Album Reviews

Album review: Radiohead – The King Of Limbs (XL Recordings)

By | Published on Tuesday 22 February 2011

Radiohead

‘The King Of Limbs’ is a difficult record to review. Like a cockroach, it skitters away into the shadows when you shine a light on it. It’s probably the band’s least accessible record to date – the beats are never firm enough to dance to, the lyrics are cloaked in reverb, and there’s barely a guitar to be heard. It’s a deep, layered, album that crams a lot into just eight tracks and 37 minutes, but with a nonchalance that belies what’s hidden below.

Take sixth track ‘Codex’, which is probably closest to the band’s earlier work. Horns and a mournful piano, run through effects to make it sound like they’re just below the surface of a lake on a moonlit night, accompany abstract lyrics about dragonflies. On first listen, it’s easy to write off as predictable and unremarkable, but after a few listens Nigel Godrich’s twinkling production gives it a soothing quality that elevates it to one of the most impressive works on the album.

Other stand-outs include ‘Mr Magpie’, ‘Lotus Flower’ (which was released as a video an hour before the full record arrived, so it’s probably as close to a “lead single” as we’re going to get) and album-closer ‘Separator’.

But as deep and difficult as ‘The King Of Limbs’ is, it doesn’t reach the heights that the band have comfortably scaled in the past. There’s no intensity – it’s all troughs and no peaks. There are no moments where everything comes together in the band’s trademark rush of energy. There’s no real problem with what’s here – the problem is in what’s not present, as if three or four tracks were accidentally forgotten about and then it was too late to add them back in again before release.

What’ll be really interesting to see is how ‘The King Of Limbs’ gets translated to a live show. It’s very difficult to hear the contributions of the band members, other than Thom Yorke, on the record, with a few exceptions when it comes to Jonny Greenwood’s arrangements. Perhaps in a live setting it’ll come to life, but right now, ‘The King of Limbs’ is a difficult, dense, slow-paced and ever-so-slightly disappointing record. DG

Physical release: 28 Mar



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