Long past the guitar histrionics of Radiohead's 90's output, every new release becomes an excercise in Schrodinger's rock: all albums are possible until it's finally released. Their latest, King of Limbs, alludes to ghostly trees and Eurocentric mythology but the sound is more akin to Japanese horror-pop cinema.
Not only are the songs here ghosts in the machine- they are the machine. They're cold, detached and methodically haunting. Sounds creep in and out of familiarity before contorting into hyperpixelated landscapes of ghostly melodies and rhythms. At one moment, they're a spectral glimpse of a song waiting to happen. Then, they're melting into inside out shapes of themselves like a glitchy sample stuck on repeat. Lost amid the stir of echoes here is Thom Yorke's crooning falsetto. Here, he sounds at home swept away in a stream of sounds equivalent to some seriously corrupted signal.
And then something really confusing happens. Starting with "Lotus Flower," the album's midway point, conventional songs start to appear. A more commercial artist would have used this material to sequence a hushed meditative album that melts into a Dali-esque slice of audio acid. Instead, the rhythms straighten themselves out and melodies start to cohere. "Codex" and "Give up the Ghost" bring a welcomed but unexpected quality to the album: hushed codas. "Separator" is as straighforward a song as Radiohead makes these days and an excellent send off that leaves the listener perplexed as to what comes next.
Essential Listening:
Morning Mr Magpie
Lotus Flower
Give Up the Ghost
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