Radiohead - The King of Limbs

i liked TMB, but it seemed to exemplify yorke's increasingly common practice of moaning "oooooooooooooooooohs" over things that would otherwise be instrumental. he's always done that to some degree, of course, but at this rate his 2026 solo album will just be called "ooooooooooooooooh" and will feature nearly 100 different tracks of him going "oooooooooooooooooh", lovingly layered over a backing track of him going "ooooooooooooooooooh"

Essence of Yorke, right there.

lol Karl

song is rad

i like yorke's practice of moaning "oooooooooooh"

i do too, in moderation! but its presence seems to be increasing and it seems like a crutch sometimes, in place of a more detailed instrumental passage, or real lyrics, or an interesting shift to the song structure.

I mean Sigur Ros made a career out of singing uuuuuuuu's

But yeah, Jonny is the real main man behind Radiohead. His arrangements have been moving the band forward since the days of OKC.

anyway, no reason to moan about it here (ooooooooooooooh), but i'm hoping it won't be plastered all over the album

i wonder if they stuck with the 2-drummer setup for this one?

colin's great on the bass on this one, as usual

Ed is the most underrated member of the band, IMO.

no your mom is.

The strings still sound sinister, and Colin Greenwood's bass gets a cortisone injection, but because I've never cared what Thom Yorke mewls about or the mewl itself I'm dismissing it as another example of Radiohead's facile paranoia, their projecting portent into a cliché or slogan that can't support it.

idk the lyrics struck me as blunter than usual but so is humanity's death spiral in 2016.

all the more reason to stop the mewling!

stop it with ur thom yorke witch hunt

i'm glad they're doing what they do and this song is a decent version of it. i'll probably like and/or love the new album and listen to it in some kind of weird way, like exclusively for a month then never again, or strictly for running only. i'll definitely avoid talking about it on the internet or in public because of this band's tendency to bring out the most excruciatingly inane commentary from otherwise pleasant (or not) people, myself included.

Musically I rather like this but Thom Yorke is pretty much a caricature of himself vocally now. I can get past it though.

Never liked TKOL myself so if this better than that it's good enough for me I guess

slightly terrified that fgti's revulsion upthread is directed not at this song but at my comments :/ if so, sorry

everyone who took issue with my mischaracterization of tkol upthread: you're right, a lot of that album is sculpted from loops, i just sometimes confuse the better live versions for the actual album

never be sorry hon xp

i'm also a fan of tkol, i like how casual it sounds.

no imago! I like everything about RH except their fanbase and singer, and I think the score for The Master is the best modern score, and obv this is not a ripoff it's more like "we both enjoy The Desert Music and Cluster"

i liked this http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1133-decoding-the-politics-in-radioheads-burn-the-witch-video/

Clumsy edit at 1:36 in the new song - a very audible click as the high strings cut out.

It's definitely a grower.

I've never cared what Thom Yorke mewls about or the mewl itself I'm dismissing it as another example of Radiohead's facile paranoia, their projecting portent into a cliché or slogan that can't support it.

I find it useful to see Radiohead lyrics as merely contributing to the atmosphere of the music rather than having any meaning or relevance outside of that, and they work just fine in that respect. But yeah, Thom's vocal style and lyrics are the aspect of the band's sound that has evolved the least over the years. He's still capable of coming up with a transcendent melody on occasion, though.

Also his lyrics can be good when he's being deadpan rather than portentious.

it's a shame that he's still banging on about 'low flying panic attacks' and such in the chorus of a decent tune.

yeah that bit stuck out like a sore thumb. sounds like it was lifted from those scrawls on the cover of OKC and comes off as self-parody.

haha you know that's exactly my problem with it! i was going to say. the excess of words/Thom lyrics all over those 4 albums from OKC to HTTT (and their text-heavy booklets) really diluted their impact. you read 'CATCH DA MOUSE!' inside the KID A sleeve and then 2 years later that's the chorus on a big single. it just can't help but seem like a paucity of imagination and ideas.

Another album that bounces between guitar-bass-drums, mopey piano ballads and cod-Hyperdub would be pretty boring at this stage.

To be fair, HttT and maaaybe Amnesiac are the only ones of their albums that could be configured like that, really.

Hail To The Thief is the best one though

Not my favourite, but I do like it.

I think my main issue with Radiohead over the years is that they're yet to make as 'solid' an album as OKC again. Each new release feels shakey, cobbled together, less of a singular 'statement' than their more traditional albums - 'experimental' in the sense that they seem to be seeking around for something that they're never quite reaching. In retrospect, Kid A does feel like a consistent album with a beginning, a middle and an end. But albums like HTTT and In Rainbows suffer from weird sequencing choices, which means that the majority of newer RH albums I hear, I tend to skip to my favourite tracks and rarely listen to as a suite.

IR is immaculately sequenced imo

You don't think In Rainbows is coherent? That's quite surprising.

Seconded.

xpost

Radiohead can do whatever they want as long as I never have to hear "Karma Police" again

Actually I often don't bother with the last two tracks on ir as they are my least favourite ones, but the first seven are a fantastic run, perfectly ordered.

the problem with In Rainbows is that it is dull as fuck

I still stand by my thoughts that IR sounds like a really good ambienty/chillouty kind of album with two heavy rock tracks stuck to the front of it. I almost always skip straight to track 3, no matter how good those two opening tracks are.

It's a good avant-rock single with 8 tracks of nothing stuck on the end

you are silly.

although i agree with the first bit of that

you are both wrong

Nude is their second best song.

"Avant-rock"

Wire vernacular?

I'm listening to Burn the Witch again. I think the first go round I was concentrating too much on the video. Definitely like the orchestration on this. Wouldn't be surprised if they'd been listening to Owen's stuff, but they've never been great at hiding their influences/