Tag: The King of Limbs

Finally listened to the new Radiohead album 'The King of Limbs' and can hear what Radiohead fans have been kvetching about recently. I understand that each era of fans tend to change every few albums when a band experiments; the age old problem of locking an artist into their most successful era. But I think there's a bigger problem here. Ever since Kid A, and definitely since In Rainbows Radiohead have been slowly ditching the old structures and rock framework, experimenting with sounds and textures - atmospherics have replaced tunes and emotion. Nothing wrong with experimentation, but if you ditch the tropes and structures of hundreds or even thousands of years you need to replace it with something equally strong in idea, concept and function. A hard call, which is why many artists be they visual or musical tend to work in a restrictive framework (necessity being the mother of invention) which may sound very unrevolutionary but when you have the sky to aim for the likelihood is you won't hit the sun and head off into cold empty space. There is usually no need to reinvent the wheel. So Radiohead are finding out the downside of experimentation as with the prog rockers before them. Form follows function, but take the functionality of rock or pop music away with no new function then you end up with a folly, an aimless art piece or a bunch of gibbering twiddles. The prog rockers got derided since their experimentation not only became surprisingly uniform (endless experimentation by musicians usually does; it's the tyranny of jazz), it also focused on the forms, the endless mellotron and drum solos, the clothes, the spectacle. The experimentation of the Krautrock and the psych-outs of the 60's became the straitjacket of the 70's. Interestingly non-musicians and art-school understand this better - it's the odd dichotomy of knowing the rules and breaking them, as I was taught at art-school - or just going in blind and ripping up the rulebook. Both approaches have worked for people in the past, but it does seem learning the very rules of music tends to lead to micro-experimentation, jazz and a reliance on a framework of some sort - yes I know there aree exceptions, but there are many more doing the polite inoffensive noodling a la Radiohead. Whereas the punk approach can be less subtle and sometimes plain bad, but the broad brustrokes seem to get over the ideas better - and if you can't hide in spectacle or craftsmanship that's all you have, a good idea or concept and some interesting sounds. So Radiohead need to either burn their rulebook - go make a breakcore or gabba album and throw away the concessions to jazzy niceness or work on the internal logic of their songs. Music does need to say something, even if it's just buy me or dance lets party...when it doesn't say anything at all then is just becomes muzak, worthy experimentation or not. And obviously those making dubstep or house comparisons haven't heard that much - unless the last half of the LP suddenly turns into Excision I don't hear that at all...and any album that people says 'you need to hear it on good headphones' usually is dealing with the Fripperies on the sidelines and is fiddling while Rome burns - never a good advert, really.

Tag: The King of Limbs

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