5. The King of Limbs / Radiohead

Too many critics and fans have struggled with the fact that they could not place The King of Limbs in the unfolding Radiohead narrative. As if every studio album from the band should follow some discernable and linear path, building on (or running away from) the album before, some listeners failed to embrace an obvious fact: this time around, Radiohead just wanted to play to their own fancies, unencumbered from the heft of their singular and storied catalog.

Until The King of Limbs, diehards could trace the British band's notable progression--or re-invention--on an album-by-album basis. The story goes something like this: Pablo Honey (the uneven creep), The Bends (the alt-rock classic), OK Computer (the magnum rock opus), Kid A (the po-mo masterpiece), Amnesiac (the twitchy Kid A companion), Hail to the Thief (the brooding commentary), and In Rainbows (the glorious re-emergence). So where to put the new album? It is not an extension of In Rainbow's large-scale visions, although some traces made their way over to the new record. It is not a return to rock-centric guitars established by The Bends or OK Computer. It is not an insular retraction into experimentation like Kid A. So what gives?

To a certain extent, the record feels like the band's first singer-songwriter album, where Yorke's vocals are truly front and center. The surrounding instrumental flourishes, perceptive and patient, are seemingly employed to accompany the singer's wishes. Undoubtedly, the tightly-wound songs serve the band's continued fascination with rhythm. While some listeners may long for Greenwood's guitars to play more of a leading role, to a signficant degree, this is drummer Phil Selway's record. His meticulous time signatures are without peer.

The King of Limbs contains only eight tracks and is by far Radiohead's shortest record. As a result, the record feels cohesive and, for whatever reason, seems to flow toward and away from the immediate highlight "Lotus Flower." The first half of the record is filled with addictive rhythms largely fueled by Selway's sticks--the strange tracks grow increasingly more interesting with repeated listens. (See "Bloom," "Little By Little," "Morning Mr. Magpie," and the dub-stepped "Feral.") The second half of the record is a treasure trove of songs, starting with the spiritual piano dirge of "Codex," moving into the tender acoustic strums and vocal loops of "Give Up The Ghost," and signing off with "Separator," a track that only Radiohead is capable of conceiving and pulling off.

Maybe Radiohead defied convention (again?), producing a small, strange, beautiful, and rhythmically-challenging record that suggests, definitively, the band is as self-assured as ever.