The King of Limbs
| Radiohead
The King of Limbs
The King of Limbs is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was self-released on 18 February 2011 as a download, followed by CD and 12" vinyl versions on 28 March through XL Recordings in the UK, TBD Records in the US, and Hostess Entertainment in Japan. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Radiohead's latest album is their shortest to date, offering eight new tracks that feel like small but natural evolutions of previously explored directions.
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Rolling Stone
The King of Limbs lingers in states of emotional and physical in- between-ness — blooming, diving, flirting, floating, falling.
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The Guardian
Listening to it, you're reminded that Radiohead are the only band of their size and status that seem driven by an impulse to twist their music into different shapes. As The King of Limbs proves, when it works it's glorious.
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Consequence of Sound
Those subtle nuances, the little hums, the clattering beeps, and the scratchy percussion? They’re the sounds of five souls, not just one.
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NME
Radiohead’s most ambient album to date, with thick layers of echo and reverb creating a watery, dreamlike feel that is further evoked by the various marine images – the oceans, lakes and fish – that recur throughout.
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Drowned in Sound
The King of Limbs reappropriates the frentic shuffle of Flying Lotus and filters it through years of collected influences to create something approaching different.
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Alt Rock Chick
The King of Limbs may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re in the mood for rich, reflective and evocative music featuring marvelous rhythms at relaxed tempos, I guarantee you a beautiful experience.
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Pretty Much Amazing
When the brief album comes to a close, there’s not a second’s hesitation before I hit play again.
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Sputnik Music
A retrospective look at a superb, enigmatic record from masters of their craft at an interesting crossroads.
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BBC
A fans-pleasing eighth album from Britain’s most consistently brilliant band.
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The Quietus
Ben Graham gives King Of Limbs an early listen, and finds the group moving further into the leftfield. This, he suggests, is a very good thing.
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Wired
All in all, the album pulses with creativity, while leaving listeners wondering if they got all the tracks during their download.
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Telegraph
This is something else entirely. The sound of the future calling.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
Impassioned lyrical sloganeering and ambitious, studio-enhanced sonic bluster.
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All Music
Radiohead doing what they do, doing it very well, doing it without flash or pretension, gently easing from the role of pioneers to craftsmen.
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MPN Now
“King of Limbs” has set a blistering pace of recognition and currently stands on its own two feet.
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Resident Advisor
Though not as varied as most of their past work, the album follows an interesting arc, starting out abrasive and growing more somber toward the end.
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On
Can’t help but be alluring and unique.
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Timeout
Limbs is a modest, perfect little album that demands headphones and the repeat button.
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The Wesleyan Argus
“The King of Limbs” lends itself to the background, and slowly slips a bit of austere beauty into your day.
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Ranting about Music!
The King of Limbs really has to grow on you, too. I’ve given in about a dozen straight listens with two or three more on shuffle (more than my usual), and it wasn’t until Round 7 or so that I really picked out what I liked.
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Essentially Ecclectic
The King of Limbs itself . . . merely requires the aural attention that In Rainbows necessitated before its true strengths are revealed.
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L.A. Music Blog
Beautifully unorthodox!
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KRUI.fm
The King of Limbs is a very complete album that may take multiple listens to fully understand and enjoy, but it is this diversity that listeners have come to love and expect of Radiohead that makes them so great.
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Music OMH
King Of Limbs is a subtle, muti-layered affair -surprisingly low-key in places, and it certainly won’t win back any fanswho checked out in the late ’90s. Yet for the faithful, this is anothergorgeous, other-worldy missive from one of the most exciting bands of our age.
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Esquire
The most important record of the year.
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S.B. Independent
The King Of Limbs is a mostly bleak affair. But the optimistic ending is a fitting sigh of relief: this is their most consistently great album in a decade.
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Express
Hats off to them for not resting on their laurels.
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The Nervous Breakdown
This album stands apart from all the others in its emphasis on fragility and sonic mixing.
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Uproxx
There's plenty of familiar ground covered in “The King of Limbs,” so nothing”s going to shove a Radiohead fan off his tracks; maybe that, too, is a reason to take it on the train.
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Seedsent
King of Limbs is short, bitter-sweet, and vintage Radiohead Thom undoubtedly wants us to know and come to terms with it, “no one gets hurt, we’ve done nothing wrong.”
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WBEZ
You can’t just listen half a dozen times and think you’ve got it, you have to live with the thing, if not put every digital burp and serpentine syllable under the aural microscope!
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20k Blog
These are 8 wonderful tracks that sit nicely in Radiohead’s eclectic catalog and the “Lotus Flower” video will forever be a staple in 21st century music videos.
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Smile Politely
TKOL seems nuanced to my ear and amazingly complicated. It's best listened to with headphones plugged in, the volume cranked up loud, the lights turn off, and the world rejected. That happens to be how Radioheads like it.
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American Noise
Once again, they’re doing it their way, and the result is sublime.
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The Owl Mag
The King of Limbs is still very Radiohead, very modern, and very enjoyable.
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Popstache
Radiohead knows exactly where it is, and for the first time in ten years, the band does not have to worry about plotting a course or living up to anyone’s expectations but their own.
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Socialist Review
If you like rock music this will be one of the best albums you hear all year. I think the standout track is the opener, a spectral dub called "Bloom".
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Yuppee
On the whole, the album is emotional, floating, flirting, falling and blooming.
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Herald Sun
It may be a challenging album, but keep stripping back its layers and another element will present itself brighter than before and an arduous beginning will eventually give way to a more rewarding experience.
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Luddite Stereo
The King of Limbs actually reveals itself to be a beautifully compact, concentrated synthesis of all of the band’s previous works.
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The Lamron
I can't say that I find Limbs to be nearly as interesting, enjoyable or consistent as the other three albums.
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Cavacool
After spending a day with The King of Limbs, there’s a lot to like here.
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M Live
Is “The King of Limbs” compelling? Frustrating? Yes and yes. Do I like it? Ask me again next week.
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Sean Is Here
King Of Limbs just kind of sifts through you, to the point where you will probably not remember most of it until you have forced yourself to listen to it a few times. Give it a few gos. I am not going to deny that it is an album that sounds good, though.
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The Line of Best Fit
It’s a hard record to love and, despite its brevity, a nigh-on impossible one to get to grips with quickly; but it’s also a record that dares you to blink first, defies you to give up on it – a rare quality in albums nowadays, and one which makes Radiohead such a compelling band to follow.
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Crikey
It’s best to stick on a set of headphones later in the evening and take the time to relax and let these songs drift away with you. Eight tracks. 38 minutes. It’s really not a lot of time to spare.
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Record Collector Mag
Here then is that rarest of things: a Radiohead album that merely treads water. The water is clear, blue and warm – and you really want to dive in, but it’s not quite deep enough.
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The Music Box
One can’t help but be enthralled as it hears the band rearrange its music from the inside-out.
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Independent
As usual, it bears little direct relation to previous Radiohead albums, but could hardly have been made by any other band, a paradox which could serve as the group's distinctive imprimatur.
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Beats per Minute
The material here is as strong as we’ve come to expect from this band, but its pleasures aren’t nearly as surface-level as even Kid A’s. The best way to judge The King of Limbs in the long run may simply be to hope someone spurs Radiohead on in this direction.
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Digital Spy
The King Of Limbs feels like a cohesive statement from a band that no longer have to make concessions to the demands of a record label, or to the expectations of their fans.
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The National Student
The King of Limbs is late-night Radiohead (downbeat, ethereal and trippy) – the power and eventually brilliance of this record comes in its innate subtleties.
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The Cascade
A pleasant surprise and a timely reminder of just how the game is changing in the music industry.
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Stanford Daily
Overall, while “The King of Limbs” may not be blasted and sung along to on a Friday night, it will certainly give listeners substantial material to contemplate.
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Music Radar
The band have found a nice mix between their traditional instrument set up and the synthesised, sampled and manipulated sound that they introduced around the time of Kid
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NOW Toronto
If this were purely an experimental electronic album, we'd overlook the lack of hooks, but even as such it's not particularly impressive.
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Kisses and Noise
In the end Radiohead was able to continue the amazing feat of producing a new album that sounds fresh and inspired while being unmistakably Radiohead.
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The Waster
Like early Radiohead, the first four tracks on the album are darker, not necessarily somber, but not upbeat either. The last half of the album is cheerful and features more piano than heavy, synthesized beats, mimicking later Radiohead albums. Good thing for us is The King of Limbs finds a way to deliver the best of both worlds.
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No Ripcord
The King of Limbs – while a brave side-step – is a case of style over substance. It’s still superior to a lot of the material currently being released, but we know they’re better than this.
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Coyote Chronicle
From the blooming opening to the separating closer Radiohead’s newest album is bound to conquer minds and limbs alike.
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34st
Radiohead’s latest is evidence that the band is still striving to write perfect albums — and they’re creating work that is unquestionably good along the way.
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The 405
From anybody else this would be regarded as a fantastic album, and that is exactly how I rate it.
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Glasgow Guardian
This is, however, a considered and well-crafted piece of music, but most impressively, a strong restatement of the band’s commitment to reinvention and innovation.
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Louder Sound
Gains in stature from repeat listens.
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The Current
Radiohead may have finally abandoned the album as event, instead giving us exactly the album they wanted to make--no more, no less.
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