There are three things you have to think about when evaluating a Radiohead album.

First, it is impossible to judge it after just a few listens, because it's most likely operating at levels that won’t quite reveal themselves to a listener for a while. Second, their past albums loom so large that any new album has a ridiculously high standard to reach right from the start. Finally, that track record can work in their favor as well, because it’s hard to believe they could ever release anything mediocre.

All of those caveats lead us to The King Of Limbs, the band’s eighth album, which snuck up on us in the band’s typical sleight-of-hand fashion. I’ve listened to it a whole bunch of times in the past few days, as any good fanatic should, and I’ve come to about a 100 different conclusions in that time, which, again, is par for the course with this band.

What I can definitively say is that this is not a rock album. The prodigious talents of guitar aces Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien are largely used for texture here, as they flicker away at the edges of these songs without ever coming to the forefront. Of course, Radiohead has been bending the genre to their experimental whims pretty much since Kid A, so their reluctance to rock out shouldn’t be surprising.

You can actually break The King Of Limbs eight songs, which clock in at a postage-stamp time of 37 minutes, into three distinct groups. There are two Kid A/Amnesiac style sonic shape-shifters: Album-opening “Bloom” and “Feral,” which is an instrumental. Neither of these sets the world on fire on their own, but they work in their sequence and as palette-cleansers for all that surrounds them.

Next up you have three itchy, mid-tempo tracks that echo some of the best work of the band’s past two albums, Hail To The Thief and In Rainbows. “Morning Mr. Magpie” is funky in an alien sort of way, while “Little By Little” has an ominous ticking time-bomb beat and Spaghetti Western guitars. The best of these is “Lotus Flower,” which is little more than drummer Phil Selway’s rat-a-tat beat and lead singer Thom Yorke at his most darkly seductive.

“There’s an empty place inside my heart/Where the weeds take root,” he sings, a line that’s typical of the evocative wordplay he displays throughout.

These three songs may not exactly strike new ground for the band, but that fact in no way mitigates their power. No band can cast a spell like Radiohead, and they do so in this trio of songs in as precise and economic a fashion as they’ve ever been able to accomplish.

All of this is good stuff, but where album really surprises and soars is the three-song run that closes things out. “Codex” starts this group off, and it is a true stunner. A stark ballad filled with watery lyrical imagery that hews to the spiritual, the song is highlighted by the chill-inducing moment when Yorke’s vocals meld with a lonesome horn. His voice is also the main driver of “Give Up The Ghost”; in this case, it is multi-tracked a million different ways over an acoustic guitar riff to beautiful effect.

“Separator” is the closer, beginning with Selway’s steady patter and marked throughout by limber bass work by Colin Greenwood.

“It’s like I’ve fallen out of bed from a long and vivid dream,” Yorke sings. “Finally I’m free of all the weight I’m carrying”. The whole band joins him in a rousing finish, as Jonny Greenwood and O’Brien pick arpeggios around the rhythm section and Yorke wails, again and again, “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong”.

On past Radiohead albums, such a line would have sounded like a threat or a warning. But the last three songs of The King Of Limbs, filled as they are with the band’s restless and adventurous spirit yet achieving a newfound gentility and grace, seem to have this band’s message pointed in another direction. As a matter of fact, that final line sounds more like a benevolent promise to all those in need.

Leave it to Radiohead to do the most subversive thing they could do at such a messed-up point in the history of human existence: They’ve dared to give us some hope.

SAMPLE THE KING OF LIMBS

"Lotus Flower"

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"Codex"

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"Separator"

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