Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool (Album Review)

 

Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

(2016)


My copy: 2016 press by XL Recordings.


Fan anticipation for A Moon Shaped Pool was ravenous given the five year wait since The King Of Limbs; which feels small compared to the nine year gap between In Rainbows and A Moon Shaped Pool. In Rainbows was all production with very little actual style (contrary to popular belief), and The King Of Limbs was often overlooked as a lesser release, mounting serious pressure on this new offering. Radiohead’s return to the piano-ballad a-la Kid A and Amnesiac was the right choice, though they do spend a bit too much time moping about near the end. The album includes several older unreleased songs that have finally been given proper album renditions, further exciting major fans.

The ringing drum machine of “Burn The Witch” is the first clue that this was written around the same time as Kid A, as layered string arrangements set an anxious pace while dipping in and out of dissonance. The bass begins as gaudy, EQ-widened moans but the course is corrected at the halfway mark, and Thom Yorke’s falsetto howl steals the spotlight anyway. “Daydreaming” is the first of many piano ballads - this one lingers a bit long, but features fun rhythmic switches and some of Yorke’s most interesting vocal experiments with chopped and screwed sighs derailing the music alongside slithering cello near the end. The simple, breathable melodies that lead “Deck’s Dark” give the album some space before an eerie choir of voices shift the mood: adding in grooving bass and tasteful, justifiable guitar licks. 

The vocal apparitions haunting the background of folksy acoustic loop “Desert Island Disk” save the song from utter mundanity, proving that their best moments come from well-produced soundscapes. “Ful Stop,” however, proves that Radiohead can still pull off a subtle rock song by steadily building desperate anticipation - this is one of the best songs for its patient drum and bass; both rising and falling slowly with choppy middle-eastern dissonance fading in and out of focus like a far-off mirage. When the song settles into a post-punk, spy-music jam sequence, you realize how masterfully executed its whole climax is. The swaying melancholy strings of “Glass Eyes” are nice, but feel redundant in the shadow of "Daydreaming" or "True Love Waits."

More meticulous plotting arrives in the palm-muted guitar of “Identikit” which pays off with double-time bass and brittle guitar strums, releasing to a reverberating, soulful collection of choir voices. “The Numbers” just feels plain uninteresting most of the time, due largely to its lack of dynamics in spite of a nice mini-crescendo at the end. “Present Tense” feels like a more relaxed version of “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” as drums affix themselves around acoustic arpeggios, this again standing as an older song Yorke performed first in 2009. Hissing drum-machine cymbals add to the horror element in the straining strings of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief,” though patience for the ballad-laden back half of the record wears thin right around here. Fortunately, old fan-favorite hidden song “True Love Waits” is finally committed to record here as the closer, and is one of Yorke’s most impressively emotional and haunting performances yet. 

Radiohead’s now rather lengthy career is ripe for constant debate among music nerds. It is certain that their overarching career is overrated, but as they age together as a band, they seem to find more satisfaction in cleanliness and subtlety (which, when executed well, is a good fit for them). A Moon Shaped Pool is great when updating the chilling, rock-rejectionist moods of Kid A and Amnesiac, instead relying on guitar riffs very infrequently and only when especially worthwhile - it suffers from slow-burn pacing and redundancies, but the band’s intentions are more conducive to progress than they’ve been in a long, long time.

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