Radiohead - Codex
(The King of Limbs)

Reluctantly-titanic art-weirdos Radiohead suckerpunched the world last weekend with their 7th (Ed: Actually it’s their eigh-) SEVENTH (but what about Pabl-) SEVENTH! album, to both boundless delight and furiously insistent nonchalance (at the announcement).  

Reaction to the record itself is similarly mixed, with some applauding the band’s inroads into cutting-edge bleepybloopyness, and others bemoaning a perceived abandonment of the humanist warmth that tempered their previous robo-sadness clickfests so well.  Still others think the whole thing is just, to borrow a phrase, ‘boring as balls’, but they are probably the type who think High and Dry was the pinnacle of Radiohead’s output, so.

Personally, I think it’s pretty good!  It’s very much like two separate EPs, one of passive-aggressively experimental bass-music herkyjerkery and the other of classic Radiohead mumble-balladry, stuck together; each working great on their own, but maybe not coalescing into a single unit as well as a Radiohead album ought to.  The comparisons to Hail To The Thief are also very apt, and I have the feeling it will be similarly marginalized whenever their next record comes out and crystallizes all the ideas in this one, and that will be similarly sad.  

In summation, listen to Hail to the Thief you jerks, it is so good. 

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