By
Andy Frisk
February 19, 2011 - 22:37
Radiohead used to rock. Literally. Their 1990s albums like The Bends (1995) and OK Computer (1997), which is one of the greatest albums of all time, were structured around the traditional rock outfit standard of guitar, bass, and drums. With Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), they basically began to abandon the guitar part of the outfit (well at least the angsty guitar parts), if not necessarily the entire traditional rock outfit standard in total. Their songs (for the most part) still had structure and lead from one place to another, when they weren’t trying to sound like background cinema scores. With later albums Hail to The Thief (2003) and In Rainbows (2007), the guitar began to creep back in, but never as hard or as sharp as it was on The Bends and OK Computer. With the band’s release of The King of Limbs (2011), Radiohead goes back out on that musical limb that they first ventured onto at the turn of the century. Make no mistake, this is a discernibly Radiohead sounding album, but Thome Yorke and the gang are moving on musically yet again. This time not forward, but slightly back by embracing a form of music that they either helped to co-influence the creation of or already borrowed heavily from: dubstep. The King of Limbs might actually be the world’s first mainstream guitar dubstep album…
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…but that doesn’t even sound quite right. Some of the album’s tracks, like the mostly instrumental “Feral” sound like they could have been an outtake track from Burial’s last album Untrue. Other tracks like “Little by Little” and “Lotus Flower” have a slightly more traditional Radiohead sound. There are tracks that have plenty of live sounding drums, but others that are obviously technologically derived. All and none of these descriptions are necessarily good or bad, that is a matter of personal taste (and I think you can figure out where I fall—being such a fan of the 1990s masterworks), but one thing that is completely undeniable about The King of Limbs is that it is an incredibly intelligent and interesting listen, and in that aspect, it is simply and welcomingly more of what Radiohead is all about.
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So…for one who would still rather hear Thome’s existential wail and whine introduced by a chunky guitar line like we were treated to at the outset of “Airbag,” the first track of the aforementioned masterpiece album OK Computer, or over the soaring guitar solos of “Fake Plastic Trees” from The Bends instead of a dubstep-like repeating guitar, bass, and drum beat like we’re hit with on “Morning Mr. Magpie” from The King of Limbs (one of the album’s standout—and most rock-like tracks), I cannot deny the beauty and, more importantly, intelligent composition of The King of Limbs and Radiohead as a musical outfit overall. We might never again hear the likes of the guitar work of “The Bends” from the album of the same name from Radiohead, but like Trent Reznor once said during the heyday of his masterpiece album The Downward Spiral, “I can’t stay the angry guy in mascara and fishnet stockings forever…” At least when Radiohead changed styles (but not direction) with Kid A, they didn’t misstep like U2 did with their most experimental album Pop (1997). While Pop is an album laden with hidden gems that still hold up today amongst U2’s massive catalogue of masterworks, Kid A, Amnesiac, and The King of Limbs don’t reek of a band’s obvious desire to push the genre forward while accidentally abandoning what made them great in the first place. U2 did this very effectively with Actung Baby (1991), but I’m still waiting for Radiohead to drop a Pop…thankfully they haven’t thus far, even with The King of Limbs, and hopefully they never will.
Rating: 8.5 / 10
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