Hail To The King Of Limbs, Pt. 2: First Impressions
Well, well, well. How’s this for a pleasant surprise? After the Valentine’s Day announcement that their new album The King Of Limbs would be released on Saturday, Radiohead apparently decided that five more days was too long after making us wait for nearly three and a half years and let us download it a day early.
So now the mysteries surrounding LP8 have been resolved – well, mostly. The King Of Limbs is an 8-track affair; half the album consists of songs nobody outside the band’s inner circle even knew existed. The songs the fans already know that appear here (in completely revamped form) are “Lotus Flower,” “Give Up The Ghost,” “Separator” (formerly “Mouse Dog Bird” – thank God they changed that title), and perhaps most surprisingly “Morning Mr. Magpie,” which has been kicking around since the Hail To The Thief sessions and was only played once in a live webcast. (It’s also featured in The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time, a collection of short films set to Radiohead songs and clips of the band performing.)
And how does the new record sound? Completely different from anything else they’ve ever done, as usual. It’s very, very far from the folksy record you might expect considering that it’s named after a tree. But where its predecessor In Rainbows is one of the most immediately accessible albums of the band’s career (and a good place to start for newcomers), The King Of Limbs challenges you from the very first note. It’s even stranger than Kid A and Amnesiac in places, and sometimes feels like a follow-up to Thom Yorke’s solo album The Eraser only with more guitars. Turns out “These Are My Twisted Words” was only a partial preview of what was to come. We’ll take a track-by-track look at this baby after the jump!
Listen Up! (with Colin Frattura) 
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