Radiohead – The King of Limbs
Unfortunately, one of the best albums of the year (in my opinion) has been subject to some of the worst qualities of the music-listening world: shallowness, self-righteousness, and stubbornness. Listeners who were waiting for a logical follow-up to 2007’s brilliant In Rainbows instead got a follow-up that was something more experimental, a little harder to digest.
And so, rather than embrace the idea of a new sound, or use common sense to assume that a band like Radiohead, with a track record of almost two decades of excellent, critically acclaimed and publicly adored music, would maybe know what they were doing when it came to their own music, people jumped to the defensive and panned the album. Is it because it’s too abstract? Is it because it uses chords and rhythms they’ve never heard? Is it too different from what they expected? Are they upset because it isn’t being spoon-fed to them? What were Radiohead thinking, making music that wasn’t easy?
I have heard The King of Limbs called “bad” a few times recently, and tried to find a moment on The King of Limbs that sounds “bad” to me. Is the opener “Bloom” bad, with its crescendo of horns and strings as Thom Yorke’s voice opens up into a vast ocean of sound? Is the ethereal “Give Up the Ghost” unsatisfying? Does the punishing and cutting “Little By Little” lack something? I can’t hear it. Is the loneliness and beauty of “Lotus Flower,” the sound of a man searching for meaning within his own empty soul, a misstep? And is “Codex” too quiet, so poignant and so perfect on its own, that it forces you to look at your own imperfections and make real decisions about your life? Is that even a bad thing? I don’t think it is. The King of Limbs is one of the most radically gorgeous masterpieces I have ever heard. The process of listening to it has made me a better person, music listener, and musician. I pity anybody who can’t take the time to allow it to change them as well.
Music will always have its naysayers; people hated Beethoven in his time for his radical third period; people rioted at Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; parents forbid their children from going to Beatles concerts in the ‘60s and panicked when “The Chronic” cruised its way onto the radio in the early ‘90s. Sometimes it’s hard for music consumers to handle raw talent when it challenges rather than conforms to expectations. But this talent seems to translate into something more eternal than the people who assume the right to tell musicians how their music ought to be done. While they die, and disintegrate beneath the earth, the music lives on, as it has for Beethoven and Stravinsky and John and Paul and countless other targets of musical small-mindedness. It becomes an inspiration to future generations, and makes its indelible mark on the face of history, while the voices disparaging its creativity and free expression disappear, thankfully, from the musical subconscious.
I daresay that had the people who insult The King of Limbs been this age when Kid A came out, they would have said the same things. “Where’s my OK Computer Part II?” “This isn’t music!” “Why is this band progressing, they were so at my level before!”
Maybe they still are. Maybe you just need to listen harder.
By Jesse Paller
^The writer of this is a fucking boss.
To Jesse:
My impression of other reviews of this album are that critics didn’t believe that Radiohead were offering something that didn’t already exist on other Radiohead albums. As a long time fan of the band, what aspects of this album strike you as significant shifts in the band’s sound? In other words, how do you think they have evolved on this album?
Hey Sam,
I think they’ve evolved the clean studio sound of In Rainbows by emphasizing more experimental songwriting and techniques (eg the looped piano and dual drum sets on Bloom or Codex’s not-all-there structure). They themselves said they didn’t want to approach the songwriting of another full LP like In Rainbows- it would kill them. So instead they went with a more minimalistic songwriting style.
It’s definitely a subtle shift, more like the shift between the Bends and OK Computer (similar overall band sound, weirder songwriting/production) than the jump to Kid A. The only reason I compared it to that change at the end was that people I’ve spoken to (not read reviews by) probably idolize Kid A, even though it’s actually even a bigger shift in sound from another classic, but of course since it’s already been canonized as a masterpiece, they revere it. It puzzles me though that people complain that TKOL is too different from In Rainbows.
That said, the change is still less noticeable than between other Radiohead albums. Maybe it’s because they’re still in a similar stylistic period (like that of Kid A and Amnesiac (2000-2001) before the jump to Hail to the Thief in 2003). But just because Radiohead are musical innovators doesn’t mean (in my opinion) that they should be judged solely based on how much they innovate. This album and In Rainbows (to me) simply feel like Radiohead is finally perfecting their own preferred aesthetic. If albums like The King of Limbs and In Rainbows are the product of this format, I like it.
“I daresay that had the people who insult The King of Limbs been this age when Kid A came out, they would have said the same things. “Where’s my OK Computer Part II?” “This isn’t music!” “Why is this band progressing, they were so at my level before!””
Kid A was radically different than OK, but it was beloved at a near universal level when it came out. When this supposedly “too different” album emerged, nearly everyone was underwhelmed. This comparison doesn’t stand.
To each his own. I wrote this because I wasn’t underwhelmed, and I’m not asking everybody to agree. If you weren’t as impressed as I was, I’m sorry Radiohead let you down. See you next album!
It just didn’t seem that ambitious to me, it seemed tossed off compared with their more dense and thoughtful records.