The King of Limbs: the 15th impression

This is a Radiohead record.

Not as obvious as it sounds, especially as there's been much noise about how The King Of Limbs has a lot in common with Thom Yorke's solo record, The Eraser. But the more I listen to this new record, the less it resembles that old one. Where The Eraser had a clean feel, this has a murky one. It's like looking into a body of water and thinking you can see the bottom, but then realising that what you are focusing on is nothing more than a cloud of silt that's been kicked up by some unseen, unknown creature.

This first struck me when listening to 'Morning Mr Magpie' for the 15th time (good ol' iTunes and its play counter, eh?). What initially attracted me to this, my favourite one of the eight tracks, was the shuffling and persistent drumming. But I now find myself getting lost in all those scary little sounds that start deep down before billowing to the surface (around 1m34s).

The first impression of the entire album was dominated by the drums. My favourites were those that did more than just nod to a relatively recent influence, Flying Lotus, with their almost undulating percussiveness. The aforementioned 'Morning Mr Magpie' and opener 'Bloom' did bode well. If the whole album is like this, I thought, I will be very pleased indeed. A whole Radiohead album made up of similar sounding tracks? Ha!

On the second half of the record we have 'Codex' and 'Give Up The Ghost'. Little or no percussion at all! To the bottom of the pile they went. And it's taken a while to come to like them. I started to notice things. The subtle horns toward the end of 'Codex' make the song. It makes the track swell and then come to rest in a very satisfying manner. The previously unnoticed Neil Youngish sound of 'Give Up The Ghost' makes me listen to the song in a new, more appreciative way. And, like every other track on the record, there's more going on than one might perceive on the first couple of listens: there is at least a second guitar, and maybe a bass in there too; there are the backing vocals; there is the smacking of the acoustic guitar; there are the strings (like the horns on 'Codex', they do little but more than enough); and finally there is Yorke's voice, an instrument that hasn't been utilised in such a way since his emoting days on The Bends and OK Computer. I rarely listen to either of those records these days, finding that they remind me of those Radiohead fans that bemoan the band's adoption of new instruments and sounds at the expense of rocking guitars and falsetto vocals. I'd left that sound behind, preferring by far the new directions the band went in. But hearing Yorke's voice again like this is nothing less than a simple joy.

A track that seems to annoy many posters on fansites is 'Feral'. Just over three minutes of glitch-like electronica with no lyrics or melody. A non-song. It's the kind of track that Radiohead have done before - 'Fitter Happier' on OK Computer; 'Treefingers' on Kid A; 'Hunting Bears' on Amnesiac. I like these tracks. I like how they help pace the albums they're on. I also like them in themselves, how their sound is like nothing else on their respective longplayers - indeed how they sound little like anything else in their discography, yet still fit. 'Feral' perhaps sits easier on The King Of Limbs than these previous tracks do on their records. But it still has that samba-like rhythm. Nothing like they've done before, yet it still sounds like them.

There are so many other things that make this unmistakably a Radiohead record - the great song order and album structure and how all the songs slot so perfectly together, the nature of the release, the musicality of the album title, the artwork - that I don't know how I could have not heard it for what it was sooner. I was not disappointed when I first heard the record, but I was wondering if there was another record where all five members were so evidently present. I was wrong. They're all there on this record, but you just have to listen carefully. Fortunately, it's as easy to listen carefully to a new Radiohead record as it has ever been.