Someone erasing their internet presence is not news.
In January of this year, I decided to erase my Facebook profile. I was sick and weary of spending so much time staring at countless photos of people’s cupcakes, statuses from bickering couples or a live feed awash with infinite baby photos.
Within a month, I had returned. Did anyone notice my mysterious disappearance? Of course not. Had my disappearance sparked internet frenzy and trending on Twitter? You can probably answer that one yourself.
To be clear, I’m well aware that’s more an evocation of my limited social life and real-world interaction rather than a scathing indictment of our modern obsession with social media but nevertheless, a modern day rock band erasing their internet presence is news.
Here’s a brief timeline/informal diary of the events that occurred:
30th April: Reports emerge online of Radiohead fans receiving cryptic leaflets in the mail, containing the words “Sing a song of sixpence that goes Burn the Witch.” Baffled, people take to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to express their confusion and uncertain excitement. Is a new album on its way?
1st May: Music fans around the world awake to the news that Radiohead had deleted its entire internet presence. Twitter? Gone. Facebook? Gone. A visit to the band’s website radiohead.com on Sunday offered eager viewers only a blank page. Everything, it seemed, wasn’t in its right place.
I find myself checking the internet constantly, refreshing and refreshing, ravenously hunting for any piece of news that would signal whether or not LP9 (their ninth album) was going to land.
2nd May: The anticipation reaches fever pitch during the morning when Radiohead’s revitalised Instagram account posts a short clip of a claymation bird eagerly tweeting its dawn chorus.
Later, the band’s official Instagram account posts another cryptic video of a group of masked claymation villagers dancing around a tied up woman.
Finally, the band releases the full video for Burn the Witch, their first album single in 5 years. A dazzling and frenetic orchestral powerhouse containing frantic pizzicato strings, looping electronic percussion and Yorke’s signature ghostly falsetto vocals drenched in an ocean of reverb. The video itself was a thing of beauty. Turn off the music and you can even enjoy on its own terms. A four and a half minute ode to both 70’s children TV show Trumpton and the iconic horror film The Wicker Man. The song’s lyrics warned of staying in the shadows, cheering gallows and low flying panic attacks. Listeners were quick to interpret Yorke’s lyrics as a savage indictment of both Donald Trump’s unapologetic xenophobia during the current presidential race and the rise of anti-immigration and the far-right in Europe. Yet, like any great song lyrics, these are just one interpretation.
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6th May: The band’s Instagram account released yet another clip of Yorke wandering aimlessly around a desolate multi-story car park, underscored by a dreamy ambience of pianos, xylophones and strings that signified the band’s next single, Daydreaming, would be a complete 180 from their previous release 3 days earlier.
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8th May: Finally, after five years, multiple clues and excruciating teasers, the album drops at 7pm BST. Initial thoughts: what the hell is A Moon Shaped Pool? The puzzling assonance in the title seemed like some drunken tongue twister designed to drag people out of their late weekend lull. As for the music? There are equal parts bewilderment and satisfaction.
For me, Radiohead’s album release approach and business model doesn’t represent some ill-contrived marketing gimmick designed to draw instant attention and boost future album sales, but is more of both a physical and digital evocation of the structure and form of Radiohead’s music. It’s constantly moving, constantly changing direction and shape-shifting. It comes out of nowhere when we least expect it. Radiohead’s music delights in its cryptic wrong-footing, constantly leaving both the ardent and casual listener on the back foot. The trumpet solos in The National Anthem, the jarring and ominous looping voices that circulate in Everything in Its Right Place or the gothic choral refrain at the climax of Paranoid Android are just the examples that spring to mind.
The traditional album release model was simple:
(i) An artist/band announces an album.
(ii) Months later, they release it in record shops and on the radio.
(iii) A few live television and radio appearances, maybe even a talk show slot to promote.
(iv) A live tour soon follows. End of story.
Radiohead blow a hole in this tired and wearisome business model by eschewing the traditional process for album release and promotion. For example, for A Moon Shaped Pool, they announced world tour dates back in mid-March, before an album was even confirmed or released. For In Rainbows, they announced the album’s release 10 days before it was available to download. For King of Limbs, this period dropped to 5 days. A Moon Shaped Pool was announced 2 days before its release. And the release date – a Monday? A Friday?
Radiohead released A Moon Shaped Pool on a Sunday evening. There’s no better time to listen to an experimental psychedelic folk art album once you’ve put the kids to bed for school the next morning.
In an era of singles and EPs, where listening to an album as a holistic collection of songs is a forgotten art, Radiohead remind us of the excitement and anticipation of opening an album for the first time and pouring over each song with microscopic detail to enjoy simultaneously both on its own terms and in its relationship to other songs on the album.
As for the album itself? Can anything new and fresh be written that hasn’t already been expressed innumerably in frenzied press coverage that has ensued this past few weeks?
Probably not.
But the album itself certainly satisfied expectations of both music fans and Radiohead listeners. However, it would seem that initial reviews of Radiohead’s singles/EP’s/albums seem almost reductive and counterproductive to their musical style. It’s for this reason that I found myself greeting reviews that appeared within an hour or even hours of the album’s release that Sunday evening with a mixture of hesitation and trepidation.
A Radiohead album, like opening even the most mediocre bottles of wine, needs to time to breath; time for you to induce and envelope its plentiful flavours and subtle textures. In our superficial, Snapchat, browser-centric, quick-hit culture, it’s easy to rely on our initial impressions as gospel.
Radiohead’s music has always existed as an antithesis to this.
Creep for instance, was released in September 1992 to little chart success. Radio 1 found the song “too depressing” and refused to play the song on its airwaves. The song charted abysmally at 78 in the UK singles chart and was quickly disregarded and forgotten by listeners and music fans alike.
Then, towards the closing months of 1992, DJ Yoav Kutner, a revered Israeli radio and TV presenter, played Creep persistently on Israeli radio. He had been introduced to the song by a local representative of EMI. The song quickly became a national hit. New Zealand, Scandanavia, Spain and the US quickly followed suit.
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From a personal perspective, I can honestly say that I took an instant dislike to 70-80% of Radiohead’s songs upon first listen, only showing a slow appreciation after an elongated period of reflection and re-listening. Radiohead’s music, for me, operates like a great movie that you hated upon first viewing, but you find yourself coming back to time and time again, noticing subtle nuances and subliminal layers with each subsequent experience. A viola almost drowned out in the reverberated background or an eerie backing vocal that initially escaped your cognisant attention.
At the moment, I’m unsure where A Moon Shaped Pool sits within the great pantheon of Radiohead’s prodigious discography. As a culture, we seem pre-programmed to catalogue everything into a numerically ascending order of quality. There are even rumours that the album appears to be the band’s swan song due to the inclusion of so many long-gestating live favourite such as True Love Waits and Ful Stop.
With A Moon Shaped Pool, both musically and economically, Radiohead have cemented their legacy as unapologetic innovators and modernisers of how we consume contemporary music.
And that, if nothing else, is to be saluted.
words DALEY NIXON