To Be or Not to Be a Radiohead Fan

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Music review: Radiohead Get Back to Business on “King of Limbs”

The Burg Staff on Mar. 02, 2011
By Matt Ashare
When we last heard from them, Radiohead — that enigmatic big little band from England — seemed bent on shaking up a business model that had stood since the dawn of vinyl. With no label support, the group invited fans to pay what they wished in 2007 for a download of “In Rainbows.” The strategy also served as an effective marketing campaign, as cultural pundits scrambled to grasp the meaning of it all. Inevitably, perhaps, the music was overshadowed by media static.
  Sitting here now, with an actual CD of “In Rainbows” nestled on a shelf next to the band’s 1993 debut, “Pablo Honey” (“Creep” anyone?) and “OK Computer,” the bold, guitar-driven 1997 album that established Radiohead as a major musical force — a subtler but no less cerebral Pink Floyd, or maybe a less overtly political heir to U2’s grand guitarscapes, with singer Thom Yorke cast as the digital age’s reigning king of pain — two thoughts come to mind. For all its airy synth textures, electro-beats, and disembodied vocals, “In Rainbows” is far more accessible, and enjoyable, than I remember. More importantly, while its original mode of distribution seemed to challenge conventional notions of what music is worth, in the end Radiohead profited from an old-school paradigm: the download, like the bygone vinyl single, was simply a loss leader — a tease — for an $80 “In Rainbows” deluxe edition, and that handsome CD on my shelf. Radiohead simply put a new twist on the tried and true.
  They’re at it again. After abruptly announcing on Valentine’s Day that a new Radiohead album, “King of Limbs,” would be available as a download the following Saturday, the band created a bigger stir by delivering the “disc” a day early. “Limbs” didn’t benefit from the big build-up to “Rainbows,” but it created a stir nonetheless. Forthcoming, in late April or early May: Vinyl and CD, as well as a deluxe “newspaper” version featuring two 10-inch vinyl disc, a CD, and over 600 pieces of “artwork.”
  With eight tracks that fly by in under 40 minutes, “Limbs” feels even more like a loss leader than “Rainbows.” Longer than most EPs, but shorter than an LP, perhaps it’s meant to suggest that, in the age of downloads and digital media services like Pandora, those analog-era designations are no longer useful. And, yet, “Limbs” does have something akin to the ebb and flow of an “album.” The first half — yes, I’m finally going to mention the music — is flush with du-jour dubstep rhythms.
  The fluttering piano the introduces the first track, “Bloom,” quickly gives way to a rushed beat that feels like it’s tripping over itself and Colin Greenwood’s nearly subsonic bass (no guitars in sight). Yorke’s apparitional voice is front and center, but the only lyric I can make out is “Open your mouth wide/Universal sigh.”
  Typical Yorke: at once inscrutable and evocative.
  Guitarists Johnny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien arrive with an insistent scratch of a riff on “Morning Mr. Magpie,” and insinuate “Little By Little” with a bit of melodic interplay.
But it’s back to scattershot drums ‘n’ bass for the wordless exercise “Feral.” And then, viola!, the white lab coats come off and we’re back on quasi-familiar ground: the piano chords of “Codex” carry faint echoes of “Karma Police”; “Lotus Flower” has the verse/chorus structure of a potential single; acoustic guitars ground “Give Up the Ghost”; and for all his mumbling, Yorke doesn’t stumble over the key line of the final track, “Separator.” With guitars swarming like pixies around his spectral falsetto, he warns, or promises, “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong.”
  The album as unending project: a business model for the 21st century.