Radiohead: A Moon Shaped POLL

In case folks didn't hear it, Radiohead eventually put "Ill Wind" (from the deluxe AMSP version) onto YouTube etc.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C7tfLhHaeU

The version of the album I essentially consider "the" version now lops off "Burn The Witch" (which doesn't fit the sound/vibe/flow of the rest of the album), and slots in "Ill Wind" in alphabetical order between "Identikit" and "The Numbers" and it works perfectly. A much more coherent and cohesive album--the Radiohead I put on most often, having listened for 26 years at this point.

me too

I dont know this album super well, nor am I a Radiohead stan so feel free to disregard my thoughts, but I'd say it's one of their least interesting. Lovely warm production, though they've been doing that a while now, great little touches, but doesnt show you anything they haven't done already, and better. Feels like a treading water effort.

ugh, wrong

Very, very wrong.

i talked about it a lot in some other thread but this is totally the best radiohead album imo

Nah, but it's top 5.

THE best? Not just the best for deep 'head heads? Better than in rainbows, okc and the bends? Ok.

Brad routinely claims the best album in a celebrated band's discography is among those you'd expect the least – it's an endearing quirk of theirs.

idk between the songs being very good if almost the loosest and most impressionistic set they'd ever written and the sustained haunted woods feeling which gets deeper and deeper as a result of the sequencing... yeah, it's the one for me. in rainbows used to be my fave. ok computer is a good record

It’s very concise and it’s well loved not just by “deep” radiohead fans. E.g.: In rateyourmusic where every radiohead album has over 40,000 the consensus is:

OKC > KID A > IR > AMSP > THE BENDS

I don’t really have a use for OKC anymore. At this point I’d say KID A, AMSP and TKOL are the Radiohead albums I personally feel like coming back to the most.

It's a clichéd thing to say, but OKC literally changed my life. It will always be my favourite.

Candyman sometimes I wonder if you’re Turrican in disguise :)

Brad is otm, Moon Shaped Pool the best Radiohead album.

Also: Wrong. This album is sublime.

I feel like I’m in an island when I say I’d rank TKOL in their top 5. Disclaimer: I count Staircase and Supercollider as part of TKOL to make it a 10 track album.

hmm, looks like i've never expressed my love for "glass eyes" in this thread, but i'm pretty certain i was that song's voter.

It's a clichéd thing to say, but OKC literally changed my life. It will always be my favourite.

― pomenitul

It was without doubt the Radiohead album that has triggered the heaviest emotional response for me, but it was pretty much the cd that never left my discman for almost two years. I think I might have overplayed it to death.

just realized they now seem to alternate between ornate, precisely engineered/performed albums (IR, AMSP) and more raw/off-the-cuff ones (TKOL, HTTT)

I think I might have overplayed it to death.

Me too, but I simply can't overstate its importance to my development as an obsessive Lover of Music.

candyman is RONG but got me listening to this for the first time in years. thanks, candyman.

Yeah relistening now. I didn’t use to care much for True Love Waits but it sounds fucking beautiful this morning.

Every song sounds even better than I remembered. Thanks candyman!

"true love waits" is beautiful in album form, but i'll always have a soft spot for that acoustic live version that came out 20 years earlier.

candyman does not sound like turrican AT ALL. he sounds like some new random kid into music who discovered the site, someone who would be roundly hazed 10 years ago, thank god the sadism has all but evaporated.

It's their best in the way that it's consistently great from start to finish. It's the album they'd always hinted at and worked towards since Kid A. It's like they'd broken free of experimentalism and were now ploughing everything they'd learnt into making bold, confident art that was nevertheless uncompromising and fully-formed.

But conversely it's not their best in that it's their least spikey, the least bumpy and the least striking. With confidence came a filtering-out of the rougher tones, the more awkward, complicated touches that either marred or boosted previous albums.

I think it's wonderful - a whole album of songs in the vein of 'Nude' and 'How To Disappear Completely' without the irritating sub-Rephlex drill'n'bass malarkey. But I also think it's a bit of a snooze - not boring at all, but vaporous, ephemeral, like waking up from a nap and your head is cloudy and you can't quite remember the dream you were having. There's no 'Idioteque' on here, no 'There There' other than "Burn The Witch", which is the only song that doesn't really fit on the album anyway.

great dubby dissociated groove achieved in "identikit"

absolutely ridiculous what happens between "the numbers" and "present tense" on this album, like a bomb goes off and then we see the smoke clearing from the ruins it left

ugh it just gets more impressive every time i listen to it

"in you i'm lost" >>>>>>

Ugh, I'm going to have to to re listen to it too.

This was the record I'd hoped they'd make listening to the mellow tracks on King of Limbs. Maybe it's advancing age, but I wish I could remember which song was which from the titles (except the opener and closer). Maybe I'll come up with a mnemonic.

i enjoy this album but am unable to associate a name to many tracks, likely due to the samieness dog latin outlined. like the only track from 3-10 i would know by mention is identikit. (i think)

haha jinx xp

Yes, that's it. I can't pick favourites from this. I know Daydreamer because it was released prior to the album. And I know Ful Stop because it's maybe the most wilfully experimental. And this is the first and only Radiohead album where this happens for me.

I hadn’t really thought about it but I agree. Can’t really pick a song which would define this one for me.

yeah this seemed an album more about ambience, production, texture, over songs. A Radiohead album you could almost leave on in the background.

Calling it "background" music is only right in that it is consistently of a certain dynamic and mood and does less of the dramatic "loud/quiet" trick they basically founded their careers on.
But there's still a lot going on in there. It's incredibly detailed, possibly their most delicate and intricate album; one that deserves "deeper listening" more than any of the others

otm

Just listened to it again, and it's still enigmatic. At least now I will remember that "The Numbers" is the spiritual jazz one.

I can't pick favourites from this.

i can, it's "glass eyes"

Can’t really pick a song which would define this one for me.

try "glass eyes"

not until my real eyes stop working!!

"But there's still a lot going on in there. It's incredibly detailed, possibly their most delicate and intricate album; one that deserves "deeper listening" more than any of the others"

Dont think anyone could argue otherwise. The question is whether theres something bigger than those craft based details, for me at least. But maybe a melancholy bath type of album is the kind of thing they should be making almost 30 years in.

I feel like I’m in an island when I say I’d rank TKOL in their top 5. Disclaimer: I count Staircase and Supercollider as part of TKOL to make it a 10 track album.

No no this is otm

Love Moon Shaped Pool also, top to bottom. "Burn The Witch" works right where it's at.

Lol voodoo.

Tbh the one I like the most is “The Numbers” because it does sound like some sort of spiritual jazz number but it also has a sort of hippie-ish 60s folk groove going on. It’s sort of unique for Radiohead imho. But I wouldn’t call it the song that best defines the album, it’s just my favorite one.

Decks Dark - you know, it's that one
Desert Island Disk - the one in 7
Ful Stop - the uptempo one in 6, kinda motorik, kinda breakbeat-y in that way they do
Glass Eyes - the super pretty vocals/piano/strings one
Identikit - the one with the incredible bridge and guitar solo
The Numbers - as stated the spiritual hat intro with a really strong string outro
Present Tense - Radiohead do samba
Tinker Tailor - sounds like it could be on the back half of In Rainbows, until the incredible strings start coming in halfway through
True Love Waits - you know

Decks Dark is the only one without some sort of distinguishing gimmick or big moment to me, but it's the exception that proves the rule, sets the tone after the opening tracks

The super lowkey rhythm on this is extremely funky, that plus the menacing groove and oneiric lyric makes it my favourite I think.

XP “decks dark” has that fantastic choral/orchestral section early on that you’d think sticks around for the entire song but drops out pretty quickly

Decks Dark might be my favourite actually - a spiritual sequal to Subterranean Homesick Alien. After the tension of the choral section, the relief of the refrain, but with added suprisingly funky bass licks. Then the smokey, subtly menacing coda - "when you've had enough of me".

I always get Glass Eyes and Desert Island Disk mixed up.