Radiohead - The King of Limbs

I kind of hate how 2+2=5 is followed right by Sit Down, Stand Up. Both are good songs, but they have really similar structures: start small and build up, up, up until an explosion at the end. Kind of tiring for me to hear it twice in a row

I included Gagging Order on my revised HTTT tracklist but hearing this live rendition today... it sounds so out of place:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJznVEh6Dyg

It's a beautiful song but it doesn't really fit in any of their albums from the past 20+ years. It was a song that was supposedly around since the Kid A sessions but it sounds straight from The Bends or even Pablo Honey, are we sure it's not older? It has that early 90's Radiohead vibes.

Heard Pablo Honey again today inspired by this thread and I thought only Blow Out is worth a damn.

Just bunged this on to see if maybe it might have grown on me, and no.

There's something incredibly unpleasant about the production on this album that really puts me off. Take for example the opening track, Bloom - that indistinct, skittering drumming that sounds like it was recorded on a phone; Thom's voice sliding indistinctly all over it. Also a distinct lack of low-end which is something I specifically associate with avant-rock music of that era. There's little to latch on to, it's all meatless, unfocused, and not in a dreamy ambient or shoegazey way - it just doesn't hold together, it's missing a certain glue.

The worst for this is 'Feral' which is maybe my least favourite Radiohead song. Just this horrible, clippy, thin drum loop that doesn't seem to quite lock into itself. Thom sounds like he's just got a new loop pedal and is testing it out by mumbling a few breathy syllables into it. There's a bassline which comes in during certain points but it's airless and boring; it does nothing and then fades out. The track is barely worthy of a B-side, just sounds like a 3-minute outtake of the band jamming. I'm not sure what it's doing on this short 8-track album other than taking up space.

Too many of the songs sound like this: Not really songs, but indistinct improvisations over busy but timid and unadventurous rhythms. It really does remind me of the kind of thing my band would have done during jam sessions where we were trying to find ways into writing more fully-formed songs. It's hard to imagine the band themselves being actually satisfied with these, and I'm surprised they put this out.

The two tracks I will give credit to are Little By Little and Give Up The Ghost. LBL is a distant cousin of Knives Out and Karma Police, but again, less immediate and still featuring that clickety clackety drum sound* Thom seems to love and I hate.

Give Up The Ghost is a lovely ballad which puts the busker-with-a-loop-pedal style to good use. That said, it still sounds like the kind of thing Radiohead would previously have put on a B-side (see "How I Made My Millions").

I nearly gave up on them around this time but I'm glad they bounced back with the stronger and more fully-formed A Moon Shaped Pool, which is one of their very best albums.

*no doubt influenced by the AFX/Squarepusher track Freeman Hardy Willis Acid which he is a fan of

ok but what about the From the Basement versions

they are a lot better sounding from what i recall

Bloom from the basement is a revelation - it makes you realise it's a fantastic composition let down by the flat production as you say. I'm totally with you on Feral, what a piece of crap. No love for Lotus Flower though? One of Thom's slinkiest melodies actually very well served my the oblique production imo.

There are three songs released as singles around the same time which are much better than most things on the album - Staircase, Supercollider and The Daily Mail, all of which have nice full production jobs. Another of the era's bizarre decisions to leave them off.

I also recommend Good Morning Mr Magpie from the basement. Proper slaps where the studio version snoozes.

"feral" at least kinda works live where the bass shines through but still very far from their best work

iirc the thing was that "the butcher" & "supercollider" weren't quite finished by the time they put out the album, and they never came up with studio versions of "staircase" or "the daily mail" that they liked which is why the released versions were just the basement live versions.

the released versions were just the basement live versions.

didn't realise this!

I only ever listen to the FtB versions tbh

The weirdly bad production on KoL is one of the great mysteries of their discography. Has Nigel Godrich ever talked about it?

I assume the rawer/off-the-cuff approach is just what they were after. They seem to alternate between "fussy" and "not-fussed-over" albums for the last little bit. (If the pattern holds, the next one'll be a little rougher around the edges too.)

this is the album that put me off of Radiohead

This is also when they added a drummer (this was before Phil was sacked a few weeks ago), and also near the dissolution of at least one marriage. I just kind of assume they were all extremely cranky

KoL tracks "Had our Phil" and "Bad Drum Phil" were probably hints in retrospect

Codex, lotus, and magpie are all great

actually simon, from what they've said it was kinda the opposite - TKoL was very much a fussed-over studio creation that was built around experiments with looping & sampling their playing that then then spent ages editing into actual songs, while AMSP was all recorded on 8-track with a rule that they had to erase the previous take of anything they wanted to record, with apparently 80% of it recorded in two weeks after a long exploratory period of just figuring out what the album should be

And Clive Deamer wasn't added as a live drummer until after the record, to help recreate all those clicky clacky loops.

horrid

real heads know it was Bernard Purdie who played on this (uncredited) because Selway couldn't hack that sweet shuffle beat.

the selway ploddle

AMSP was all recorded on 8-track with a rule that they had to erase the previous take of anything they wanted to record, with apparently 80% of it recorded in two weeks after a long exploratory period of just figuring out what the album should be

wow surprised radiohead went with the patented Brad Nelson Creative Method for that record but it really paid off

Yeah huge props to them for committing to that.

Poor Phil. :( I feel similar affection for Phil as I feel for Lars.

What's all this about Phil Selway?

he's been sacked

? Nothing on google.

At the time, I thought that "Codex" and "Give Up the Ghost" would be a good direction for them to go, less musically self-conscious and calmer; the next album was pretty much what I was hoping for.

xp phil has been sacked but the world doesn't know it yet

is there anyone else out there who loves "separator" the most on tkol? speaking of drums, it's got one of rh's sickest beats imo

^ Yes, I think it's my favourite on the record. Love the rhythm section and the vibe.

yeah Separator has my vote too but I am a sick beats man

*separates from the rest of the thread and invites ˈʌglɪɪst preɪ and m__k to sick beats island

jordan, let me know if i'm out bounds here, but i'll just say that the separator drum pattern is literally soothing to play. there's such a good balance between left and right, between leaning on the left for the closed hi-hats at the beginning, leaning right to do the 2 16th-notes on the bass drum, punctuated by an open hi-hat (lifting up the left foot/leg in doing-so) and then stepping back on the left again to close the hi-hats and begin the pattern again. it is left and right, in about equal doses, with a nice measure of balance and waiting and anticipating thrown in. it's like the Downward Dog of drumming

i imagine it's what "slapping" feels like to a bass player. like, there's this temptation to slap because maybe it feels good? but the difference is, this beat also sounds good

Beat is nice but I hate the way you can hear an audible join where you can tell it's a loop. I can't work out if it's deliberate or just sloppy editing

would be much better with a real drummer imo, it's not too hard. but then again, i don't think phil could do it. that led to the sacking of course

sick beats, man, this is some island

*there's only one disc, on this island. it is donkey kong country*

listening to this now (well, From the Basement) and I remembered I always lose the "1" in Little By Little which drives me mad. Also the riff is an endless staircase and the vocal literally climbs up it, little by little.

I've never taken much notice of Radiohead, but there's a live concert of them on at the moment and this band is not for the likes of me. Thom Yorke's out of tune vocals and idiotic stage antics are unbearable - his vocals are unbearable when they're in tune though tbf. I even hate the look of them: the pointless bald drummers, the guitarist with the fucking hat on. They are better than Muse though, who I saw on the same channel a few months back and who are literally the worst band in the world.

Jesus Christ, what a night, it's the Stereophonics now and it was Manic Street Preachers earlier.

"Thom Yorke's out of tune vocals and idiotic stage antics are unbearable"

posh Oxford wankers should be banned from music if they are shit.

Radiohead are fucking pez, man. Absolute shite!

wow more like analhead - the licking of rims jk this is not bad and yall need to calm down in the radiohead - the king of limbs thread

yeah, what's going on here. we're just trying to hang out and have a good time

i was going about my saturday evening, rearranging my living space. and now suddenly i have this problem

if he ever wants another lazy damaged eye I'd be happy to volunteer for throwing some battery acid and rubbing some industrial swarf in his other eye just get the lol of it!

two fucked up eyes would make him look really deep and enigmatic

calzino you DO know about the infamous Curse of Thom's Lazy Eye, right? it comes upon all those who make fun of his eye. it makes your every spoken word sound exactly like him at the end of climbing up the walls :-O