Radiohead: The King of Limbs - Page 2

Yep, Thom Yorke's warbling is unintelligible as ever. I don't know why they bother writing lyrics. This is probably my primary problem with In Rainbows and King of Limbs: his singing approaches the lyrics as if they were only a series of syllables, nothing more.

No. Simply that TKoL is a Thom Yorke solo album (on the surface at least) in all but name in the same way that TFC is a Roger Waters solo album. There are no signs that the band is over, not by a longshot, but they are at point where they have nothing to prove creatively. And that's almost as dangerous as a Floyd-like internal meltdown.

 

That said, quality-wise, TKoL is an absolutely fantastic album. This cannot be said for TFC.

Amen, brother.  It's been a good day for tunes.

Feral and Lotus Flower could be solo Thom, but the most of rest of the tracks have full band performances going on, albeit minimalistic ones. And the other two that don't, Bloom and Codex, both have orchestral arrangements with Greenwood's stamp all over them. Obviously there's some similarity with The Eraser cos they both have Thom exploring his electronic side, but if you actually compare how the two sound it's pretty obvious which is the Radiohead album and which isn't. And let's not forget that Kid A only had like one or two 'band' tracks on it. 

 

It's funny how Kid A seems to be quite accepted these days, topping loads of best of decade lists and so on. Yet the second Radiohead decide to pick up where they left off with that kind of thing, everyone loses their shit all over again.

Fucking great album. Finally got a chance to give it more than once listen through.

The second half of the album definitely picks up quite a bit.  Brian Eno's ambient music has more catchy hooks than the first half of King of Limbs.  I'm thinking it will grow more on me over time (Kid A took me about 7 years to fully appreciate), but I'm a little bummed out as In Rainbows clicked with me immediately.

Thing is, Kid A had Idioteque, National Anthemn and Optimistic. And I was a lot younger when it came out. Fix that, Radiohead!

But seriously, I was hoping for a couple enormous brainmelting orchestrations, which In Rainbows was full of. I can't be disappointed, especially because this was such a surprise anyway. And I really like Giving Up the Ghost and Little By Little. But so far this reminds me most of Amnesiac, which is just fine. And of course, my feelings about it will alter over the eighteen months, probably like six or seven times.

Wasn't sure about it on my initial listen Friday night (though I LOVED Lotus Flower). But after sleeping on it the songs came back to haunt me in a good way. Love it, but I'm undoubtebly a Radiohead fan boy.

Reading all the negative reviews...I see how much fucking pop music has such a strangehold on the world. 

Music criticism is slanted towards pop on the whole. I feel like people feel the need to take shit with the "Baby baby baby" factor seriously, judging the latest Kesha or something as it's own beast. But genuinely interesting or fringe-y acts get judged clearly based on their LAST work, so if someone produces a masterpiece, then does something in a different realm, they are punished with "bad" reviews.

What's that? People like pop music with hooks more than they like ponderous ambient bullshit? When did this start?

Someone mentioned some sort of theory/belief about music criticism swaying against rock music when Use Your Illusion II came out. From that point on, rock faced the brunt of reductive critical bullshit, whereas pop music, so dependent on the imagery of the then-booming music video industry, was graded on a curve. As in, you can write MORE about pop music as a package, whereas rock music is just (gasp) rock music.

Codex is so devastatingly beautiful.  This album just keeps surprising me more and more each time I listen to it.  By the way, a good pair of headphones can go a long way in changing your perspective--for better or worse.

I'm 2 listens in so far. I quite like it, but not without reservations.

 

The beats on tracks 3 and 4 aren't rubbing me the right way. They definitely have care put into them, cool sonic details, and a sense of purpose, but I think those will take a while if ever to sink in with me.

 

I can't quite decide yet if they are still "ahead of the curve" or not (U2 Examples: Achtung Baby=Ahead of the curve. Zooropa=Ehhhh.... Pop=Not.). Ask me in a year.

 

I do get a general sense of depth and subtlety from the whole package, which is the most important thing, far more than liking all of it immediately. This will be one to listen to and contemplate for a while. In Rainbows sounded majestic, and rocked, and had a few of their best ballads, but it didn't exactly leave me with a lot to think about. King Of Limbs has some mystery to it.

 

As for general first surface impressions, the production/mixing sound of most of the beat heavy stuff reminds me of the recent Portishead, especially the blown out compressed percussion sounds in Bloom. I liked the latest Portishead, but it sounded a bit too harsh from the compression, giving it kind of an ugly feel. I'm not sure yet if this is going to affect my further enjoyment of KoL. Yeah, I'm anal about sound.

 

As for the comparisons to The Eraser, I'm glad they weren't entirely accurate, since that album has always left me slightly unsatisfied. Most of the songs are good and sound cool, but they don't have staying power for me. It's much more single minded than the Radiohead stuff, which reaches for a more widespread kind of transcendence. I do appreciate that Thom needed the Eraser to get certain things off his chest and out of his system (like the specific political references), though.

Some tracks are clicking, some are not, but there is some gorgeous stuff on here.  Its been said, but just to weigh in:  TKOL doesn't really feel like its own thing to me quite yet.  It feels like after thoughts from In Rainbows.  That doesn't necessarily bother me (I think In Rainbows is fantastic); its just weird to have a new Radiohead album released that sounds so much like the one released before it.

I'm loving this fucker more with each run through. Especially warming up to the front half. The back half really had me at "hello," but it's growing more and more.

 

My immediate reaction sort of echoed Arjen's in that it's such a subdued album mood wise, I never felt anything really "pop." But I'm ok with that. They don't need to remake ______ each time out. And if I want more guitar-driven Radiohead then... I'll go see them live, have my face melted and watch them bust out stuff from various eras.

 

As per usual, I'm laughing my tits off at all the arm-chair musicians passing authoritative judgment on things they have no fucking clue about. "In Rainbows was just lazy." "Where are the guitars?" (note: not on here, but elsewhere. Especially film-critics who suddenly turn the same outlook towards music and just, well, fail generally.)

Update: WHOA, daddy. Yeah... definitely one for the headphones. More than most even.

Separator sounds like one of their happiest songs, especially the second half. I really like some of the subtle horns in some of the songs, especially Bloom and Codex.

Strong album, but dunno if I'll have the urge to listen to it often.

"Separator" is one the most staggeringly beautiful songs I've heard in years. LOVE the use of horns on this album.

Listened to it a couple times through.  Digging it so far. I can appreciate ambient spacey Radiohead when they decided to give us that.

I don't like it one bit.

 

 

 

 

I guess there had to be someone.

 

Haha...

At this point I feel like the first half (and I find it impossible not to think of this album in terms of Side 1 and Side 2) is the most fresh and interesting part of the album, but at the same time it's sorely lacking a piece of songwriting as substantial as any of the last four tracks. Bloom is a fantastic intro that suggests a new sound for them - all ragged, chopped up samples and fragments pieced together into a chaotic mass of sound. And the tracks that follow it do explore that idea in quite different ways, especially with the Flying Lotus style multi-layered percussion. But there's no big 'statement' track that ties it all together. That's what makes me hope there's a follow up before too long, that feeling that they're aiming for something here that hasn't fully paid off yet.

 

It's interesting that people are constantly talking about how 'electronic' this is, how it sounds like a Yorke solo album and the band barely seems to be on it. I'm fairly certain that most of the sounds on the album are played by the band with live instruments, but it's true that overall it feels like an electronic album in spirit. That's one of the most interesting things about it: it might be the most seamless merging of their rock and electronic sides they've managed so far, so seamless that casual listeners don't realise how much the band is really doing.

I agree in a lot of ways, Paul. A listen through on the headphones REALLY revealed how ludicrous the "sounds like a solo album" complaint is at its core. I get it, but if you listen close they're all clearly there on most tracks. It's all just really, really restrained and disciplined.

 

And I think the "electronic" thing is mainly coming from the chopped up nature of the drums and the more ethereal synth bits in there. The drums were performed mostly by Selway, I'm guessing, just chopped and looped within an inch of their life on the front half. But this is far less "electronic" sounding to me than Kid A or Amnesiac. Still of a piece with those two, but also clearly incorporating other elements from all their stuff and new ones as well.

 

As always, it's going to be nigh impossible for anything to ever knock OK Computer "off the mountain" for me*, but this one is growing on me more and more each listen. I really love it.

 

 

 

*Not that I really get into the whole "ranking" thing. In terms of music especially, I look at my favorite artists in terms of "shelves." Like there's "top shelf" Radiohead for me (OK Computer, Hail to the Thief, Kid A, In Rainbows, The Bends), a slightly lower 2nd shelf (Amnesiac), and then bottom shelf (Pablo Honey). And I tend to just appreciate all the work as it is and when they put out an album like this I don't lament the lack of guitars or whatever (so long as I dig what IS there) because, well, now I have a really chill Radiohead album that I love. I have that now. If I want guitar-driven Radiohead I have a lot of great examples of that to listen to as well.

 

That said, I do totally understand the desire for "more" with many people. I mean, I have other bands that I'd be really sore if they didn't hit certain "notes"/peaks each time out.

^that's the thing, really. There's so much baggage that comes with anything this band does, it can take a while to get past your ideas about whether it's doing what you personally think a new Radiohead album is or isn't supposed to do and judge it on what it actually is doing. Like most great bands Radiohead's catalogue evolves like an ongoing story. A big part of what's kept me hooked for all these years (along with the records ageing like wine) is wanting to see where it goes next.

 

And yeah 'restraint' is something that struck me about Codex especially. That song is kind of genius in how understated almost every aspect of it is.

 

This is the best review I've read so far, really sums up a lot of my thoughts on it and the band in general:

 

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/02/radioheads_king_of_limbs_revie.html

Late to chime in because, well, I've been listening to it a lot.

 

First impression, it's slight, and short, but great driving/zoning out music.

 

Now I really enjoy it, but still feel there should be a bit more to it. I don't need a "standout" song to love an album, but I would have been very happy of more of what we got. I'd replace "slight" with "subtle", as it's very rewarding with headphones. Lots of interesting things that are lost in the mix with the outside world. "Codex" is easily my favorite, and I really enjoy the droning weirdness of "Feral".

 

Complaint: "Bloom" has a clicking sound in it that sounds just like I forgot to turn off my turn signal and annoys the hell out of me when I'm driving. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Dropping by hear to lay something on all you cats.

 

Newspaper Album - BLACK and WHITE print.

 

Album released before TKOL - In RAINBOWS.

 

 

What does it mean? Does even Radiohead know?

If I had to guess, I'd say it means you're over analyzing just a tad.

Yeah, I know that there's the idea that OK Computer and In Rainbows are linked by the rule of 10, but that theory (what could it even mean?) seems like a bit of a stretch.

 

I was listening to Bloom today and each listen has made me love that song more and more. The frantic drums settle into such a strangely soothing rhythm, almost like waves against rocks, and the brass work intertwining with the jazzy bass and Yorke's vocals just works so well for me.

I know guys!

 

I wasn't saying it meant anything (the "does Radiohead even know?" was supposed to allude to all these crazy half cocked fan theories), it was simply an observation my friend made that I thought would be cool to drop down here. No harm no foul, because Thom did indeed foresee 9/11 and write it into the lyrics of Kid A. Yep.

 

Oh, good album by the way, and I agree that it's probably the first half of something bigger.

I've never had time to check it, is the rumor about In Rainbows and OK Computer being designed so that if you alternate tracks they synch up and fade in and out perfectly?

It's definetly a neat little thing to do and some of the transitions work really well (Airbag to 15 Step, Homesick Alien into Nude) but overall it's not some incredible revelation. If they intended to do it, they certainly made it very subtle.

I can almost guarantee you Radiohead did no such thing. The moment a band tries to do something like this, you'll recognize it because it'll feel trite and the music itself will likely be half-cooked because they were too worried about cooking up a geeky conspiracy that will all tie together years down the road.

 

But, people love these kind of things (Paul is dead, etc. etc.) and always have.

I'm sure the OKC/In Rainbows mash up is pretty cool because they're both great albums. But anyone who thinks for a second that it was done intentionally is nuts. Radiohead seem to agonise over the flow of their albums enough already, they're not also going to worry about how well the tracks all link in with one of their other albums and then not bother to tell a soul that they went to all that trouble.

 

While I'm here, King of Limbs post-mortem: it's a nice concentrated burst of good new Radiohead music, but nothing much greater than that. I find the songs themselves up to standard but the album as a whole doesn't amount to anything as substantial as almost any of their other records. I think its legacy will depend very much on what the band do from here. I like the album but if they split today and this was their swansong it would sit there as a weird little anticlimactic footnote to a great career.

 

But Radiohead have always been a 'big statement' band, and the fact that this one has obviously been deliberately designed as something smaller is kind of interesting. If their intention is to step away from trying to climb everest with every album and make some smaller statements for a while, I would be on board with that. It's not entirely satisfying on its own but if they do put out another album of this quality within the next year or so, which I've no doubt they're entirely capable of doing, I'll be pretty delighted. They have to know that people are clamouring for more and I wouldn't be surprised if their complete silence since the release is partly cos they know the ambiguity will keep everyone on their toes.

Brilliant: "Support Group For Disappointed Radiohead Fans"

 

That was great. 

A couple of new tracks:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXeMfqQo8-0

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v78VkeaLipU

Those were both released on a UK-only 12" for Record Store Day today.