Radiohead - The King of Limbs

An earlier version of this article was previously published in The Omega.

2/5 stars

The most surprising thing about the new Radiohead album “The King of Limbs” is how unsurprising it’s content is.  Radiohead is a band that has continually reinvented themselves with each subsequent release.  The band has had a brilliant history of frustrating expectations and carving out a niche that is purely their own.

After the success of their masterpiece “OK Computer,” an album that pushed the ideas of what rock music could be, the band went on to produce albums that were full of glitches and stuttering drumbeats, Thom Yorke’s unearthly vocals became indecipherable, and song structures began to eschew hooks or choruses or song structure all together.  Despite these attributes Radiohead is a band that has always remained in the mainstream’s subconscious and is regularly regarded as one of the biggest rock bands in the world.  Even Britney Spears has been seen carry their previous album to her car!

This changed for the first time with a brief return to accessibility with 2007’s “In Rainbows.” “In Rainbows” seemed to be a summary of everything the band had done thus far.  Not only that, but the album was full of hooks, snarling guitars, crashing cymbals, unearthly wails, and bombastic strings, even on the quietest ballads. 

“The King of Limbs” doesn’t do any of these things, it doesn’t present something new and it doesn’t create a cohesive package; what it does present is a quiet, minimalist album that seems to be made up of previously discarded ideas.  This is certainly not surprising, as Radiohead spent the majority of the 90’s fashioning a glitchy-electro-rock sound.  The reason this album is such a disappointment is its inability to create a unified vision, or much of a vision at all in its brief 37 minutes. 

The first half of the album is easily the weakest part of the album.  The songs sound like a cross between Thom Yorke’s solo work on “The Eraser” and Radiohead’s “Amnesiac.”  These songs could have easily been B-sides to either of those albums, but the music isn’t nearly as unsettling and interesting as the “The Eraser” or as inventive as “Amnesiac.” 

The album highlights begin halfway through the album with “Lotus Flower” and “Codex”.  The latter sounds almost like a spooky Coldplay (aka Radiohead-lite) concept.  After half an album of cold and insular electronic sounds the warm piano chords are incredibly welcome.  The second half of the album becomes less dense and easier to listen to. 

As the shortest Radiohead album, “The King of Limbs” seems to end prematurely, every time “Separator” ends on my IPod I keep waiting for the next song to start.  It is hard not to feel ripped-off by the album, not only is it short, but it seems to be populated with throwaway songs, songs that might have better suited on a B-side collection. 

A lot of music critics have labeled “The King of Limbs” as an in-between album, one that represents an evolution from an old sound to a new one.  This description seems like a way to try and excuse the albums mediocrity.  The hard truth is that “The King of Limbs” seems to symbolize for the first time in their long and successful career that Radiohead is running out of new ideas and concepts.