There is something profoundly sad-sounding about “The King of Limbs,” as if the band recorded the album while trapped in a remote fortress made of ice and snow. There is no evidence of any such actual entrapment, except that the album sounds best in isolation, in relative darkness, on a great pair of headphones.
Radiohead released “The King of Limbs” in a variety of digital formats on its website on Feb. 18, as if sending out a distress signal to anyone who still listens to entire albums. The band members have since presumably been rescued from their arctic prison, and today released the album, their eighth, in physical form.
“Bloom” opens with an accidental-seeming cascade of piano keys; a moment later mechanical percussion begins, and Thom Yorke wails, slurred and sullen, “Open your mouth wide.” The song builds slowly over five minutes, earning its title and signaling a strong familial relationship between “The King of Limbs” and Radiohead’s 2003 album “Hail to the Thief.”
The heavy doses of electronic sounds will draw comparisons to its 2001 album “Amnesiac” as well, but “The King of Limbs” is a more patient collection of music, allowed to unfold as if guiding itself.
The main exception is “Feral,” which seems to have been recorded during a moment of paranoid delirium when the shadows and noises in the ice fortress started playing tricks on the band’s minds. Yorke sings unintelligible noises through a dense filter, as a fuzzy bass line and restless drums grow more and more unsettled.
Radiohead long ago abandoned traditional song structures, but “The King of Limbs” finds its music in an unprecedented state of freedom, seemingly influenced by the improvised ethos of jazz.
As a result, after the first run through the album, it may feel as if there’s nothing there. But small moments of extraordinary beauty begin to stand out: Yorke plaintively crooning the title of “Give Up the Ghost,” the lyrical guitar line that drifts into “Separator.”
The album even has a single, “Lotus Flower,” the most direct song on the album. It’s built from the same mold as “Idioteque,” from the 2000 album “Kid A,” layered over Phil Selway’s propulsive drumming.
But “Lotus Flower” should not be enjoyed separately, except when watching Yorke’s flailing dance moves in the music video. “The King of Limbs” continues Radiohead’s quiet war against the trends of pop music, where the very notion of the album has all but died. And this is among its best, a gorgeous and moving work that in only 37 minutes demonstrates a level of craft matched by no other band currently making music.
Radiohead does not attract riots from adoring fans, and its 1997 masterpiece “OK Computer” had nowhere near the transformative influence of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” but the band does warrant a crucial comparison to the Beatles.
No one could have expected that the four Liverpudlians behind “Love Me Do” would someday create “Sergeant Pepper’s” and “Abbey Road.”
And when Radiohead gained notoriety for its gimmicky first single “Creep” in 1992, who could have predicted this trajectory?
“The King of Limbs” is not a coronation; Radiohead has been musical royalty for more than a decade. Instead of an icy fortress, let the song titles of “Bloom” and “Lotus Flower” suggest that this album is the seasonal blossoming of a natural wonder, as stunning as the last and the next.