Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

Radiohead spent the first decade of this century finding a balance between their newfound love of electronic sounds and the guitar-based repertoire of ‘The Bends’ and ‘OK Computer’. Having achieved a near-perfect synthesis on ‘In Rainbows’, the world has waited eagerly to hear where the Oxfordshire quintet would head next. On Valentine’s Day, a new album, ‘The King Of Limbs’ was announced.

So, what exactly is on the album? Like its title, ‘Bloom’ unfurls: piano sample, electronic pulse, scattered drums, tiny glitchy squelches, nimble bass. Then Mr Yorke enters with a beautiful, searching vocal turn. The chorus, if you can call it that, is a succession of Yorke “ooh”s, which eventually merges with a glorious string and brass section. A repeat of the verse then returns and is immediately more comfortable on the ear, having heard it before. The end of the song fades away with all the echoes of its counterparts in a very ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ way. After this very ambitious opening, it’s little wonder that ‘Morning Mr Magpie’ falls a little flat. Despite the slightly dark overtones lent by the vocals and some lovely (presumably Jonny Greenwood) effects, I think it’s just too chirpy (pardon the pun!) and repetitive for a Radiohead song, with the syncopated drum rhythms and the bouncing muted guitar. There’s also not much in the way of development, but in all fairness, this is enhanced by its juxtaposition with the opener.

‘Little By Little’ is an interesting song; it has a similar tone to 2009 stand-alone ‘These Are My Twisted Words’ (descending bass line in particular), yet little of the darkness that pervaded that track. Listening to the song feels alternately like driving at night and frolicking in a sunny meadow, such is the morose tenderness of Thom Yorke’s vocal set against the light, pattering rhythms and coupled with lyrics in the vein of ‘You are such a tease and I am such a flirt’. Up next is ‘Feral’, the big brother of Amnesiac’s ‘Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors,’ complete with vocals but no lyrics, but containing more ‘somethings’ that resemble melody. According to Radiohead’s website, they were listening to a fair amount of Burial and other electronica artists around the time when they were recording this album, and this track certainly demonstrates those influences. Its rolling bass is pretty special actually, giving the song both groove and high remix potential!

Next, we hit the second half of the record with the incredible ‘Lotus Flower’. I personally am reminded during the verses of a sped-up version of Howling Bells’ ‘Golden Web’, which, coupled with Thom Yorke’s desire to ‘fit myself inside your pocket,’ convey a sweet fragility. The song flows effortlessly from section to section (the sustained bass notes halve in length from intro to chorus giving the song more impetus as it evolves, before leaving during the second half of the chorus to complement the angelic qualities of Yorke’s voice and lyrics), and before long, you’re either wondering how on earth five minutes elapsed so quickly, or trying to clap along with the handclaps (not as easy as you'd think!). ‘Codex’ follows, and is probably the most “traditional” song on the album: piano chords and everything. It sounds like it could have been written during the Amnesiac sessions and is grand and stately like the album’s namesake. Still, the treatment of the piano sound and the subtle, stuttering heartbeat rhythm in the background don’t allow the song to revisit the cleaner arrangements of ‘Pyramid Song’. Quasi-electronic strings/guitar effects sweep over the top of the track, and then force the piano into a quiet outro, with the more ‘modern’ elements seeing us out, like a mini-victory of electronic over acoustic.

A battle rendered pointless by ‘Give Up The Ghost’ with its slow, lulling rhythm hand-on-acoustic guitar rhythm and strummed chords accompany some looped background vocals. Again, parts build up and develop around the introduction throughout the song: clean guitar parts that sound almost like vibraphones, vocal harmonies and different vocal passages. After four minutes, you sense the fade out before it actually starts. Similar to ‘Magpie’ earlier, there is very little actual development, but I really enjoy the campfire sing-along vibe which emanates from the forest soundscape at the outro of ‘Codex’, so it almost seems a continuation from that track. Then, ‘Separator’ enters, and we’re back to business, King Of Limbs style. The lovely percussion sounds are back, with some reverberant Yorke vocals displaying their usual dreamlike tone. However, any feelings of slight repetition fade halfway through the song when an actually discernible guitar part enters with a beautiful lick and a chorus suddenly emerges: ‘if you think this is over me, you’re wrong…’ The surprise of this sudden acceleration of ideas at a point where things were getting a little sleepy means that once you are used to this development, all of a sudden the song has finished. Then, … nothing.

You have finished listening to the new Radiohead album.

The immediate impression I get from ‘The King Of Limbs’ is that there’s been slightly more focus on style than substance. Radiohead don’t do themselves any favours by only serving up eight tracks (two of which lack any real lyrics and should really be termed ‘pieces’ as opposed to ‘songs’), some of which seem to twin with each other. The drum and bass parts in particular sound very similar over some tracks, which both homogenizes the songs, but also makes distinction between them difficult. However, this shouldn’t suggest that the album is skin-deep; there are some truly beautiful moments and songs on this album and a continued determination to really continue to push their sonic boundaries. After ‘In Rainbows’ and the novel ‘pay-what-you-want’ Internet release approach resulting in their most accessible album since the 90s, it is no surprise to see Radiohead return to more abstract forms to present their fans with more of a challenge, they’re well known for this type of behaviour, as well as for not repeating themselves. It’s just slightly disappointing that, while experimenting with a more minimal approach for the last few years, they haven’t had as many musical ideas as they have had for previous albums.

Having said that, fan community rumours are rife with the possibility of a second part to the album (the last track being called “Separator” could have a more direct meaning?), which could lend ‘The King Of Limbs’, as reviewed here, a whole different context.

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PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

Ever since her off-kilter, quirky performance on BBC1’s ‘The Andrew Marr Show’ nearly a year ago, I was chomping at the bit for more news of her impending record. News that the Four Lads’ ‘Istanbul, not Constantinople’ sample had been dropped was quite sad, as I’d been finding myself singing it in Tesco randomly for quite a while. But the opening title track sets the tone for the rest of the album perfectly; the ghost of that sample is presented with the bittersweet xylophone melody, and Harvey’s vocal delivery is half-crazed, half-sweet, both rousing her country and blaming it for whatever happened to “Bobby”. Not for the last time on the album, the juxtaposition of almost medieval-sounding instruments set to modern popular rhythms (I’ve used the term ‘medieval reggae to describe several songs on the album to friends!) works brilliantly at making those songs archaic and contemporary at the same time. ‘The Last Living Rose’ sets a musty brass hook and a vaguely militant drumbeat against Harvey’s no-nonsense delivery and clean-muted guitar while the affection she has for “beautiful England” is at odds with her criticisms: “gold, hastily sold, for nothing, NOTHING”, or loving “take me back to beautiful England”.

Whatever messages spill from Harvey’s perfectly judged lyrics (never too heavy-handed, never too understated), her subtle nuances indicate that this is a record about war. The training-drill vocal phrases present in ‘The Words that Maketh Murder’ or ‘The Glorious Land’ and the marching rhythms of ‘In The Dark Places’ are played with sometimes simple melodies, accompaniments and instrumentation of old English songs. ‘..Maketh Murder’ was a great choice for a lead single from the album, like the experience of war itself, the autoharp chords introduce themselves fairly happily, till the lyrics add a sense of foreboding and the bass implied by the brass parts add a darkness to the track.

After the fairly smooth flow of the opening four tracks, the jarring rhythms of ‘All & Everyone’ that eventually gather momentum (a comment on conflict?) seem to halt the pace of the record, whereas ‘On Battleship Hill’ reverses this trick by disrupting a fairly conventional upbeat chord progression with a particularly high-register Harvey vocal. The cracked-old crone voice which Harvey introduced in parts of ‘White Chalk’, her last studio album, is back in ‘England’, where she sings about “the country that I love” with the air of an 80 year old village witch; elsewhere, her voice is free of the rage and drama of her first few albums, and has become quite like her speaking voice. Suitable, then, for an album which at times becomes your own personal war correspondent.

Onto ‘In the Dark Places’ then, and in this song, Harvey seems to tell of a mission, where “some of us returned, and some of us did not”, and encapsulates the tone she sets throughout the album – simply stating these facts without reverting to hyperbole is in fact the true horror of conflict and she knows it. ‘Bitter Branches’ contains the album’s most vitriolic vocal, but it's still a far cry from her ‘Rid Of Me’ days; this is a more considered anger, which is more a fearful protest at the inconvenience of her brutal surroundings.

The last quarter of the album is fairly subdued, but does not suffer for it. ‘Hanging In The Wire’ captures a rare moment of peace with serene vocals drifting throughout piano chords, and ‘Written on the Forehead’ seems surprisingly uplifting for a song which recants the tale of people ‘throwing belongings, lifetime’s earnings amongst the scattered rubbish on the sidewalk’ and decrying the lot with the “Let it burn” refrain set against Niney the Observer’s ‘Blood and Fire’ sample. The last track of the album is a fitting end, a eulogy almost, to “Louis” who we gather is John Parish’s “dearest friend”. The final tracks of all PJ Harvey albums, without exception, are special events; so it is a little anticlimactic to not have the lady herself on lead vocal duties here. This does unfortunately detract slightly from the song and puzzles me as a listener, certainly when I imagine Polly singing John Parish’s opening verse, but overall ‘The Colour of The Earth’ sounds celebratory (perhaps due to surviving the metaphorical atrocities of the album’s twelve tracks and living to tell the tale?).

Overall then, I felt that PJ Harvey has delivered a fantastic album, which few other artists would have had the experience to produce. Since winning the Mercury in 2001, she has gone lo-fi glam (‘Uh Huh Her’) and piercingly mournful (‘White Chalk’), but here becomes the anonymous, yet patriotic, bystander and storyteller. Interestingly, this is the first album cover which does not picture Polly Jean herself.

Listening to this latest reinvention of PJ Harvey, there were no moments where I found myself reaching for the skip button when listening to this album. In fact, I usually found myself skipping backwards to hear songs again. She manages to spin the most substantial songs out of seemingly very little: the repeating chords and phrases don’t grate as they would have in another artist’s hands, and this is due to her lyrical and vocal ability to keep things interesting throughout. Not to mention a sterling production job by John Parish, whose salt-of-the-earth vocals back her up on most of these numbers. She loses a few points for giving Mr Parish lead vocals on that beautiful last track though!

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Intro // Prologue

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