You have to hand it to Radiohead. They’ve always been out there, mopes on horseback on the Mild Frontier of Sound, but in 2011 everybody’s favorite almost ambient band set their sights on a goal even their biggest detractors could get on board with—nonsentience. To quote band artwork guy Stanley Donwood, Radiohead were set upon producing a work that was “transitory… something that was almost not existing.”
At long last. Kid (Com)a!
Now you might have thought they’d do the expected thing and spend a week listening to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports over and over again. If it’s “almost not existing” you’re looking for, Eno is the perfect place to start. But if nothing else Radiohead are innovators, and they had a simply jolly idea on how to do it their way.
Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood describes their methodology, sort of: “We didn’t want to pick up guitars and write chord sequences. We didn’t want to sit in front of a computer either. We wanted a third thing, which involved playing and programming.” And that’s what they did, using turntables and vinyl emulation software and doing all kinds of looping and editing to create backdrops over which Thom Yorke wrote melodies and sang. According to producer Nigel Godrich, what was supposed to be a two-week experiment ended up taking six months. And at the end he was left with a “gigantic mess that took me about a year and a half to unravel.”
It sounds like the prelude to an LP destined for the Worst of lists of the rock world. Band Spends Inordinate Amount of Time and Money to Make Album People Don’t Even Know Is There. Now I’m no musical genius, but if I’d been Radiohead I’d have made an album consisting solely of Thom Yorke singing almost inaudibly over a backdrop of total silence. Goal accomplished!
But The King of Limbs is no fiasco, primarily because that “almost not existing” was pure hyperbole and the grand result of Radiohead’s unorthodox new record-making technique was an album that sounds pretty much like every other Radiohead album. And remarkably enough it won’t put you to sleep either, although there are a few songs where they put real effort into being as ephemeral as the ectoplasm known to issue from the mouths of 19th Century mediums.
Radiohead has never done a thing for me. I can appreciate the craft and the sonic ambition and the fact that no one else sounds like them. Say what you will about them, they’re innovators. But I find their wispy sound and Thom Yorke’s bummed alien vocals alienating, which I assume is the intention. I ignored the string of highly successful albums that led the misled to label them The Only Band That Matters, because they were so obviously not The Only Band That Matters. They may be the world’s biggest cult act, but cult act they are.
That alienated is important—I get the idea I’m supposed to connect with Radiohead’s music on an emotional level, but connecting with the alienated is a fool’s errand. And Yorke at some level has always struck me as a fraud—just another Major Tom floating off in his tin can into the arid alien soundscapes that are Radiohead’s bread and computer chips. The chill of space just doesn’t do it for me.
Robert Christgau called Kid A “an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty. Alienated masterpiece nothing—it’s dinner music.” He then added, “More claret?” That’s about right. Except at the dinner party in question everybody would be wearing headphones and nobody would be making witty dinner conversation because they’d all be lost in their solipsistic little brain trips. This is head music, and by that I don’t mean music for heads. It’s too parched and arid.
So call it brain music—it makes no connection with your legs or heart or feelings, unless you’re even more of a depressive than I am. In fact I have a hard time imagining a group of people anywhere listening to this music together. Radiohead’s music doesn’t make a joyous communal connection. Theirs is “in your room” music if I’ve ever heard it—perfect for cold, gray, stay-inside windblown days when Joy Division sounds too positive and perky.
So fiasco, no, but hardly a triumph either. Despite its brisk sales, helped in part by creative marketing, and its positive critical reception, The King of Limbs disappointed many. It even made Rolling Stone magazine’s 2024 Most Disappointing Albums of All Time list, even if the piece’s writer spent most of his time apologizing for putting it there. Odd to find a review of a fantastically disappointing album that opens with the words “Put down your pitchforks. Everybody calm down. We’re not suggesting The King of Limbs is anything short of a sensational record.”
The chief problem with The King of Limbs is that, while Radiohead hardly made good on that “almost not existing,” on a few they give it the old public school try. The only real failure is the domesticated gerbil that is “Feral.” It’s all shuffling, burbling electronica and no melody, with Yorke buried deep in the mix. Impossible to understand what he’s babbling about, and the lyric sheet makes clear that’s to the good, because Yorke’s words are tripe.
Which is a frequent problem when it comes to Mr. Yorke. I have this frequent fantasy of a poetry workshop where the instructor says “Any volunteers?” Yorke waves his hand frantically and the instructor sighs (this happens every time) and says, “Yes, Mr. Thom Yerke?” “That’s Yorke, sir.” “Duly noted, Mr. Thom Yerke. I take it you would like to honor us with one of your ‘specimens.’” “Yes sir, I would sir.” “Very well, Mr. Thom Yerke.” “That’s Yorke, sir.” “I do hope you don’t repeat the word ‘hopeless’ thirty-seven times in a row, Mr. Thom Yerke.” “Thirty-eight,” says Thom Yorke. “And the ‘h’ in ‘Thom’ is silent, sir.” “So it is, Mr. Thom as in thumb Yerke. Unfortunately, you are not.”
Some of the LP’s songs described as enervated, but that could be Radiohead’s biggest gift—the ability to make interesting drags. These minimalist songs are animated by the smallest of things, and that is an accomplishment. The glacial “Codex” works on the back of some lovely piano and Yorke’s vocals—there’s no denying its prettiness, and the trumpet works, but otherwise there’s not much there there, and the same goes for the crawling “Give Up the Ghost,” with its pretty guitar figure and layered vocals. Very nice it is, but it’s ultimately tiring as well. It’s too static to generate any real excitement, not that excitement has ever been part of Radiohead’s mission statement.
“Lotus Flower” has an actual beat and you can dance to it, which Yorke himself proved on a video for the song, much to the merriment of all. I mean you have to see it to believe it. But the song works on the strength of rhythm alone, even when it doesn’t have to—it may not boast a killer melody, but the melody on offer is workmanlike enough. And Yorke almost sounds animated.
“Bloom” is shockingly busy—a nice piano bounces off some burbling space age synth and some busy percussion, over which Yorke comes off sounding as pretentious as Bono. And the song even builds to a kind of mock orchestral crescendo, of sorts. By the standards of The King of Limbs, “Bloom” is a big Broadway production number. By any other standards, it’s little ado about not much.
And by The King of Limbs standards, “Hello, Mr. Magpie” is loud. It’s not loud, but the electronic percussion is lively and Yorke sounds like he actually wants to be heard. Why he almost sounds (gasp) angry. “You’ve got some nerve coming here,” he sings (and you don’t get ear strain trying to make him out!), before accusing that “you” of taking his memory and the melody too. And he’s right; there isn’t much of a melody. The song just ambles along. But it doesn’t offend my delicate intestinal sensibilities, and that’s a victory, right?
“Little by Little” has actual rhythmic drive, which makes it a winner by default, and while Yorke’s voice annoys, at least he’s not consciously trying to make a wallflower of himself. Throw in some nice guitar and a vaguely psychedelic feel and it may be my album fave, which is to say that I hope never to hear it again but wouldn’t cry tears of blood should that happen.
The drums on “Separator” are funky by the bloodless, funk-free standards of Radiohead, and Yorke actually sings rather than warbles. And a lovely little repeated guitar figure wheedles itself in there, sounding almost Buffalo Springfield-like along with some other spacy effects, and while I would hardly use the word animated to describe it you’ll rarely come closer in the lofty and airless confines Radiohead inhabits.
The musical ecologists in Radiohead set out to strip things down to the essentials, to minimize their sonic footstep as much as possible. It was a very Samuel Beckett thing to do. And good for the environment too—all those loud noises and exciting songs out there can’t be doing us any good. And The King of Limbs IS an achievement of sorts—it couldn’t have been easy to make an entire album that offers fewer big moments than a single Van Halen song.
But I’m not fooled. When it comes to Radiohead self-effacement is just another form of grandiosity, their “almost not existing” just another bombastic statement. They’re the inverse of U2’s pompous bluster but in both cases what comes through in the end is a preciousness and pretentiousness that makes me want to pick up the nearest Slade record.
The King of Limbs is not a bad Radiohead record, but it suffers the fault of all of Radiohead’s records—they’re very self-conscious “works of art.” There’s a place in rock for works of art. But I prefer works of art that aren’t such hard work. And that offer bigger rewards.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C-
