Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

The Kick Of Limbs

Kick A

Don't get my kicks hangin out the 15th floor

I missed this back in May but it's a great little reflective (!) piece: https://www.gq.com/story/radiohead-a-moon-shaped-pool-secret-goodbye-five-year-anniversary

Very nicely put. Whether 'A Moon Shaped Pool' was Radiohead's last or not--I agree it feels final. For me, it rekindled my love for the band, so critical to my import-only-single-chasing youth, after the previous several (actually, large chunks of everything since 'Hail To the Thief') had left me somewhat cold. It felt like mature work, less busy chasing something its constituents wished to be (i.e. avant-garde electronic act, "funky," non-melody-based, rock-out anthemers) and just felt like they are. And yet it felt no less complex than they'd been post-'Bends,' just more coherent. It felt freed--of expectations, of expectations to defy expectations. Somehow the successful fruition of 'True Love Waits'--far more poignant, as sung by an older man in the midst of loss of love, than in the youthful earnestness of its earliest incarnation--does indeed feel like a "completion" of the band.

(My feelings about the album are colored by how I listen. I've ultimately decided to remove 'Burn The Witch' and think of it as an excellent b-side, as it's a false start to the mood, tone and sound of the album; and I add 'Ill Wind' inserted in alphabetical order, which fits perfectly.)

Agreed, I suspect most people skip BtW (as good as it is in isolation).

i skip BtW as well

lol, i was watching this video linked to in that piece above, about the secrets of the video for "Daydreaming", and after having to turn it off part-way through (try to guess if you end up watching it, and I'd like to know what's after it!), I realized that I had the exact same experience with this video a few years ago, turning it off at the same point

https://vimeo.com/178823364

um... "inspired by the subreddit"?

let's just say it focuses on the number 6 - a number which can be made from other numbers

i... think if you finish it its power over you will diminish

thanks cuz it's interesting and i hadnt heard of it

i'm always into it until it suddenly goes onto that tangent, i just can't with numerology when it gets to the "hotel door 123 is 1*2*3 = 6", because then i have to think "yeah and 1+2+3=6 too" and feel very sad

i can remember loads of speculation around the album release that it was the end. Then they toured. And toured again? And Thom made another album. And they toured again? And also The Smile. and.... god bless em

i do wonder if it is true, as the rumors say, that phil, colin, and ed have all been sacked

xp They go into the half my life bit but that's obvious... but what i didn't clie into before was that Radiohead was also half of Thom's years at that point, and then they go into was that literal, professional half of his life what undid his relationship and bla bla bla don't think it was any more numbers

5 minutes three plus Nigel well that's Jesus isn't it

5 minus. I'm putting down my phone goodnight

they go into was that literal, professional half of his life what undid his relationship

has thom yorke ever talked about what undid their relationship, though? i haven't been reading all their press like i used to back in the day, but it doesn't seem like something he'd be that open about. but maybe, who knows

5 - Nigel = 6
Nigel = -1

the video is saying that nigel is the "negative force" in thom's life. it is nigel that undid the relationship

not by anything that nigel did, but how his negative force corrupted their relationship

Burn the Witch is one of the best songs on this one!!!

Putting it as the opening song is the right choice I think. It doesn’t really fit with the rest of the album but it’s too good to be a b-side

Excellent post by Soundslike upthread, my thoughts exactly

Radiohead have been consistently terrible about putting songs that don't fit properly and stick out like sore thumbs on their albums

KM I don't follow what you're saying about Nigel but perhaps you're not being serious

"i do wonder if it is true, as the rumors say, that phil, colin, and ed have all been sacked"

is this a rumor? I hadn't heard it.

I'm not holding my breath for a new RH album myself.

OKC, Kid A, The King of Limbs and In Rainbows all sound to me like every song fits - or at least don’t have songs that stick out too much for me. The Bends, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief and AMSP do have songs that don’t fit. I agree that AMSP is very consistent though if you remove BTW and place Ill Wind instead.

oh, i was joking about all that akm, sorry! i don't know why i do these things. the "sacked" rumor is one that i'm trying to start myself. it originated when the Smile had a different (much better, imo) drummer and stripped down the band to just the genius members (imo), jonny and thom

that Smile performance was very promising, i thought, particularly as the first performance of a new configuration of members with completely new songs. it sounded "raw" in a way that most modern radiohead recordings/concerts do not

Justice for CR78

i wouldn't expect a new rh album until maybe 2024 at earliest, since they haven't even starting recording yet

i imagine it would have happened sooner if it weren't for the pandemic - that seems the most likely reason the smile is even happening

it would be so appropriate with the general overtone of the band if "radiohead" as we know it is another casualty, in a roundabout way, of covid.

don't say such things pls

Also, man how has it been FIVE YEARS since this came out? I cant cope

Radiohead have been consistently terrible about putting songs that don't fit properly and stick out like sore thumbs on their albums

OKC, Kid A, The King of Limbs and In Rainbows all sound to me like every song fits

My theory about Radiohead's seeming unimpeachability is rooted in the fact that they always include a bum track, or two, or three. It makes their records appear stronger overall when they have a "Fitter Happier"/"Treefingers"/"Hunting Bears"/"Faust Arp" etc. etc. on there.

And going even further than "a duff track", to take songs-that-are-basic-as-shit-in-their-original-incarnation like Pulk/Pull and Like Spinning Plates and Kid A and essentially destroy them by turning them backwards or mixing them badly or having a Macintosh sing them... the resultant fartsongs make everything else sound better

the resultant fartsongs

― flamboyant goon tie included, Sunday, November 7, 2021 3:35 PM

disregard my previous post; i have it on good authority that this will be the title of the band's next album.

like, basically confirmed. inform twitter.

I actually love fitter happier and treefingers in the context of their respective albums.

Agree on hunting bears and faust arp being duds, but they’re short enough that I don’t mind them. There’s more songs in amnesiac which I find to be extremely skippable - but I tend to think very unkindly in general of that album tbh and it’s probably my least favorite next to HTTT.

I absolutely love the song “kid a” and wont hear this nonsense of it being a fartsong. You can throw the other two you mention to the dogs though, I don’t really care about them.

agree, title track from kid a has always been a keeper.

Ennh “fartsong” wasn’t meant to be a diss, what they did with “Spinning Plates” was an inspired use of an otherwise kinda-insipid song I think. I lived with a potter who intentionally put leaks in the bases of her vases. She said, “when the work is less functional, it becomes more artistic.” I dunno whether I agreed with her. Then, Hideo Kohima famously said, “games can never be art because they require functionality”— paraphrased. I think about this stuff wrt Radiohead’s “top of every list” track record, that by shooting holes in their Coldplayest moments they’re making “art”, or at least the semblance of art. “Fitter Happier” is dumb, “like a pig / in a cage / on antibiotics” is actual Pink Floyd, but it strengthens my resolve that “Paranoid Android” is one of the greatest songs ever recorded— like “Fitter Happier” kinda de-stinks the stink of “the crackle of pig skin / the yuppies networking” and let’s the song slip into my personal canon

That was some post, thank you

love this convo

i loved fitter happier for a long time. then i got a bit bored and started skipping it. then i realized that either way, it makes for the perfect lead-in to karma police and it's iconic. pretty good for the least-listened to song on the album (according to spotify at least)!

I absolutely love the song “kid a” and wont hear this nonsense of it being a fartsong.

otm. did i already mention my experience of first hearing john mayer via his cover of it, sent to me by the only guy in the dorm with long hair, over the vaunted "T1" connection that was apparently the fucking shit in 2001? he had interesting taste, and would have been a great ilxor! anyway, until i heard his version i thought of the radiohead version as kind of impenetrable or something. but mayer makes it sounds like...all his other music. so strange to go back to the original after that and suddenly hear all these soaring choruses. even today (before reading these posts), for some reason i found myself humming "we've got heads on sticks, you've got ventriloquists" in this really sweet way, like it was the most normal thing to say

treefingers has raised a bit in my estimation over the years. it used to sound like flat tones to me, now I hear all the variations and different voices added and subtracted all the time. i feel like a common HS radiohead moment is when everybody's listening in the car and then it gets to treefingers. and it's like, is anyone going to make us skip this tonight.

i also have to say that i got lit 420 earlier today thought that the transition at the end of Optimistic into In Limbo is maybe underrated. when In Limbo kicks in it suddenly sounds like the lyrics in a way that is sickening and awesome

It's a double transition - there's the brief "funk" rendition of "Optimistic", and then the even briefer intro to "In Limbo" before the triplet guitar arpeggi start. It's perfectly timed to lead into the second song: "Not this... and not this either... but this!"

yeah, i love it! that little fake-out transition is 23 seconds long.

the exact number of years he was together with rachel. but how would he know that in 2000??

also jordan's number think abt it
two GOATs acknowledging each other

(jordan retired the season ok computer was released, returns following the release of amnesiac, i just think its an underdiscussed series of events)

anyway "kid a (the song)" is great, "fitter happier" is the "providence" of ok computer (this is Good), "treefingers" is good ambient, "hunting bears" more like "hunting for a point (and starving to death)"

i like the idea of fucking around so you know that the good shit really is the good shit

"fitter happier" is the "providence" of ok computer

yes

also WTF, WOWOWOWOW at the michael jordan connection, makes sense

other important dates
93 - mj retires for the first time, same year as the release of pablo honey
95 - mj returns once the bends comes out
03 - retires for the final time when httt comes out