“Separator”
from the album The King of Limbs
2011
iTunes
Plenty of bands are perfectly content to find a sound that suits them and spend their careers making variations on the same album. Radiohead is not one of those bands.
In fact, you could argue that Radiohead has never really settled on a sound at all. From Pablo Honey in 1993 through The King of Limbs in 2011, the English band’s most consistent hallmark has been the restless wanderlust of a never-ending search for what’s next.
That’s a source of frustration for fans of the band’s early work, who wish Radiohead would simply record another song as accessible as “Creep” or “Fake Plastic Trees.” For listeners willing to get swept into the band’s vortex, though, the ride can be as exhilarating as it is bumpy.
The King of Limbs is rarely a simple record. The band emphasizes textures and jumbles of rhythm, which makes for sometimes claustrophobic listening, especially on the first few tracks. There’s a lot of throbbing bass and meticulous ticking beats, but not in anything resembling a danceable sense.
Terse, rhythmic repeating guitar races across a relentless hi-hat figure on “Morning Mr. Magpie,” and deep bass hovers at the back of the song as singer Thom Yorke injects clenched-jaw tension into the melody floating sweetly over the vertiginous instrumental fray below. A slippery ascending bass line sidles through the next song, “Little by Little,” atop cadences overlapping with all the busy whirring, clicking and chattering of the workroom at a clock repair shop.
If it’s mostly complex, The King of Limbs is also frequently beautiful. A flowering of horns helps temper the insistent beat machinery of opener “Bloom,” and Yorke lifts his voice over sad, resonant piano on “Codex” as ethereal electronic sounds drift through the background, punctuated first by a smear of brass and, toward the end, an abrupt swell of strings.
“Codex” and the last track, “Separator,” are the most straightforward tunes on the record. On the latter, a sinewy guitar line builds slowly, winding its way around the precise beat that frames vocals masked by reverb, through which drifts Yorke’s cryptic refrain: “If you think this is all there is, you’re wrong.” Whatever that means.
Perhaps more than anything, The King of Limbs demands patience, and persistence, which is asking a lot: These are not songs that unfold on first listen, or even necessarily on third or fourth. That’s more of a commitment than many music fans are willing to make, and fair enough — it’s been a long time since Radiohead made records with an eye toward anything more than satisfying the band’s own creative impulses, if it ever did. Those who are prepared to stick it out, though, may well find The King of Limbs worth the wait.