"The King of Limbs"
Radiohead
(Ticker Tape)
Remember the time when every Radiohead album felt like a revelation? When you were sure that the band, with each of its albums, was going to go where no band ever had gone before?
It’s not that time anymore.
The British quintet’s new album, “The King of Limbs,” isn’t bad. It’s even gorgeous at times. But it’s too familiar-sounding to qualify as an unmitigated success.
The skittering beats. The mysteriously yearning and often unintelligible vocals. The atmospheric, dread-inducing soundscapes. The lack of traditional song structure. Radiohead has covered this territory before, and merely offers variations on it here.
“Wait,” at least some of you are saying to yourselves. “Radiohead has a new album?” Yes they do — something of a stealth release, by music industry standards.
On Monday — the morning after the Grammy Awards, when most of the music press’ attention was turned elsewhere — the band announced that it would be putting out this digital release today (for $9 in MP3 format, $14 in WAV, not determine-your-own-price, as it did for “In Rainbows” in 2007). Then it released the album a day early — yesterday — via thekingoflimbs.com. The reason for moving up, according to a press release, was that the website was ready, so there was no reason to wait.
CD and vinyl versions will be available March 29, with a deluxe edition out in May.
Opener “Bloom” starts with a churning beat and something of a slogan (“Open your mouth wide,” sings frontman Thom Yorke, elongating the last word for emphasis). Then it, well, blooms, turning into a calmly floating jam. “Codex” travels a similar path, starting as a stately piano ballad, then veering off into outer space.
“Feral” is strikingly abstract (even for a Radiohead song) all the way through — just murmurs and sighs over a relentless beat. Yet there is plenty of old-fashioned melodic appeal in delicately constructed songs such as “Give Up the Ghost,” “Separator” and lead single “Lotus Flower."
“It’s like I’m falling out of bed/From a long, weary dream,” sings Yorke at the start of “Separator.” Toward the end of the track, he sings “Wake me up,” repeatedly. Indeed, there’s something sleepy about “The King of Limbs” in general: the murky, foggy textures, the surreal, dreamlike segues, the gentleness of the ballads.
This is one of the prettiest and most melodically appealing albums that Radiohead — a major contender for the title of Greatest Rock Band of its Generation — ever has released. It just doesn’t pack the wallop of its late 1990s and early 2000s breakthroughs.
The brevity of “The King of Limbs” — it offers just eight tracks and lasts a mere 37 minutes — adds to the sense that it was not intended as a major statement. It feels more like an EP, meant to bide time between more ambitious works.
No wonder the band declined to make a big deal about its release.
Jay Lustig: (973) 392-5850 or jlustig@starledger.com
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