RADIOHEAD

Everyone's favourite band (or it seems like) have returned with their eighth studio album. Like a ‘previously on Lost’ prologue, opening track ‘Bloom’ plays out a compendium of Wot Radiohead Hav Dun in the decade since Kid A (2000), often at the same time. Initially threatening to actually hop on to a trend with its shimmery, shifty piano riff, scuttling percussion and now trademark booming bassline combining almost to form dubstep, Radiohead’s naturally geeky, panic attack-style of production prevents it from so safe a fate. It’s effectively a modern update to ‘Idioteque’’s endlessly satisfying, intentionally wrong, take on 2-step. Eager to make a good impression despite their standing as the kings of smart-boy British rock, everything is thrown into the mix: uncharacteristically heroic vocal melody and brass lines included.

Not every song is as successful, though. Not sure whether it’s more ‘Knives Out’ or ‘There There’, but the vaguely electronified indie identity crisis of ‘Little By Little’ has definitely been on a Radiohead album before. Its mix of clean guitar arpeggio and sequenced hi-hat (definitely a new detail for the band) is perfectly fine in its execution, but leaves a little to be desired in terms of ambition from this set of self-proclaimed forward thinkers. There are metronomic clanks and cool background noises, but they do little to distract from the idea that this song is slapping you in the eardrum with déjà vu. Far more satisfying is ‘Feral’. Though not as vicious as its name might imply, it’s nevertheless a triumph of brevity, combining a truly relentless beat (there must be more drum than non-drum on this track, if that makes sense), electro spots, blotches and bass wave, and the charming Disembodied Thom, as debuted on Kid A. Brevity seems to be the mission statement here. It’s not as though Amnesiac (2001) or In Rainbows were especially long, each able to fit on a side of C-90 with room to spare, but 37 minutes must be a record for the band. It’s like a refreshing Bizarro World, where the album’s centrepiece is the nastiest, most disorienting song on the album: think the bottomless descent of ‘In Limbo’, but with that falling feeling replaced by being frozen in place and poked with electrified sticks.