Radiohead’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ Album Is a Haunting, Stunning Triumph
Nearly nine years after Radiohead gifted In Rainbows on unsuspecting fans in 2007, their seismic, no-label, price-point-be-damned surprise release has been co-opted by an exhaustive number of major-label artists. This year alone has seen pop royalty like Kanye, Rihanna and Beyoncé springing albums on their fans, and in the past 48 hours James Blake and Death Grips have also unleashed new albums. Radiohead’s ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, popped into view a few hours ago and for a band that once pleaded for “no surprises,” Pool‘s most thrilling surprise isn’t its Mother’s Day release, but that Radiohead’s least rock-oriented album in the 21st century doubles as its most gorgeous and desolate album to date.
In the five years since The King of Limbs, the members of the group have explored numerous wormholes on their own: Phil Selway delved into his singer-songwriter side; Jonny Greenwood waxed classical, minimalist and got his A Passage to India on with last year’s Junun. Meanwhile, Thom Yorke ran amok both with moody electronic projects and the more polyrhythmic dynamism of rock supergroup Atoms for Peace. But while The King of Limbs (and even parts of In Rainbows) at times sounded like five musicians pulling in as many directions, there’s a stunning eloquence and cohesion on A Moon Shaped Pool, its many parts and trajectories aimed towards the same goal.
Radiohead have tantalized zealots with portions of first single “Burn the Witch” for nearly a decade, from piano chords to snatches of lyrics from their now-deleted website. But for all the clues that might have been accrued, the effect of “Burn the Witch” is remarkable. From its steady chug of drum machine, strummed acoustic guitars and the clacking col legno of the string section, “Witch” ratchets up that “low-flying panic attack” until its soaring climax.
From the elegant piano line of “Decks Dark” to the nimble finger-picking of “Desert Island Disk” and “Present Tense,” Radiohead’s long-standing embrace of edgy electronics has now been supplanted by an embrace of gorgeous timbres and melody, the more disarming the better. And while electronic effects and the like are still present (hear how they move like an ocean current underneath “Desert Island Disk”), most songs forgo the crunching, dueling electric guitars of Greenwood and Ed O’Brien and Selway’s hard-hitting drums to instead foreground acoustic guitar, piano and strings. If anything, A Moon Shaped Pool reveals within Radiohead a newfound appreciation of, if not folk music, then the form’s ability to express melancholy through melody.