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.