Radiohead - The King of Limbs

it is nowhere near as good as for example 'little by little'

The lyrics are amusingly pat, even for thom

every time i revisit in rainbows i am totally surprised by how awesome everything in "bodysnatchers" is

every time i visit 'in rainbows' i am totally struck by how the album goes to soft-headed rubbish after 'bodysnatchers'

i like the stop-motion video, at least!

lol lj

not that i can divine very many lyrics from this but i enjoy "this is a low-flying panic attack"

every time i revisit in rainbows i am totally surprised by how awesome everything in "bodysnatchers" is

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Tuesday, 3 May 2016 16:43 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every time i visit 'in rainbows' i am totally struck by how the album goes to soft-headed rubbish after 'bodysnatchers'

― And the cry rang out all o'er the town / Good Heavens! Tay is down (imago), Tuesday, 3 May 2016 16:45 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You guys are listening to that album all wrong.

The first two tracks on IR should have been consigned to some sort of ltd ed 7" and the rest should have been a really nice mini-album.

really weird opinions about ir itt

"bodysnatchers" is just a great asymmetrical rock jam, every part of it is thrilling imo. imo ir and kol are radiohead becoming a better band i.e. people who respond to each other sensitively and intuitively while playing in a room. that's of course a very rockist interpretive lens but hey it's rock music. kol suffers for not being worked on enough (which is why it's suddenly amazing when you hear the live from the basement versions/the songs they released later)

i like the songs on IR, but i hate the dry production. sounds like a radio session. TKOL is a bit harder to crack, and actually yeah now that I remember it, I love "Little by Little" and "Morning Mr. Magpie."

i've never been big on later radiohead but the new song sounded pretty good to me

yeah IR has the benefit of feeling like they took the appropriate amount of time to craft an actual album, and the b-sides feel appropriate as b-sides

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Yeah it sounded pretty good, I hope they've gone full orchestral on this one, it would certainly tally with what Jonny Greenwood's been doing over the last few years. Another album that bounces between guitar-bass-drums, mopey piano ballads and cod-Hyperdub would be pretty boring at this stage.

despite a youth spent playing the bends/ok computer/kid a on repeat, in rainbows was the lasting radiohead album for me in the end

me too

the orchestration on this is nice but it feels a bit radiohead-by-numbers otherwise? there's not really any sort of shift beyond some orchestral subtleties. it's better than the recent thom yorke solo stuff but that's not saying much.

in rainbows is really great, up with their very best. it's a culmination of their strengths. this is supposed to have been written around that time but it doesn't really compare to what made that album.

i like what they were going for with the king of limbs, there's a lot of interesting rhythmic shifts, but the songs weren't really there. bloom is quite nice though.

king of limbs was great mostly for the thom dancing video

also 'codex' is my most played radiohead song it's a powerful relaxant

this is cool. kinda interesting how the orchestration completely overpowers the mix at the end and the tinny drum machine beat gets completely swallowed up. i kept expecting the live drums to drop.

i can't listen to the earlier albums very often these days, but HttT/IR/KoL still have some surprises left. and Thom Yorke's solo albums sound the least dated of anything to my ears.

i listened to the eraser last night for the first time in a while, man that thing is so great. can't believe it's been 10 years. yesterday's tomorrow's boxes or whatever did nothing for me.

Oh for Christ's sake

hahahaaaa

incredible website

Interesting to see the production on In Rainbows being described as "dry" when huge parts of it are soaked in reverb.

the drums are super dry (except for, like, the tambourine on 'Reckoner')

Also, I don't think The King of Limbs was a "band all playing together at the same time" record in the sense that In Rainbows was. 'Bloom', 'Morning Mr Magpie', 'Little By Little' and 'Feral' in particular sound very much like they were pieced together digitally. A lot of cutting/pasting/chopping up/digital re-stitching and massaging going on there, which is why the live versions sound completely different - they're "re-arranged" so they can played as a band.

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They're not dry, though. If anything, the drums on stuff like 'Nude' sound very closely miked. I like that sound, though.

"Dry" to me is Metallica's ...And Justice For All.

the king of limbs was largely pieced together from loops they made i think

I suppose In Rainbows would sound incredible with a cavernous Bryan Adams power ballad snare sound, though. I mean, really.

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Yeah, it's definitely a heavily computerized record for the most part. Aside from things like 'Give Up The Ghost' and 'Codex', which sound like live takes which have then had the effects added later.

the drums on say 'Weird Fishes' sound so home studio-y to me, very exposed and unadorned, like if i just threw up some 57s and left it at that. they used similar drum sounds on other albums/songs, but compare it to like anything on HttT where there's a much wider, more compressed, expensive-sounding snare.

I can see why they didn't go for overkill on reverb on the drums, though. It allows for more space in the mix for reverbs elsewhere, such as on the vocals etc.

decent new song! it'll be interesting to hear it in the context of the rest of the album.

i am always really surprised that Separator doesn't ever get a shout out when it comes to KoL. i guess people are just kind of burned out by the end of the album (even though it's relatively short) but that song TOWERS over the rest of the album

I like it.

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I love that part in 'Separator' when the high guitar part comes in. I think the studio version could have been better though - there's a great song there that I don't think they got the best out of.

sad for the old radiohead messageboard people (i was a regular there from 2000-04ish), it looks like the board was erased along with everything else. but it's probably just temporary, and having your favorite msgboard taken away from you is probably beneficial for mental health anyway

Also having Radiohead taken away from you, or indeed everyone

darraghmorbs

Gimme fifty years I'll be a lot worse than he is now

Separator and Bloom are awesome. I might be one of the few Radiohead fans who loved KoL. The bass and drums throughout make the album, also the calm songs like Codex or GUTG have some beautiful harmonies and subtle details as they progress.

super psyched the dude survived the fire btw, i was getting anxious

They really fucked up not adding Staircase and Supercollider as part of the album tho

Wow, this new song is epic.

This new song is making me very excited for the new album. It's that steve reich-kraut-repetitive crescendo trick they've done many times before but it sounds great with the string orchestration substituting the synths/guitars.

'Codex' has grown into a big favourite of mine, actually... it's such a beautiful melody, and I love the piano sound on it.

yeah 'Codex' and 'Give Up the Ghost' are actually my favorites on that. not a big fan of how the drums and percussion samples are deployed on the early tracks, so the stripped down tracks work best.

I find Tomorrow's Modern Boxes really rewarding actually. Not much in the way of hooks but I think of it more as an instrumental record, love the piano/synth/electronic percussion sound palette.

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