Album Review: Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

The cheeky scamps. Surprise release dates, replete with hasty revisions; confounding tweets about something possibly happening in Tokyo; a ‘newspaper album format’ (whatever that is) going for £30: it’s refreshing to see that, at a time when online leaks are fast rendering the notion of official release dates meaningless, there's still a band out there that can operate outside the general music industry landscape and give the release of their eighth long-player the feeling of An Event.

Of course, this isn’t just any old band we're talking about: it’s Radiohead, who have always displayed an almost bloody-minded determination to do things differently.  Last time around, fans were invited to pay whatever they liked for In Rainbows. Whatever price you coughed up, it’s likely you got a positive return on your investment. To these ears that record now counts as the band’s second-best album, possessed of a warm glow of humanity that their music can at times lack, and their most accessible batch of songs since, y’know, the big one. It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that, for all their rarefied brilliance and invention, not absolutely everything Radiohead touch turns to gold. The dust has now well and truly settled on Kid A, with general consensus tending to confirm its masterpiece status, but Amnesiac was only 50 percent great straight after that, and even the staunchest fan would have to admit that Hail To The Thief lacked a cohesive musical vision.

So, on to The King Of Limbs then. Is it any good? Well, not really initially; you’ll likely be scratching your head for at least a couple of listens. In places it’s a strangely predictable affair – you almost feel like you could make a checklist of Radiohead signifiers and tick off certain boxes. Glitch techno influences? Check. Thom Yorke’s keening, high-pitched vocals? Check. Vaguely accusatory lyrics, possibly about global politics? Lumbering bass grooves? Electronics conveying an electric storm? Check, check and check. Their determination to work on their own terms is generally to be commended, but those glitch influences have been fully absorbed since Kid A, and you could now argue they’ve never managed to surpass the Berlin warehouse joy of 'Idioteque'. And, at the risk of sounding for a moment like one of those phenomenally irritating people who constantly plead for Radiohead to make another album that sounds like The Bends, there are no instantly-grabbing hooks here to pull you in on the first few spins.

But it comes together. After a stretch things start to stick, and what first sounded like loose threads gradually get pulled into line. 'Little By Little'’s rumbling sense of menace was the first to coalesce into a proper song for this writer, and a pretty wonderful one it is too. 'Morning Mr Magpie'’s tick-ticking guitar motif baffles at first, but soon develops a hypnotic allure. But TKOL’s second half seals the deal. 'Lotus Flower'’s video is notable for Yorke's already-infamous dance moves, but the song – built around an insistent groove – shouldn’t be overlooked. 'Codex' is an elegiac piano ballad – listeners might notice some resemblance to 'Pyramid Song' or Videotape. 'Give Up The Ghost', reminiscent of The Beta Band’s 'Push It Out', is arguably the LP's high-water mark, and also its biggest departure. Those disembodied backing vocals, repeating a single refrain, are properly haunting. Closer 'Separator' sounds wafer-thin on early listens, but its twinkling guitars and Four Tet-ish percussion bring the record to a weirdly relaxed conclusion.

This isn’t the best Radiohead album – not by a long shot. It might be best to approach it as the Amnesiac to In Rainbows’ Kid A. But if it is to go down as a minor piece in the canon, it is nonetheless a robust one. The King Of Limbs is a short, laid-back record of subtle joys, built to reward patient listeners and close attention.