborating musicians who got together and decided to play a very tight set without being flashy in the least. Smart music without an iota of condescension. In Rainbows: 5/5.

So. We’re up to date. And I’ve been listening carefully, obsessively to Radiohead’s The King of Limbs since I woke, early last Friday. I’ve listened at a volume so loud it shook the wine glasses which hang upside down in my restaurant. I’ve listened to it at a more mellow decibel level, while lying on my back, eyes closed, in the center of the room. And I’ve listened with headphones, breathing as quietly as possible so I could detect the subtleties of sound in each of the interestingly split channels—for some albums, a headphone listen is a revelation and Limbs is definitely one of those albums. After spinning the disc twenty times, I think I’ve reached a conclusion or two. Or at least I’m comfortable enough that I’m being neither gut-rash nor Yorke-Is-An-Infallible-Deity brainwashed.

The King of Limbs seems kindred in spirit to both Kid A and In Rainbows. To wit, like on Kid A, this is Radiohead working to be interesting and innovative, but not for the sake of irreverence; not because they need to impress anyone else. Instead, like with Rainbows, this is Radiohead working for their own satisfaction. To paraphrase “Reckoner” in a way apropos of the “Lotus” video, this is the band dancing for their own pleasure. Limbs seems to be Radiohead pushing their own boundaries because, well, like good artists, it’s fun and cool to push one’s own boundaries. It’s the only thing that keeps creating interesting after years and years of creation. But Limbs is certainly not perfect, and sometimes you’ve got to be paying attention to see how they’re pushing their personal envelope. Track by track:

1. “Bloom” is fascinating. It makes great use of dissonance and subversion. The speedy opening strings don’t seem to mesh quite correctly with either the drum & bass-style percussion or the repeating keyboard pulsations. Something feels off. And the steadily loudening white noise whir of the background doesn’t help. The first time I heard the song, it felt sloppy and haphazard[11]—especially when what sounds like upright bass kicks in, playing a groove that seems to belong to an entirely different song. Yorke’s vocals are strangely delivered. But after a while, it becomes clear that the song is not a gyroscope about to spin out of control; in fact, the song feels like well-controlled chaos. “Bloom” seems to me the closest Radiohead’s ever come to approximating the aesthetic for which Nine Inch Nails is best known—Reznor’s project is built on loops, dissonance, and the sound of things about to fall apart. “Bloom” seems simultaneously aggressive and fragile—the repeated lyric “turning in somersaults” sums it up well. And the occasional horns which drift in and out make this very 2011-sounding song feel connected to the era of black and white films, where sad and dim streets are fogged by dry ice.
2. “Morning, Mr. Magpie” has apparently been soundchecked or otherwise debuted in a live fashion by Yorke or Radiohead, neither of which have I had the fortune to see. On the LP, it follows “Bloom” well; it’s speedily plucked guitar gives it a sort of urgency that is set off-kilter by the cymbal crashes—awkwardly split between channels. This song, like the first, begins to feel a bit like a spinning top close to falling; washes of ambient ringing add to this effect. The biggest complaint I’ve heard from people about Limbs is that it lacks in the melody department. Which may be true (at least for its first half) and vexed me a bit until I noticed that the lyrics of “Magpie” actually address this: “You’ve stole it, all the magic/ took my melody.” Despite the lack of prominent melodies in many of these songs, their prominent percussion tracks and the sometimes subtle, sometimes overwhelming ambient noise mixed in make many of the pieces surprisingly affective. Moody. For most of its duration, “Magpie” feels like flurried activity, a on the edge of panic, but not over the precipice. Close to its end—by the time Yorke utters the above lyric—it seems much less chipper. Much less hopeful.
3. “Little by Little” was described by someone I couldn’t help but overhear[12] as such classic by-the numbers Radiohead that it was immediately dull. This is where the envelope pushing is subtle. This is Radiohead being Radiohead—especially during the chorus—but the rest of the song continues on in the spirit of its predecessors. There’s a whole hell of a lot of percussion action going on—clicks, pops, snare, hi-hat, something that sounds like a wood block & mallet—and the walking bass is the primary motive power of the piece, what allows it to feel like it’s moving in a direction. This is Radiohead being Radiohead—despite the fact that the song is stripped of most of Radiohead’s signature instruments: Yorke’s voice is a lazy mumble, the guitar is sparse, there are no dramatic strings or “Gloaming”-/”Idioteque”-like 808 noise. The guitar is quite minimal, but becomes more noticeable as the song progresses. Limbs excels at creating sonic textural moodscapes, and the feeling this song evokes—especially as the guitar becomes more prominent—is suspicion, trepidation. The mood of “Bloom” seems a bit like resignation to entropy; “Magpie” has that cautious optimism curtailed at its end. “Little by Little,” then seems a logical mood progression.
4. “Feral” is the most unlistenable thing Radiohead’s produced since “Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors.” Unfortunately, I don’t think it succeeds nearly as well. In fact, I’m so unsure of what precisely this song is attempting to accomplish, I’m reluctant to comment on it. So far, it feels out of place to me, its harried vitriol and choppy vocal clips serving only as juxtaposition for the beautifully sparse and delicate “Lotus Flower,” not to mention the three tracks which follow it.
5. “Flower” is the perfect example of the sort of synthesis I discussed. The song that became “Reckoner” on Rainbows was actually a last ditch effort at writing a slow coda to fix another song—one which they’d performed for years and called “Reckoner,” but which became the Yorke solo track “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses”—and it couldn’t have been created without the intervening years of experience between its first draft, and its final shape. Similarly, I feel like “Lotus Flower” couldn’t exist without Radiohead having written “In Limbo,” “Knives Out,” “Backdrifts,” and “Reckoner.” Elements of a decade of songwriting are present here, but this song is not a sequel to anything. Besides the video, other oddly compelling elements: the oddly timed clap track; Yorke’s playful tone during the first verse and his doleful falsetto during the last iteration of the chorus (“I dance around the pit/ the darkness is beneath”). Again, the song is percussion and bass driven with a not inconsiderable ambient element. But it’s the first time on the LP Yorke’s voice appears unfettered, unmuffled. And so when he sings “tonight I set you free,” that’s pretty much how it feels. “Flower” is the first non-claustrophobic song on Limbs. But despite such lyrics, it never feels particularly cheerful. This is perhaps because, based on the end of the album, what is being “set free” is the soul (so to speak).
6. “Codex” seems to build on those aforementioned lyrics: “I dance around the pit/ the darkness is beneath/ tonight I set you free.” Lyrically, the song seems to be a suicide fantasy. But like “No Surprises”—one of the bleakest songs I can recall being written—it doesn’t sound that way unless you’re really paying attention. With headphones, one can make out a lot of dissonance that’s not immediately evident. The song seems, at first, starkly beautiful and similar to other piano-centric Radiohead pieces such as “Pyramid Song,” “Sail to the Moon,” and “Videotape.” And it does, of course, resemble those tracks, but it also stands on its own. The  subtle background noise complicates the otherwise semi-uplifting piano melody; washes of horn that drift in and out and the string-trembling that begins around 3:45 make what seems like a simple and beautiful melody more complex in the same way the brass in “Bloom” does. If I’m not mistaken, the song is actually at least partially in a major key—something Radiohead doesn’t often use—but the horn washes turn it sour. Like “Flower,” “Codex” feels very much appropriate as vessel for its lyrics: “fantasize…no one gets hurt/ you’ve done nothing wrong…the water’s clear and innocent.” The happiness here is the sort of happiness that Virginia Woolf must have felt walking into clear, innocent water, knowing everything was about to get a whole lot less bothersome.
7. As if that weren’t dismal enough, “Give Up the Ghost” lyrically reinforces that relieved resignation to suicide feeling. Opening with birdsong, Yorke gently sings this almost-lullaby over an innumerable number of his own vocal takes. An astounding amount of “Give Up the Ghost” is actually vocal samples, twisted and echoed. He continually repeats the phrases “don’t hurt me” and “in your arms,” then moves on to the plain statements “I think I have had my fill” and “I think I should give up the ghost.” Percussion is, in stark contrast to “Bloom” or “Feral,” apparently just a hand patting an acoustic guitar in the least complicated fashion. Between this song and “Codex,” it appears that where the album is most strongly melodic, it’s also the most miserable. I’m forced to recall one of those nuggets of “wisdom” offered me: everything sad is beautiful.
8. “Separator” could very well be seen as an epilogue, it’s repetitions of “if you think this is over, you’re wrong” ironic. The song, sonically—both its percussion and comparatively chipper guitar—feels quite relieved in comparison with Limbs’ early mood of confusion, chaos, suspicion, and its later air of hopelessness and fragility. Lyrics “like I’m falling out of bed after a long and weary dream/ finally, I’m free of all the weight I’ve been carrying” go hand in hand with the established theme of snuffing out one’s earthly life. And when Yorke begins to repeat the phrase “wake me up,” I’m reminded of a feeling I have sometimes in what passes for morning at my place. My alarm goes off and, after I hit snooze, I’m groggily awake long enough to know I’m asleep. And it’s fucking bliss—the day can’t help but go downhill.[13] Unconsciousness is, sadly, usually wasted on the unconscious. Drowning, it’s said, feels an awful lot like drifting into a dream; it’s a deprivation of oxygen to the brain, and must feel similar to a huffer’s high, or the euphoria produced by erotic asphyxiation. And I would imagine that, if one were to have his or her fill of this world, give up the ghost, and leap into the clear and innocent water, there would be a moment when, yes, death was imminent and irreversible, but that the world was a suddenly glorious and manageable place—a dream, not a nightmare, and one would, for those few beautiful suffocated seconds, want to cry “wake me up,” and take it all back.

The King of Limbs is radically different than it first appears. Where it feels unbearable, unmanageable, it is actually tightly managed. Where it feels beautiful and relaxed, it is dangerously unmoored. And all throughout, it’s definitely Radiohead being Radiohead, but the baby steps are what make this album remarkable. White noise. Absent melodies. Insistent bass. Limbs is not a sequel to In Rainbows, but it does, as I said, share its spirit of being art without pretense or condescension. Limbs looks flashier. At first, it sounds like it’s Kid A-defiant. It isn’t. It is nothing more or less than what happens when five open-minded and talented musicians come together and decide to do what they do best, but this time, they try to do it better—like any good artist should.

I don’t think they hit the mark. But In Rainbows is a pretty tough act to follow. At present, The King of Limbs gets 4.25/5 stars from me. Better than Kid A, not quite as good as Amnesiac. I could be overenthusiastic and it might eventually sink to a 4/5; if “Feral” grows on me (which I highly doubt), it could jump to a 4.5.

[1] Nope: I don’t know what that means either. I just gave out my credit card number and crossed my fingers. [BACK]

[2] By now, I’d expect you to understand that my “most condensed version” is probably twice as long as any other complete review of the LP. [BACK]

[3] Excepting “Sulk.” [BACK]

[4] It’s a great EP, sure, and we all know (or should know) that the Grammys are a crock of shit, but the fact that an only incidentally compiled collection of songs deemed not good enough to make a different LP was put up itself as one of the five best LPs of 1998 is making a powerful statement about the social standing of the band. [BACK]

[5] Though I will most eagerly grant that Kid A’s version of “Morning Bell” is yards better. [BACK]

[6] Beating the whimsical, if loud, “Just” handily, and “Electioneering” because it’s just not as chilly as anything on the ’97 LP. [BACK]

[7] And no, “Pulk” is not a typo. [BACK]

[8] She was the type of girl who stopped liking a band the moment the college radio station’s DJ had heard of them, even if he had yet to hear a single song, so she had an “indie rock”-related slap coming anyways. [BACK]

[9] I think. [BACK]

[10] Though I moved on from “Videotape” pretty quickly when I acquired In Rainbows: Disk 2, and discovered “Go Slowly.” [BACK]

[11] Which is still sort of how I feel about the Com Lag EP track “Where Bluebirds Fly.” [BACK]

[12] Except it was in print. I couldn’t help but read it. I couldn’t help overreading? [BACK]

[13] And this is me on antidepressants. [BACK]

[UPDATE]: Thanks to Botley Smith, who corrected two untrue Radiohead fan myths for which I’d fallen. Namely, that “I Will” and “Morning, Mr. Magpie were “live set staples.” They were not, though both had been played in solo sets or soundchecks prior to their LP debuts. [BACK]