RADIOHEAD ARE around long enough to be called 'veteran prog-rockers', though they would disown the term, yet that constant shape-shifting, boundary pushing, and experimentation keeps earning them comparison to Pink Floyd and Aphex Twin.
It has been a long time since a Radiohead album properly excited attention (In Rainbows was more about the fact it was a download and what that meant for how we consume music, rather than for the music itself ), and part of this might have to do with, as Pitchfork pointed out recently, how Radiohead have not sought to second-guess anyone or consciously (obdurately? ) throw a major curveball.
A Moon Shaped Pool is one of the most familiar sounding Radiohead albums in years, drawing on the electronica of Kid A and the electro/organic atmospherics of Amnesiac, but, in true Radiohead fashion, creating something imaginative, bold, and importantly, distinct, at the same time.
'Burn The Witch' opens with a flurry of stabbing, staccato, strings, starting the album on a tense, agitated footing, but as Thom Yorke's voice ascends, the arrangement takes on a sweeping, epic, grandeur. The mood slows for the beautiful, quiet melancholy of 'Daydreaming' and the choral backed (seriously guys? Not prog-rock? ) 'Decks Dark', songs which are possibly be quintessentially Radiohead (at least for the Kid A/Amnesiac era ), the former ending with grunting, groaning cellos (recalling a similar moment in the Rolling Stones' Their Satantic Majesty's Request ).
There is also moody Krautrock ('Ful Stop' ), growling, dramatic, indie guitar ('Identikit' ), and a long overdue (official ) release for 'True Love Waits', given poignancy by Yorke's delivery. Overall, the finest Radiohead album in some time.
