(XL)

It’s hard to isolate The King of Limbs from its context, especially when Radiohead do something like produce it as a ‘newspaper album’ – the £30 version comes wrapped in ‘many large sheets of artwork’ that embrace the distortions of packaging and media.

Thom Yorke’s sideways lyrical references to thievery, accumulation and the ‘empty space inside my heart’ take things into familiar, but not boring, territory. The world remains cold and greedy; androids remain paranoid; and Radiohead continue to make great (if quite similar) music. By turns awkwardly skittering and straightforwardly melodic, and covering both sadness and hope, this is another quiet gem from a band you couldn’t pick apart, and wouldn’t want to.

Radiohead - Lotus Flower