RADIOHEAD - A Moon Shaped Pool

You don't need us to tell you that Radiohead has a new LP out. That news has a way of traveling. But it's worth noting that unlike 2011's King Of Limbs (a prickly release whose character was ill-suited to the overwhelming weight of being a NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM©), A Moon Shaped Pool is far more welcoming and at ease with expectation, all without being especially reminiscent of anything they've done before. It's a deep dive into the acoustic folk of John Martyn and Nick Drake, but through the lens of the quintet's trademark slippery studio tricks. It's a grower, but it's probably their best full LP since Kid A.

"A Moon Shaped Pool, where Yorke somewhat loosens his death grip on that ol’ post-millennial angst as the rest of the band lets loose some of the most beautiful, composed, expressedly chill music of the lineup’s 30-year-long career. This isn’t saucy, jittery Radiohead (2011’s The King of Limbs), freaked-out New World Order Radiohead (2003’s Hail to the Thief), or pro-IDM, existentially-zombified Radiohead (2000’s Kid A, 2001’s Amnesiac). Instead, Pool somehow coalesces aspects all of these eras and emerges as a considered, filigreed, album-length sigh — a earnestly human sigh, a distinctly fortysomething sigh, with all the fears, trials, and exhaustions that middle age can accrue." - SPIN

"Never content to repeat themselves or fall into a conventional lane that defines what they are supposed to be, Radiohead is constantly pushing forward with new sounds and ideas that challenge the notion of rock and roll’s limits. Turns out there are none, at least in the hands of Radiohead. The band’s ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, follows the logical progression of The King of Limbs. It moves even further away from their electric guitar-based indie-rock roots and into more inscrutable and uncharted musical territory. Although it’s recognizably Radiohead, the album is quite different from anything they’ve ever done. It’s also breathtaking from start to finish, a triumphant return after the longest gap between studio albums in the band’s career. 

Many of the songs on A Moon Shaped Pool have been percolating for years, waiting for the band to figure out exactly how to translate them successfully. The opener “Burn the Witch”, for instance, was demoed as far back as Kid A, and then again for several subsequent albums, but they were never quite able to get under its skin. They finally do, and it’s glorious. “Burn the Witch” begins the album with a bracing barrage of terse and thrilling strings (an effect created by the players striking their strings with a stick rather than a bow), reminiscent of guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s hair-raising orchestral work for Paul Thomas Anderson’s brutally dark cinematic masterpiece There Will Be Blood." - PopMatters