King of Limbs

A storm had been lashing our house for hours, raging and howling like some a beastly blind thing. It would keep me up for most of the night, but now I sat waiting to hear something which I had never suspected of existing a week before, and the anticipation had made me a ball of nerves. I was waiting to hear another hour's worth of Radiohead's music.



When In Rainbows came out in 2007 I had downloaded it and sat quietly listening to it at my desk, staring out into the twilit parking lot behind Dakin. I would later reach sublime moments with some songs on the album-- the oak forest waking up after two devasting fires to "All I Need" drifting in an out of radio static-- but at the time all of the songs already had memories tied to them. The rocket speeding itself to space from Vandenburg as we sat on the rocks listening to a preview show in San Diego, the orchestral version of Weird Fishes (Arpeggi) accompaning us on road trips. As I sat there, I lamented the fact that if I always needed to be sitting down somewhere in order to listen to the album I could never have the perfect meshing of environment and music that made OK Computer so impactful, those moments that elevated Radiohead from a near-compulsive high school habit to a truly amazing experience.

In Rainbows, like many of Radiohead's albums, is a mish-mash of musical approaches. Chances are if you dislike bittersweet acoustic guitar ballads there's going to be at least one epic rock song to cleanse your pallate or at least one foray into electronica to appease you. Likewise, there's a slightly more limited selection of emotional themes. If you don't feel like being down there's at least a couple moments of aggression per album, and if you try a little you can probably find at least one song that's neutral or hopeful, even if it isn't happy. Even though Radiohead had built their reputation on dodging expectations certain expectations had indeed been established. These expectations were well formed for me, something I didn't realize until they were systematically shattered.

An expectation is a weird concept. To exceed an expectation is a positive thing, but it's a backhanded compliment if your expectations were not high to begin with. This is the sort of sentiment expressed most often in reviews of terrible but fun action flicks, ie, "This film was surprisingly awesome". To fail to meet an expectation is always bad. It means even if you had modest expectations of quality it didn't make it. If you have high expectations failing is even worse, resulting in shame for all involved. Shame for being a fool for expecting that much and shame for whatever failed to meet those expectations. I would say that King of Limbs failed to meet my expectations, which is perhaps accurate, but there is no way to say that without it sounding positively pejorative. Which is not my intent. Rather, it so confidently marched around my concept of what a Radiohead album is that I could not help but feel shattered during the process.

Unfamiliarity is uncomfortable. What I wanted to hear was something familiar, something to hold on to. I needed to hear an acidic guitar riff or angry bangings upon a piano, or ballads to the crushing ennui of modern life backed up by Jonny or Ed's clear, assertive guitar, alluring bass lines plucked out by Colin, Phil hammering away at a beat. Everything that typified a Radiohead song, the paradigm, the category of all their songs averaged together. I couldn't imagine that of all the pieces that made up In Rainbows-- the dubstep of 15 step, the quickstep of Bodysnatchers-- they had taken up the crushing minimalism and beauty of Videotape and made an entire album of it. Everything I was listening for had been ground into tiny grains-- here a morsel of dry beats by Phil, here a sweetly plucked guitar melody behind a wall of other noises-- except for Thom's voice. Except that Thom wasn't even Thom in the usual sense. The voice that dominated everything was Thom's if it had been tumbled in the ocean for years, removing each acid edge and petulant corner, until a smooth bauble remained, suggesting little of its former ability to draw blood. With each successive song the noise of each little cut up bit began to pound in my ears. Where was it where was it? Where was what I was looking for? I had stopped listening to what was really being played, and felt each absence with acute anxiety.

There's beauty to silence that most musicians don't take advantage of. A couple of weeks ago I had encountered James Blake, a producer that had just decided to make an album of his own. With his sultry yet curiously thin voice, he crooned his way into my musical-emotional landscape. His songs almost aren't songs at all-- they consist of noise, bass that can barely be heard, and repetition, and trade in precious commoditites like abyssal silences, hi-hat, and synth drum ploiks. Yet they got under my skin by timing each beat so perfectly. Each little feature dug into me with a tenaciousness I hadn't encountered in a song since listening to the Suburbs. Each silence yawned like a canyon, each earnestly sung yet distant chorus a bridge to new territory. James Blake resonated with me in perfect harmony.

After the sublime Bloom I felt the dissonance within me grow. I was striving towards something that the album was moving resolutely away from. But there were sublime moments even there, sitting on Zaidee's floor, moments of elation and thrill, that told me that all wasn't lost, moments that echoed the searing, irrational, unplaceable joy I felt as I heard Everything in its Right Place for the first time. I left it alone the day after, driven near to madness by the wind howling at my windowsill all night, thinking about it occasionally. I sat down the day after that in the afternoon to listen through it again, as I had In Rainbows, sitting staring at my wall as the sound issued thin from my computer's speakers. This time I knew what was coming, this time everything else had been broken before hand. This time I heard everyone else: Here is Jonny, carefully pulling in a wash of brass, a drift of strings, guiding them out again with gentle gestures. Here's Colin giving a simple, supportive beat. Here's Phil, cut up but still recognizable, playing fast and precise. And here's Thom again, carrying a sweetly sad melody, determined now not to frighten, but singing as if he sings for the passage of each meaningful thing into obscurity.