Music Matters

Radiohead moves from gloom to hope: The revelations of The Kings of Limbs

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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Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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