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| Radiohead. |
The recurring thing on this album is just how innovative and inspiring a bassist Colin Greenwood is. It's pretty obvious on tunes like 'Bloom' and 'Lotus Flower', but how about 'Morning Mr. Magpie', where Greenwood parkinsonianly vibrates throughout the tune? In fact, this track is an entire piece of tremendous helter skelter. It has your feet asynchronously tip-tapping throughout. And 'Feral'? Jesus Christ, what exactly lifts this tune? It's hard to define. The King of Limbs is hard to define - it's made hard to define, of course, it's purposely introvert and nervous. It's like walking around in a mental asylum, frankly. The first part of it anyhow.
I am enormously intrigued by what actually goes on in Thom Yorke's mind. Like, what does he dream about for example? It's a bit scary actually, how this album's lyrics paints some scarily bizarre and anxious pictures for your eyes - especially on the panicky 'Morning Mr. Magpie', where Yorke sounds like an old, crazy man, wailing at a magpie outside his door. The music does it's own bit too though, obviously. In general, it's a hard album to love, but an inevitable album to be caught by. I love how the instruments are often askew, and how the band plays with harmonics - even tritonus once or twice. The rhythm section is very apparent, and makes the entire album a pretty bare-to-the-bone affair.
There's a pretty obvious split between 'Feral' and 'Lotus Flower', with the front four tunes on the album having a close kinship with the experimental electronic and IDM scene - think a less minimalist and more instruments-oriented version of Autechre, and you aren't far off. From 'Lotus Flower' and on, there is a bit of a tendency towards indietronica, soul and even dubstep. There is more Jonny Greenwood in this part; it's more band music. But all throughout, it's Colin who ties it all together. Like the main bass riff on 'Lotus Flower', which, pitch it up an octave or two, could easily be an annoying synth riff in some landfill indie-electro band. Masterful.
I think my ultimate complaint about this album is the lack of instant classics to tie it together. Not even instant classics, but just songs that have some sort of long-term significance. I know it's a bit of a demand, but Radiohead has managed at least a few legendary tunes on every record they've made. I mean, 'Codex' is pretty, but it's not 'Pyramid Song'. 'Lotus Flower' might be the exception though; it's really a track that's growing on me. But if you forget all about Radiohead's impressive track record, this album is still an impressive and, dare I say, considering this band could release an album of complete nonsensicalness, and people would still be all over it, bold effort. It's a much more confined and concentrated piece than In Rainbows was - there are no bursts of energy like 'Bodysnatchers' or obvious melancholy like 'All I Need'. In stead, it's an absence of grand gestures that becomes an insisting presence of Thom Yorke's wicked, crooked psyche, and this way, it becomes Radiohead's most restricted an sonically most uniform record - but masterfully executed nonetheless.
