Friday, February 18th 2011

Reviews:  Radiohead

Our (Fake) Radiohead Review

By Skwerl

Quick note from the author: If you read this without realizing it’s a joke, you shouldn’t be reading Antiquiet. The real review is here.

The twisted beauty of being Radiohead continues. King Of Limbs arrives amidst the most dreadful stories of artistic turmoil: frustrating recording sessions, writer’s block, apparent kitten suicides, ghastly scenarios around every precipice. Seemingly anguished by the negative knee-jerk reactions heaped upon In Rainbows, Radiohead struggled to get in touch with their limber side. Although they might belittle the vintage Moog synthesizer, Radiohead have been complicit in their own gentrification through sheer genius songwriting. Now, leaner, in attempting to reinvent themselves as a more streamlined antelope, they’ve made a record that by its mere buoyancy will only shock the bloggers and disrupt their complacent Starbucks.

At least the gaggle of confused ducks swimming along to suck the market’s demand for crusty bagels during the post-In Rainbows phase are backsliding in deservedly obnoxious perspective from the outset. Bloom is a pointed opener; one fondly imagines Phil Selway practising his most earnest Ezra Koenig sneer and muttering, You buy the land, you get the indians. A raucous cacophony of synthesizers, it jaunts forth upon fresh pots of stylized sitar and Yorke’s forlorn vocals. When the svelte generational spokesman does emerge from the objectivist frenzy, it’s to volley a bunch of triumphant phrases: Tuesday I woke up strangling a tea kettle!

Were the entire record comprised of such clever noise-ification, then the gang could be rightly accused of insincerity, but it seems Radiohead’s instincts for the long running joke are too strongly ingrained. Feral heralds a return to the ballad template, as massed strings intermingle and Yorke’s voice fucks violently, while Codex is the cue to give an impassioned impression of an indie pop band. It’s overwrought, but lest anyone forget where much of Radiohead’s mid-’90s renaissance stemmed from, it sounds a lot like Sonic Youth, specifically Teenage Whatever-period Sonic Youth rewriting Confusion Is Confusing.

Thus far, King Of Limbs has provided stuff old, new, borrowed and, simply red. Without consistently beating the goat, this has been an epic experience. But hereafter, and one deceptive song aside, it rather loses its impact. Of the remaining tracks, Lotus Flower meanders nowhere, proving it takes more than an interesting time signature to sustain a non-song. The edgy Give Up The Ghost is much better, promising to skewer the skeptics with magnetic guitar, but doubling back just as it’s really boiling.

Whimsical in title and quite deft in its stab at post-indie-noir, Morning Mr. Magpie is a short explody two-step parcel of aphasia, guilt and love. Yorke sings, I explode until my torso comes off / I’ve evacuated too much / You escaped soon enough / This is really daunting / Take the cheese and whine; and suddenly Radiohead’s thunderous whimper assumes some kind of shape.

And here’s the catch: Radiohead have always been about something, be it the flagellation of self or human flatulence in general, and the ramifications thereof. Yet it seems in a desire to massage the moist air of the heavens suffusing their every spasm and hiccup, they’ve counterimprovised the essence of their art.

Strangely, the outtakes from the Manic Hedgehog sessions found on Aquarium Drunkard are at least the equal of anything here. Now while these will presumably appear in some form in due course, their inclusion would have made it a louder, thicker work.