Radiohead's The King Of Limbs: These Are My Twisted Thoughts

After having had the opportunity to live with Radiohead's new album The King Of Limbs for nearly a week now, I can honestly report that I still have semi-mixed feelings about it. Which, at least in the case of this particular band, is probably a good thing.

So, to borrow from the title of a song once intended for this album, these are my twisted thoughts.

You see, Radiohead is a band whose albums — especially the good ones — have this tendency to sink in rather slowly, taking deliciously insidious root in your brain and in your psyche, brick by brick. Likewise, the really great ones — as I suspect The King Of Limbs may well prove to be — reveal previously undiscovered new sonic textures that might have been initially glossed over with each new spin.

Like most really great music, once it gets under your skin, Radiohead's best stuff has this tendency to really take root and grow on you. The journey getting there can be occasionally difficult, and quite often is. But the final destination is almost always worth it in the end, and also one which much more often than not leaves you wanting more once it's over.

The King Of Limbs is no exception.

I also suspect that the physical CD release — which is still about a month away — will reveal even more new audio treasures of the sort only hinted at in the initial MP3 and Wav downloads that were released this past Friday. In the case of 2007's In Rainbows, this was certainly true and then some. The difference between that initial download release, and the actual CD that came later, was almost like hearing two completely different records.

The King Of Limbs marks Radiohead's full-on return to the layered, somewhat icy soundscapes of 2000's Kid A, and its 2001 companion album Amnesiac, following the fuller, more traditional rock instrumentation (at least comparatively speaking) heard on 2003's Hail To The Thief and 2007's In Rainbows. Not surprisingly, there are already rumors afoot of a similarly forthcoming companion to The King Of Limbs (based on the title of the closing track "Separator," and its lyric "if you think this is over").

On an initial few listens, the songs here have the sort of unfinished feel to them that — at least to the more casual listener — might sound more like a series of half-baked ideas, even though looped over the occasionally lush, often trippy, but nonetheless intriguing music that it is.

On the surface at least, there is nothing on The King Of Limbs with the same grand, sonic sweep as In Rainbows best songs like "Reckoner," nor a song anywhere as fully realized (at least in a traditional sense) as "All I Need," from that same album. Even so, there is a hypnotic quality to these songs that is almost impossible not to be sucked in by, particularly after repeated listens.

But the real star of The King Of Limbs is Thom Yorke's voice. As most fans of Radiohead's post-OK Computer work already know, Radiohead's lyrics have not always been one of the bands stronger suits.

When you can pick them out here, lines like "I'm such a tease and you're such a flirt" (from this album's "Little By Little"), make about as much sense as "yesterday, I woke up sucking a lemon" did the first time Yorke sang them on "Everything In Its Right Place" from Kid A.

Even so, the way that Yorke uses his high pitched, borderline eerie sounding falsetto as an instrument to not only compliment, but enhance the overall atmospheric textures of this album is nothing short of amazing.

When Yorke's lonely, seemingly just beyond the grave voice is looped over and over saying what sounds like "don't...hurt...me" during the song "Give Up The Ghost" for instance, I have absolutely no idea what he's singing about. But, and perhaps inexplicably, I still find myself drawn spellbound to it like a moth to a flame.

The first time I heard Yorke use his voice as an instrument like this was on 2000's classic Kid A, an album which, along with its companion piece Amnesiac, gave me initial cause to draw comparisons to what David Bowie did back in the seventies on his Berlin trilogy with Brian Eno.

That comparison largely still holds, by the way. But hearing Yorke's use of his voice as a unique compliment to the music on The King Of Limbs, I'm also reminded a lot of what Neil Young did on his highly under-appreciated eighties syntho-pop experiment Trans. It's probably not a coincidence that Yorke has been known to occasionally sneak in a few verses of Young's "After The Gold Rush" during the song "Everything In Its Right Place" at Radiohead's concert performances.

Much like Kid A (an album which The King Of Limbs, not coincidentally in my own opinion, shares much in common with), and to a slightly lesser extent, Thom Yorke's solo album The Eraser, the icy cool of Radiohead's new album will probably not bring any comfort to those fans who have been patiently waiting since the nineties for that followup to The Bends or OK Computer (neither of which are probably forthcoming anytime soon by the way).

But for right now, The King Of Limbs really feels like one of those great Radiohead albums.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

New Radiohead Album Arrives Saturday As Download, CD And Vinyl To Follow

Radiohead's long awaited new album — their eighth studio release overall and the band's first since 2007's In Rainbows shook up the recording industry with its then revolutionary new distribution model — will be available this Saturday as a download through a special website set up by the band. The album is once again produced by longtime Radiohead musical collaborator Nigel Godrich.

Details about the new album, titled The King Of Limbs, were first released in a statement by the band this past Monday, and in typical Radiohead fashion, were predictably sketchy.

What is clear is that Radiohead will once again initially employ the same download-only distribution model they used for In Rainbows, although there will not be a "pay what you want" or otherwise free option this time around. At the time of its 2007 release, In Rainbows shocked the music industry by allowing fans to download the album for whatever price they chose to pay, including paying nothing at all. This time around, the download will come at a fixed price of about $9.00 American.

The band will subsequently release physical CD and vinyl editions of the album on March 28. The vinyl edition is being touted by the band as the world's first "newspaper album," due to its elaborate jacket that folds out like a newspaper. Perhaps, they have never heard of Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick, which was released in a similar jacket way back in the early seventies.

What is less clear about The King Of Limbs however, is the track listing. A Japanese website set up for online pre-orders was at one point reporting that the album will feature eight new tracks, but has since removed the post. Early sessions for the album in 2009 produced two tracks, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" and "These Are My Twisted Words," which were subsequently leaked as downloads.

However, various news sources on the web report that neither of these are likely to make the final cut of The King Of Limbs. AtEaseWeb, the popular, semi-official Radiohead fan site, suggests the following songs as strong possibilities for the album:

The Daily Mail
Mouse Dog Bird
Lotus Flower
Give Up The Ghost
Skirting On The Surface
Open The Floodgates
Let Me Take Control/Chris Hodge
Burn The Witch
No Shame
Pay Day
Super Collider

While sites purported to be streaming tracks from the album are likewise said to be plentiful, a diligent Google search failed to yield any actual results for places to hear so much as a single snippet. Of course, we will all know by this Saturday, won't we?

American fans can download Radiohead's The King Of Limbs beginning this Saturday, February 19 by going here.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

By Request: NYFAQ Table Of Contents

Since a number of you have been asking -- and since my ever-anxious publishers today joined this group -- here is a preview (subject to change) of the table of contents for my Neil Young book, which I still hope to have out by his fall.

As always, this comes with the usual disclaimer that things are subject to change as events develop between now and my late spring deadline to deliver the actual goods.

Neil Young FAQ

The Albums And Archives Of Neil Young

Contents

Introduction: Everybody Knows This Is Neil

About The Author

Forward (Writer TBD)

Part One: A Dreamer Of Pictures

Neil Young’s Early Years: 1963 – 1969

1. - I Am A Child: From Canada To California
2. - Hello, Broken Arrow: Buffalo Springfield
3. - Buffalo Springfield Again: Latter Day Remembrances, Compilations, Anthologies And Boxed Sets
4. – Is This Place At Your Command?; Neil Young, Elliot Roberts And David Briggs
5. – When I Saw Those Thrashers Rolling By: Neil Young & Crazy Horse
6. - Sleeps With Angels (Too Soon): Departed Bandmates, Brothers In Arms, And Sisters In Song
7. - You See Us Together Chasing The Moonlight: Neil Young’s Bands

Part Two: The Needle, The Damage And The Ditch:

1969 – 1975

8. - We Have All Been Here Before: A Brief History Of Crosby, Stills, Nash (And Sometimes Young)
9. – An Open Letter From Neil Young (Reprinted from Blogcritics Magazine)
10. - There Was A Band Playing In My Head, And I Felt Like Getting High: After The Gold Rush
11. - I’ve Been To Hollywood, I’ve Been To Redwood: Harvest, Nashville, And The Stray Gators
12. – So I Headed For The Ditch: Time Fades Away, On The Beach, And Tonight’s The Night – Neil Young’s Ditch Trilogy
13. – Why Do I Keep Fuckin’ Up?: Neil Young’s Biggest Commercial Flops
14. – Hey, Ho, Away We Go, We’re On The Road To Never: Neil Young’s Most Underrated Albums

Part Three: Dancing On The Light From Star To Star: 1975-1980

15. – Zuma, The Stills-Young Band, And The Return Of The Horse
16. – Like An Ocean Fish Who Swam Upstream: Chrome Dreams, American Stars And Bars, The Ducks, Decade, And Comes A Time
17. - More To The Picture Than Meets The Eye: Human Highway, Rust Never Sleeps, And The Punk Rock Connection
18. – Get Off Of That Couch, Turn Off That MTV: Neil Young’s Live Recordings
19. – Piece Of Crap: Five Essential Neil Young Bootlegs
20. – A Kinder, Gentler Machine Gun Hand: Five Great Neil Young Concerts From Seattle, Washington

Part Four: Sample And Hold: The Geffen Years And Neil Young’s Lost Decade

21. – Why Do You Ride That Crazy Horse?: Hawks And Doves, ReAcTor, And A Kid Named Ben
22. – I Need A Unit To Sample And Hold: Trans, Island In The Sun, And Geffen
23. – Computer Cowboy: The Best Neil Young Websites
24. – No Matter Where I Go, I Never Hear My Record On The Radio: The Shocking Pinks, Old Ways, And Farm Aid
25. – Strobe Lights Flashin’ On The Overpass: Landing On Water, Life, Muddy Track, And The Bridge School
26. – Aint’ Singin’ For Pepsi: The Blue Notes, American Dream, Ten Men Working, And The Road Back Home
27. – What We Have Got Here, Is A Perfect Track: Eldorado, Times Square, The Young And The Restless
28. – This Shit Don’t Sell: A Brief History Of Neil Young’s Unreleased Recordings

Part Five: A Thousand Points Of Light: Neil In The Nineties

29. – Rockin’ In The Free World: Freedom And The “Return” Of Neil Young
30. - Don’t Spook The Horse: Ragged Glory And Arc/Weld
31. – From Hank To Hendrix: The Most Noteworthy Neil Young Covers, Collaborations, Sendups And Tributes
32. – On This Harvest Moon: Twenty Years Later, The Sequel
33. - Change Your Mind: Sleeps With Angels, Mirror Ball, And How The Punks Met The Godfather Of Grunge
34. - Good To See You Again: Broken Arrow, Dead Man, Looking Forward, And Year Of The Horse
35. - Touch The Night: Neil Young’s Latter Day Disciples

Part Six: It’s A Dream: 2000 – 2011

36. – Let’s Roll: Broken Arrow, 9/11, Are You Passionate?, And Greendale
37. - Falling Off The Face Of The Earth: Prairie Wind And Heart Of Gold
38. - Motion Pictures On My TV Screen: Shakey In The Movies
39. – Should’ve Been Done Long Ago: Living With War, Let’s Impeach The President, And The Freedom Of Speech Tour
40. – Sure Enough, They’ll Be Selling Stuff: The Resurrection Of The Archives
41. - No Hidden Path: Chrome Dreams II and Fork In The Road
42. – I Said Solo, They Said Acoustic: Neil Young Brings Le Noise To The Twisted Road
43. – Buffalo Springfield Again

Acknowledgments/ Sources

Index

PS - Congrats to Neil on his long overdue first Grammy for music this past weekend!

All We Are Saying Is Give V A Chance

Although ABC's reboot of the original cult 1980's sci-fi alien invasion series V got off to a somewhat sluggish start during its initial freshman season, I'm really liking where things seem to be headed with this years sophomore run.

The biggest fear right now though, comes with the rumors I'm hearing of a season ending cliffhanger. With the show experiencing what would be — to put it kindly — rather soft ratings, and with ABC's demonstrated lack of patience for giving shows like this one a second chance, it is entirely possible the only ones left hanging by this season's finale might be the viewers who've stuck through it this far.

Given the network's track record with sci-fi series like this one, I'm not much liking the prospects for a season three of V next fall right about now. The success of Lost notwithstanding, ABC is still the network that pulled the plug on both the semi-promising Flash Forward, and the much limper Happy Town without so much as blinking, despite initially hyping both to the moon and back.

Consigning V to a similar fate — to make way for the latest season of Wipeout or whatever — would just be a damn shame. Because right now, I think that V may be finally onto something.

Take Tuesday night's episode "Concordia" for example. Up until this point, V's main characters — played by a great cast of vets like Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost), Morris Chestnut, and the always reliable cable sci-fi series stalwart Joel Gretsch (Taken, The 4400) — have been fairly one dimensional.

As FBI agent Erica Evans, Mitchell has played both sides the most of all — cow-towing to the evil V new age alien lizard queen Anna (the deliciously sexy and seductively evil Morena Baccarin), even as she knows the bitch has designs on an obscene inter-species breeding program involving her own son.

Yet, despite her own inner conflicted nature, she has always taken the moral high ground. That changed tonight, as the FBI agent signed on to a plot to take out Anna for good, with the help of new cast member Oded Fehr (in a typically hard core terrorist role for this vet from Showtime's much missed Sleeper Cell) as Fifth Column bad-ass Eli Cohn.

As catholic priest (and closeted alien resistance member) Father Jack, the lines between passive protest and more direct "any means necessary" tactics became similarly blurred tonight. In this episode, the penultimate man of faith became the man of action by signing on to the same assassination plot as FBI "Anti-Fifth Column Task Force" head Agent Evans.

But the real wild card here is Morris Chestnut as Ryan Nichols — an alien lizard who up until tonight was a Fifth Column human sympathizer playing the role of double agent, but who now appears ready to sell out the resistance to that lizard bitch Anna (who holds Ryan's child captive aboard the mother ship).

So, just when it looks like ABC might pull the plug, this shit is actually starting to get rather good.

Still, the fact of where it is actually going next is also somewhat obvious. My own prediction is that double agents like Mitchell's FBI agent and Gretsch's Catholic Father Jack will discover their inner bad-asses and take up arms for an all-out, take no prisoners war next fall (provided of course this is one).

The current political references — which have been both timely and smart from the start — also remain razor sharp. Tonight's "Concordia" episode even referenced the reptilian's cloaked inter-species breeding centers as an "urban renewal project."

The other nice new development this season has been the way that the "reboot" of the original eighties V has been rewritten to be more like a sequel to the earlier version. With the return of original eighties alien queen Jane Badler as Diana, the story has now been recast as a second try at invasion by these alien lizards.

As a guilty pleasure fan of the original (cheesy as it was), I like this latest touch a lot. All we need now is the return of Marc Singer and the pre-Freddie Krueger Robert Englund (reprising his role as the clumsy human sympathizing alien Willie) to complete the trifecta.

All we are saying is give V a chance.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

Saddle Up To The Jayhawks Greatest Album All Over Again

Music Review: The Jayhawks - Tomorrow The Green Grass (2 CD Legacy Remastered Edition)

With the Jayhawks reportedly set to embark later this year on their first extensive tour with the original lineup led by principal songwriters Gary Louris and Mark Olson since 1995 (and a new album reportedly set to follow), a fresh new dust-off of Olson's last album with the band couldn't have come at a more opportune time.

This deluxe remastered edition of 1995's classic Tomorrow The Green Grass from Sony/Legacy was released last month, along with its 1992 predecessor Hollywood Town Hall. Of the two repackaged albums, Tomorrow The Green Grass gets the more ambitious treatment by far.

In addition to a beautifully done remastering job on the original album (overseen by Olson and Louris, along with original producer George Drakoulias), the deluxe expanded double-disc edition also includes the first appearance on an officially sanctioned release of the "Mystery Demos."

Recorded in 1992 during two separate sessions in Los Angeles and their native Minneapolis, these early, acoustic versions of songs that eventually wound up making the final cut for Tomorrow The Green Grass — as well as subsequent solo albums by Olson and Louris and Jayhawks offshoot Golden Smog — have long since attained mythical status among hardcore fans. These recordings offer a rare glimpse into the songwriting process behind some of Olson and Louris' greatest songs (not to mention some rarities heard for the very first time on an official release).

Even so, it is still the original 1995 Tomorrow The Green Grass album that is the main event here. Despite receiving unanimous praise from critics when it was originally released, the album was largely slept upon in terms of actual record sales. Today, it is regarded as a classic and rightfully so.

As good as its predecessor Hollywood Town Hall was, Tomorrow The Green Grass was the defining moment where the Jayhawks first began to shed some of their more obvious country-rock influences (Burritos, Byrds, Everlys, and Neil Young primarily) heard on the former album, and begin to find their own unique voice as songwriters and as a band. Not that these influences are abandoned altogether here. Indeed, the harmonies are sweeter and crisper sounding than ever before on songs like "Two Hearts" and especially the absolutely gorgeous album opener "Blue."

But lying just beyond that twangy exterior, you can also hear echoes of everyone from the Band to the Stones and even latter day Grand Funk Railroad (on a great cover of the latter's Motown influenced "Bad Time"). If anything, on Tomorrow The Green Grass the Jayhawks wear their sixties and seventies rock bonafides on their sleeves just as comfortably as do their well-worn Gram Parsons cowboy boots.

The guitar riffs which power "Ten Little Kids" for example, are taken straight from Exile-era Stones (and from "Tumblin' Dice" in particular). "Sleep While You Can," one of five bonus tracks on the first disc here, likewise takes the riff from Badfinger's "No Matter What" and simply speeds it up. And if "Red's Song" doesn't borrow more than a little from The Band's classic "The Weight," I simply don't know what does.

But the biggest difference here musically is the addition of keyboardist Karen Grotberg, whose tinkling ivories add a new dimension to the Jayhawks sound on tracks ranging from the hymn like electric piano heard on "Ann Jane," to the straight out honky tonk of "Last Cigarette" (another bonus track, which also features lead vocals from Grotberg). Largely unknown at the time, Grotberg had the unenviable task of replacing the studio vets like Nicky Hopkins and Benmont Tench heard on Hollywood Town Hall. Her keys are an absolute delight throughout Tomorrow The Green Grass.

With a set of warm-up dates just completed (where the Jayhawks performed both the Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass albums in their entirety), rumors of a reunion album and a more extensive tour later this year are running high.

If this is indeed the case, don't miss them if they come to a town near you. In the meantime, this excellent expanded edition of the Jayhawks greatest album is a great introduction to the band who more or less provided the blueprint for what we today refer to as alt-country.

Saddle up.

This article was first published as Music Review: The Jayhawks - Tomorrow The Green Grass (2 CD Legacy Remastered Edition) at Blogcritics Magazine