Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

I think I'm far more bored with "The Bends" but, yeah, if I want to listen to Thom Yelp it's gonna be Kid A / Amnesiac or something more recent.

I can't really say why, I mean I loved all their records on release but the staying power just isn't there for me. Or at least the desire to go back and revisit their material.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, May 2, 2017 4:10 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I set up a Radiohead playlist not too long ago and I pretty much found myself skipping almost every track from Pablo Honey, The Bends and OK Computer, which I found surprising because I listened to those albums a hell of a lot back in the '90s and there's a lot of music from that time that I can still listen to now. I'd love to be able to say that I can still endlessly spin The Bends and OK Computer and that I can still get the same thing out of those records as I used to, but I can't. I can still get a lot out of Kid A, Amnesiac and In Rainbows, and I'm finding The King of Limbs to be increasingly an exciting record on a sonic level, even if I don't think the songwriting is quite there. I find A Moon Shaped Pool a bit bland.

Rarely spin Bends and OKC but when I do they tend to rawk

i was in a bar recently that played pablo honey over their speakers straight through and on almost every track i was like "wow this kinda sucks"

i guess i'm expressing why i'm deeply unsurprised that anyone would skip almost every track from pablo honey

I mean, I know that The Bends and OK Computer are both great records. I know that they're stuffed to the brim with great, emotional, well-written songs that are performed and produced well and that both records are great start-to-finish experiences. Even though I've listened to both records hundreds upon hundreds of times, I still can't say that I've overplayed them as much as some other albums that I've listened to a hell of a lot. I don't know what it is, but I can't get more than a couple of tracks into either record before I want to listen to something else.

yeah I hope there's some real interesting stuff on the cassette, I'd missed that initially

Blow Out is the only track I'd keep from Pablo Honey really

Pablo Honey has never deserved half the shit that gets thrown at it. Looking at the tracklisting, the only track that I'd say was out-and-out awful was 'How Do You?' and even that's inoffensive. It's a good record, even if it is an album that doesn't seem to float my boat anymore.

i mean my last attentive listen to it was in a loud bar so i'll give you the benefit of the doubt there

It's not even a case of Radiohead making sense when you're a certain age and then growing out of it, because the age range of Radiohead's audience is quite vast.

"Blow Out" is the only salvageable bit really

Even the deluxe version sounds fair if you're crazy about Radiohead.

For an extra $100? I have clearly not been keeping up on the insanity of deluxe reissues. How many times is anyone going to page through Thom's scribblings?

I admit the cassette sounds cool. Good use of the format.

after blowing pretty much all of my teenage disposable income on radiohead, i am looking forward to downloading the shit out of the 3 new songs

wonder if they'll be demo versions or live or remixed or

damn, Lift? i haven't actively listened to Radiohead in 10 years but this is sick

tape collage cassette sounds awesome too

yeah, the cassette will be the most interesting thing, i think!

Then it just turns out to be 90 minutes of them telling dick jokes.

fuck i wish i could just buy that separately

surprised Follow Me Around isn't included in this

wasn't Follow Me Around written during the OKC tour/after recording?

not sure when it was written, but it was soundchecked on the OKC tour and was featured on meeting people is easy (a film concentrating on the OKC era) so it seems like it fits to me, certainly more than it would to a kid a deluxe edition

yeah it definitely sounds like a Bends/OKC song... almost as if it were written in the same batch as True Love Waits. i vaguely remember reading or hearing that they never actually recorded it, at least not during the OKC sessions

they definitely tried recording it in the Kid A sessions, I'm sure there's all sorts of weird arrangements of things they tried out then

would love to hear the bleep bloop version

cassette mix is also coming as an MP3 within so there'll you know be.. *copies doing the rounds* soon after release. not that i'm suggesting anyone steal from Thom lest he starve to death.

I'd certainly buy a deluxe CD version that came with a download (or better, another CD) of what's on the cassette. But have no space/need for 3LP, cassette (no player), and a large book. Bummer.

Definitely excited to hear "Lift" and "Big Boots," and would be interesting if the cassette had versions of "True Love Waits," "Motion Picture Soundtrack," "Nude," etc., though I'm very happy with the versions they finally released in later years.

Also, 'A Moon Shaped Pool' (with 'Burn the Witch' relegated to a b-side) is still the best thing they've done since 'OK Computer'.

ohhh yeah Motion Picture Soundtrack! i only heard the 1995 live version a few months ago.

'Burn the Witch' is one of the best songs on A Moon Shaped Pool.

"Burn the Witch" is good, but it's a false-start. Doesn't fit the sound or mood of the rest of the album, to my ears; and is especially odd coming at the front of the record.

If that's the case, then why would it be especially odd for it to be the opening track? It would make less sense anywhere else on the record. It transitions into the second track nicely, so I really don't get what the problem is.

Burn the Witch is so good and it really got my hopes up when it premiered. I love Daydreaming and TLW but when the album dropped it wasn't what I was expecting or what I wanted based on the first single. oh well. Feh

A year on, I like 'Burn the Witch', 'Decks Dark', 'Ful Stop' and 'Identikit', but mostly the record is a bit of an extended yawn.

I like 'Burn The Witch' quite a bit. I agree that it doesn't fit with the rest of the album. I think the 1st track is the only place to sequence it if you are going to keep it on the album.

i like moon shaped pool a lot and wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being one of my favorites down the line. still not enough distance from release time though

Follow Me Around and also a very early version of Skirting in the Surface have been around since OKC. The reason they're not here is because they can still make it to LP10 whereas Lift or Manowar are very decidedly Radiohead 90's in their lyrics and composition no matter how much you try to update them. They only make sense between Bends and OKC. Try to imagine them fitting on any album since The Bends.

SKIRTING and FOLLOW ME AROUND have that sort of loose Neil Young sound they've been attempting for the past decade here and there (they were practiced in the sessions for A Moon Shaped Pool and played live very recently)

i love Moon Shaped Pool. i'm surprised more people don't. True Love Waits might sneak in to my Top 3, or even Top 2! although i can never see Kid A's How To Disappear.. being dislodged from my top Radiohead tune slot where it's stuck fast for 17 years.

I love this album. Just as Radiohead clearly never want to have another 'The Bends', if I hear one more Thom Yorke insular up his butt IDM inert composition I might be put off of them for years again.

"Burn the Witch" is good, but it's a false-start. Doesn't fit the sound or mood of the rest of the album, to my ears; and is especially odd coming at the front of the record.

It's because all the songs are in alphabetical order, right?

They clearly reversed engineered the titles to get a good sequence.

Burn the Witch fits the mood of the album just fine, and I don't really know what people are talking about when they say it doesn't. I also think Identikit is madly overrated.

"Burn the Witch" just doesn't fit musically--everything else has this dreamy, gauzy feeling and "Burn the Witch" is too clear and staccato. But it's more that it's sort of a lyrical/thematic throwback to the (to my liking) lame "Hail to the Thief" blunt-instrument politics that, while well-intended, were never Yorke's strong suit. ("The Numbers" might be subject to the same criticism, but it fits in better musically). The combination just leaves it feeling like a false start. To unfurl into the album via the slow dream/nightmare build of 'Daydreaming' feels more accurate in suggesting what is to come.

Maybe it hasn't stuck with other folks, but I find any time I revisit earlier Radiohead--and I was a b-sides collecting superfan since age 14 circa 'The Bends' through 'In Rainbows,' minus 'Hail to the Thief' which I strongly disliked--instead I find myself wanting to listen to 'A Moon Shaped Pool'. So sequence it alphabetically starting with 'Daydreaming' and dropping in 'Ill Wind' and I'd argue it's Radiohead's best work in a 25-year career.

Cons about AMSP: it's homogenic and Thom nowadays seems less challenging. His voice, compositions and lyrics stilm have potential to be mindblowing but he seems to have settled and it feels like he's on a plateau now... maybe he has already said all that he needed to say.

Pros: while Thom might be on a comfort zone, Johnny is still growing as a composer and his arrangements might be the best in any radiohead record.

HTTT is also my least favorite record by them but I don't agree with Burn the Witch being of that subpar quality. Maybe without Johnny's string arrangements but HTTT wishes it had a song like this one.

I don't think "Burn the Witch" is subpar (well, maybe lyrically, not musically) just. . . not cut from the same cloth. Would've been a very good non-album single.

Of your cons, I think what you're experiencing as homogeneity means that for me the album feels coherent, with common production approaches and musical/thematic consistency. And I guess the almost unguarded emotionality of a lot of the lyrics feels almost new for Yorke (like "Glass House" or "Present Tense"), whereas the general Big Brother/paranoia/evil corporations-cum-government stuff was the "settled in" Yorke autopilot that I really disliked about 'HTTT' and some after.

Plus I feel like 'AMSP' has more real melodies than any album in many years--not that they need melodies per se to be successful, but whenever they tried to be a groove band instead it became plodding and Yorke fell into aimless tunelessness (i.e. "There There"). Even on his latest solo electronic record, I'd be hard pressed to remember a single melody. But listening last night to some of those pre-The Bends songs from the 'My Iron Lung' period that I always loved and thought of as peak old-fashioned tunesmithery from Yorke, I was impressed to realize how while Yorke used to engage some high-note pyrotechnics and really belting it out, I don't know if he's ever been more purely tuneful than on 'AMSP'. So I agree he was on a comfort zone plateau for a while, but I think he's launched off it again with this album.

whenever they tried to be a groove band instead it became plodding and Yorke fell into aimless tunelessness (i.e. "There There")

I agree with this point, but this is a very strange example to pick

yea wtf "There There" is their best song

It's a jam

Are you sure you understand what the terms "melody" and "tune" mean?

whenever they tried to be a groove band instead it became plodding and Yorke fell into aimless tunelessness (i.e. "There There")

Once a critic described a large chunk of their music as "inert" which is probably the best adjective you could use. Or another favorite (paraphrasing): "I never thought I'd ever say this but, this record could use a lot more Flea."

(BTW I agree that AMSP is among their best works and would be even better if it didn't include and begin with "Burn the Witch" - I always skip it and go right to "Daydreaming"!)

No I don't mean homogenic in the production. It's probably my favorte Radiohead record in that regard. It's more in the compositions, most of these could qualify as ballads and the "rockers" or "groovers" - or whatever you want to call them - that are present in every Radiohead album are probably some of the weakest songs imho this time around (burn the witch, identikit, ful stop).

Even HTTT had Myxomatosis (and There There which I don't agree to be an aimless song) to compensate.