With the release of their eighth full length album, The King of Limbs, Radiohead has found itself more pigeonholed than ever. Everybody seems to have a preformed opinion about the band’s impressive, critically-acclaimed cannon, and projecting that opinion onto Limbs. This is a standard reaction for a Radiohead release—as a result, most of what people say about Limbs will likely reflect opinions they had before album opener “Bloom” crescendoed past its initial piano loop. But these eight songs deserve to be looked at in their own right.
Despite a huge, electronic revamping since 2007’s In Rainbows, Radiohead has retained that record’s minimalist tendencies. While Limbs might be the band’s most sonically innovative record yet, with songs like “Feral” and “Morning Mr. Magpie” delving into electronic sounds the band only dabbled in on Kid A and Amnesiac, listeners do not need to exert too much effort to understand their complexities, even for the most outlandish tracks.
This is Radiohead shedding its mystery, for the first time releasing an intimate, bare-all record. Subtlety has largely replaced the extravagance and grandiosity of albums like Kid A and OK Computer. Limbs calls Radiohead listeners to dance along with the beats, rhythms, and melodies that churn through the better part of the record.
It is clear that the band has producers like Flying Lotus and Actress, in places where it emphasizes a beat and then relentlessly swells its ambience through each track. The drum machine has largely replaced acoustic percussion, and complimentary loops of piano and guitar appear in lieu of much more standard instrumentation. The first four tracks reveal these influences the most, with “Bloom” and “Morning Mr. Magpie” operating like smooth, free jazz, and “Little by Little” taking cues from Modern Guilt-era Beck. The instrumental “Feral” shows an unprecedented use of electronics, situated somewhere in between Amnesiac’s “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” and more off-kilter dubstep artists like Burial.
Limbs’s second half is far less electronic, and fans of the band’s earlier work should have an easier time enjoying it. Tracks like “Codex” and “Give Up the Ghost” show that Radiohead has a keen ear for beauty in subtlety.
But even though Limbs shows Radiohead in their most listenable and most experimental form, this album feels incomplete. Conspiracy theorists all across the Internet insist, for reasons from the album’s order number to a line in “Separator” proclaiming “if you think this is over then you’re wrong,” that the King of Limbs that we have is not the finished product. So keep an eye on this record—Radiohead just might have some more surprises in store for it.
Voice’s Choices: “Lotus Flower,” “Separator,” “Morning Mr. Magpie”
