RADIOHEAD - THE KING OF LIMBS

Radiohead decided in the end to release the new album a day early, so I've listened to this approximately 10 times now. First off I need to point out that I am a huge Radiohead fan, so I was never going to hate the new album, I'm also hardly the most unbiased of reviewers, with that in mind here's my view.

This release fits into the Kid A/Amnesiac/Hail To Thief suite of Radiohead albums, The Bends 2 it is not. There are virtually no real drums, no 3 guitar traditional rock songs and probably little to like if you gave up on Radiohead after OK Computer.

That said there are some absolute classic Radiohead moments on this album . Codex is one of the most beautiful songs I have heard in years. The song is built on minor piano chords, with discordant brass floating over the top, with Thom Yorke singing:

Slight of hand / Jump off the end

Into a clear lake / No one around

Just dragonflies / flying to the side

No one gets hurt / You've done nothing wrong

Slide your hand / Jump off the end

The water's clear / And innocent

The water's clear / And innocent

Simply one of Radiohead's greatest songs, bar none.

Throughout the album there are weird things going on, white noise, bird call, distorted drums, odd time syncs, multi layered affected vocals, typical of post OK Computer Radiohead. Other tracks of note are Lotus Flower (the single) which has a great video of Thom Yorke doing his weird little dances. Final track Separator is also pretty special, great shuffling drums, multi-layered vocals, massive reverb, beautiful guitar arpeggio's from Johnny (through several delay pedals by the sound of it) and Thom singing dreamily "Wake me up, wake me up" and "If you think this is over, you're wrong". Could that last lyric and the song title be a pointer to a swift follow up album?

The album flies by in 38 minutes and leaves quite an impression, for some reason I can't stop thinking about the films Vanilla Sky and Inception when I am listening to the album. There is so much depth and so much going on, that I keep finding new stuff on each successive listen.

So all in all , no great leap forward, just Radiohead doing exactly what they want, on their own terms and not pandering to anyone, least of all the fans. I love them for that.