Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 12:00 AM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Rock
Country: U.K.
Label: XL
Year: 2016
To write down your opinion about Radiohead’s new album, is not the easiest thing in the world… This particular group is (rightly) regarded as one of the greatest bands of the last 25 years in the wider area of Rock music and even many place them at the top of all time great bands. Pioneers in audio / audiovisual terms, stylistically, in the way they communicate their music through modern technology, with their own pile of inspiration of internet patents, but above all it’s a band that has written and left behind numerous masterly songs and albums of high art and as logic suggests a band that could attract the interest of only millions of music lovers every time a new album is released.
Five years after their rather bad (along with their debut “Pablo Honey”) and most anemic album “The King Of Limps”, Radiohead return with “A Moon Shaped Pool”. It is difficult to form an opinion about the record with just a few hearings or place the album somewhere in history. This is because we are dealing with a work – definition of the term: concept album. With the classical sense that we tend to forget these days… The sense which requires you to dedicate time, attention and complete hearing, without focusing on two or three pieces after you have verified that the rest are fillers.
The truth is that the new album of Radiohead hasn’t got any A or B classed pieces. It is a comprehensive work, impressively worked (as always) in the field of production and orchestration, with a bunch of “hidden” beautiful details that are revealed to you slowly when you give, as I said, the necessary time and attention.
Sonically, I think that the two different “schools” of Radiohead, the most electronic of singer Thom Yorke and the most soundtrack – sounding of the guitarist (and not only) Jonny Greenwood with several portions of classic strings, are ideally combined and offer a result that only the acoustic canvas of Radiohead can offer, a result that comes to prove the evolution of the band over the years.
Synthetically, the album “A Moon Shaped Pool” is an album 100% Radiohead. All the atmosphere, the subtle melancholy, the beautiful melodies and interpretations of the special and charismatic voice of Thom Yorke are here, as are the ingenious and inspired executions of the veteran band filtered by the widely attentive production. The difference with the classic Radiohead big albums lies in the fact that you can hardly distinguish (at least at first…) someone or some songs as the top of the album that will remain forever in their live playlists, although my personal feeling is that ‘Glass Eyes’, ‘Present Tense’ and ‘Daydreaming’ are a “click” above the rest.
But this is of little importance because as I said, we are dealing with a project that the more you listen to it in its entirety, the more you gain. It’s an album which is considerably higher than the previous “The King Of Limps”, «cooked» from the best materials of Radiohead, without necessarily reaching their best highlights…
Besides, it’s a band that even if it disbanded after the “Amnesiac” of 2001, it would again write its name in golden letters in the history of music. They’ve got nothing to prove to us except perhaps to their own selves, that they still got it and offer us complete artistic works.
Such record is for sure “A Moon Shaped Pool”. Time will only tell how great its place will be in the Radiohead Universe!
4,5/6
