The Scene

Radiohead have been dropping albums at no moment’s notice since before it was the trend. Which is exactly the way that Radiohead fans like to think about that. But this one came with a bit of foreshadowing. First came the online purge, the youtube page and social media accounts cleaned out, the website devoid of websitery. Then the long silence. Upon the conclusion of which, this appeared:

Oh, snap! New Radiohead music! Sound the goddamn alarms, people.

The Songs

Burn the Witch – Marching forward upon strummed guitars and ominous strings. Burn the witch, cast away the outsider. The wailing chorus is a shower singer’s dream (and anyone else in the household’s nightmare).
Daydreaming – Begins like the soundtrack to a divorce (I guess it sorta is). About a third of the way in it starts incorporating a few more ideas (like a pulsing bass line). Super earnest and definitely moving. Bit of backtracking at the end there too.
Decks Dark – A little more rhythm to this one, a welcome rise in tempo and menace. Some of the layered textures towards the end are superb.
Desert Island Disk – Folky acoustic guitar base and semi-hushed vocals. Perhaps a bit of a bridge song. It doesn’t quite stand on its own feet.
Ful Stop – A rolling, more demanding tune. Upping the ante with what almost sounds like a bit of Krautrock influence.
Glass Eyes – Back to the more maudlin stuff, which they do so well. The strings dominate this one, giving it a bit of texture that to be honest isn’t really there elsewise.
Identikit – Gets a distinctive rhythm, vocals sound shaky all exposed but in a good way. Slightly underdone but a couple sweet hooks in there and a decent solo to close it out.
The Numbers – Radiohead made a climate change anthem! Twinkling keys and a bit of guitar build it up before it takes on a bit more purpose in the back half. Coulda been more vibrant, maybe.
Present Tense – Love this one, the plucked acoustic and the soft, shuffling beat. The harmonies in the background are wonderful.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief – That’s a title and a half, right? The song doesn’t get where it aims but there’s a lot going on. That bubbling at the end’s a bit weird.
True Love Waits – It’s been waiting in the vaults for an album it fits on and this is certainly it. Beautiful, agonising tone to end on, arguably the strongest song on the record.

The Vibe

Okay here’s the thing: This album is clearly very good. The songs are beautifully constructed and the whole thing spins with a strong conceptual core. It’s a Radiohead album, man. But it’s not really anything we haven’t heard before which means that had this album come out twenty years ago it could have been revolutionary but in 2016 it’s just sorta more of the same from a legendary band.

I mean, I like it fine. I’ve listened several times and I kept enjoying the bugger but it hasn’t quite risen to the stratosphere yet as the best albums (especially the best Radiohead albums) do after repeat listenings. It’s mellow but intricately layered, for once a Radiohead album that feels like it was written to be a Radiohead album… if that makes sense.

The best way to explain that is with a good look at their brilliant video for Daydreaming, directed by the inimitable Paul Thomas Anderson. Who, by the way, has been using Jonny Greenwood to write his scores for his last few films now. The video features a wistful looking Thom Yorke stumbling unnoticed through a number of scenes before crawling into a snowy cave by himself.

Those scenes though, they all seem to recall famous scenes in Radiohead history. Images from past music videos and stuff like that, we’re watching Yorke traverse his way through the history of this band, contemplating and reckoning with it all before he crawls into his hole – whatever that bit’s meant to mean. An escape from the pressure or something. As he does it coincides with the backtracked vocals where he sings: ‘Half of my life…’ over and over again. That’s roughly how long he was married before his recent divorce and close to how long this band's been around. Take from that what you may.

The Music

Odd thing is, for an album that carries a pretty consistent sound, many of these songs are drawn from way back in the catalogue. True Love Waits goes back as far as twenty years, while a few others go back as far at least a decade. Just waiting for the right framing and all that. Here it is.

The drums tend to play soft (or not at all) as the melodies carry the tunes on piano, on guitar, through the strings. Through Yorke’s gorgeous voice. All sorta as we’ve come to expect from these guys, though the strings are a bit more. Such as happens when your lead guitarist takes some time off to score films for a modern genius of a director. AMSP is dutifully cinematic in places, though it’s also grounded by its own apparent grief. Yorke’s divorce is where that all stems from even if his usual overbearing sincerity means that it isn’t much of a departure.

The tracks that stand out are the first two, which are not coincidentally the singles, as well as the closer. Present Tense and Decks Dark are quality as well, though a few others get lost in the mire on initial listens.

They know exactly what they’re doing and the album wouldn’t have seen the light of day were it not up to their high standards. Having said that, I wouldn’t have argued with a bit more guitar to slice out of the fog nor a little more Phil Selway on those drums, get something thumping through it all. Still, Nigel Godrich is back in the producer’s seat as usual and his work is sublime. AMSP may not quite reach the heights of past Radiohead works but the sounds are flawless.

Revelations

Dunno if this was on purpose or not but it hardly seems like an accident that the track listing is in perfect alphabetical order.

“Stay in the shadows, cheer at the gallows. This is a roundup”

The video for Burn the Witch is based on a 60s UK children’s series called Trumpton. It was based a little too much apparently because the owners of the Trumpton really didn’t care for watching characters that look like theirs enacting pagan rituals and witch lynching:

“Radiohead should have sought our consent as we consider this a tarnishing of the brand. It is not something we would have authorized. We consider that there is a breach of copyright and we are deciding what to do next.”

“Dreamers, they never learn”

Borderline controversial statement: Thom Yorke is an overrated lyricist. His words don’t read that well on their own, especially here when so much of it is all sad and sombre. His strength is how brilliantly he sings them, not how poetically he writes them.

“Have you had enough of me?”

“Truth will mess you up”

Identikit (per The Free Dictionary): a set of transparencies of various typical facial characteristics that can be superimposed on one another to build up, on the basis of a description, a picture of a person sought by the police.

“I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know”

“The numbers don't decide. Your system is a lie”

“As my world. Comes crashing down. I'll be dancing. Freaking out. Deaf, dumb, and blind”

“And true love waits. In haunted attics. And true love lives. On lollipops and crisps”

“Just don’t leave. Don’t leave”

Finale

Unsurprisingly, A Moon Shaped Pool came out to near universal adoration. It had an 88/100 on metacritic last I looked, which is more than stunning. I get the feeling though that it might have dropped a few points had reviews been written (like this one) after a few more weeks with the record. Again, it’s bloody superb on so many levels, the way that the songs are so intricately structured and yet they never feel like collages or anything like that. Yorke’s voice is as good as it’s ever been and the band is on top form – shout out to Jonny Greenwood’s strings too.

But too much takes on the feel of intellectual art where it’s undeniably good without really being that affecting. You feel it in the moment but then the album ends and you have yourself a nice, warm cup of tea and it’s all the same as it was before. A few more loud, up-tempo numbers might have made a difference. There’s just a wondering that these guys are so talented by now that they can write these things in their sleep, they can go through the motions so well that you almost can’t tell the difference. That’s not a criticism. But it does sorta mean that the immediacy, the desperation of past Radiohead albums isn’t quite there. Hey, that’s a lot to ask from a band after all these years. There’s nothing wrong with 7 outta 10, but my favourite track on the album was the one written the longest time ago and maybe that’s no fluke.