A year or so back when I called Kid A my 55th favorite album of the last decade, I wrote that "there’s something inherently pompous and ridiculous about a rock band with three guitarists and a boring rhythm section stripping away the guitars to focus on 'beats,'" and how I felt that album "was the beginning of them painting themselves into a corner so tiny that whatever sounds that escape from it now, like In Rainbows, sound completely dead and bereft of ideas or energy." So it was kind of with morbid curiosity that I checked out The King of Limbs, which seems to be getting the kind of muted, unenthusiastic reaction that I thought In Rainbows deserved, much of the discussion centering on the album's dance music influences.

And to my surprise more than anyone else's, I actually kinda like The King of Limbs! Not much, but I feel like they're approaching textured, loop-driven songs in a way I dig more here, even if their sense of rhythm is kind of flatfooted and fidgety in a very British way that I'm not the biggest fan of. "Morning Mr. Magpie" and "Lotus Flower" even feel like Thom Yorke actually singing a song to me and not just kind of freeform mewling syllables like a lot of Radiohead's worst later songs. And "Giving Up The Ghost" is a really nice example of them applying their minimal, repetition-driven songwriting approach to a spare vocals and guitar arrangement. But more than anything, I appreciate exactly what people find disappointing about it -- how short the running time is, and how slight and unchallenging it feels, which can be downright refreshing in the context of a career as acclaimed and supposedly important as Radiohead's.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 11:22 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.