I’ve been listening to this record for quite a few months now (since practically the hour of its release) and I gotta say I’m still not totally sold on it. A lot of the usual nomenclature of reviews becomes useless when we talk about a fairly non-traditional group like Radiohead, but I’ll do my best.

To begin with, saying something along the lines of ‘it’s a departure from their previous work’ is kindof a pointless comment. Radiohead albums are nearly always marked by a distinct (and often radical) evolution in sound from album to album, so no surprise there. I guess in the past though, I always eventually warmed up to the new thing, and despite my best efforts, that’s not happening here.

In my defense, I’m not trying to like the record because I think I should. This tenacity is based on my personal experience with Yorke and co., wherein I have almost without fail disliked every one of their records upon my initial listen, but slowly grew to love each of them quite a lot. Still waiting on that for TKOL.

Why? Geez, man. I think I just don’t really like dub-step? Maybe? Who knows. Let’s start with what I did like. In a nutshell, it’s this:

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‘Little By Little’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

‘Little By Little‘ is the track where I feel that this ever-present rattle of fast-paced percussion that pervades the album works best. It makes the most interesting use of Yorke’s voice, and seems to have a more intricate layering of instrumentation than the other songs. I like that it’s a dark track, with intentions tending towards ill rather than good. Having something sound malevolent without being outright evil takes some subtlety, and the craftsmanship it praiseworthy.

But then you get dumped from that right into a track like ‘Feral’ which sounds like random tones bouncing around in some echo chamber where a drum machine was left on. It was tracks like this that I found difficult to access and almost impossible to process or comprehend. Radiohead has always taken out typical song elements and replaced them with unorthodox sounds to achieve something new, but it seems as if they finally took out one two many things, and that stands in their place is often not enough.

‘Lotus Flower’ is our only other real anchor on the record, it has the bizarre tonality of the rest of the album, but it also has some substance, giving it weight and dimension, and therein making it a really enjoyable track to listen to.

A song I’d characterize as ‘wraith-like’, haunting in it’s emptiness, is the cinematic ‘Codex‘:

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‘Codex’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

And for a closer, ‘Separator’ isn’t bad, but it’s also a little underwhelming, and a little stupid. “If you think this is over / then you’re wrong.” Really? By my count, ‘Separator’ is track 8 of 8, and the album is a short 8 at that.

Anything not mentioned here isn’t bad, but just didn’t seem noteworthy to me. But I don’t wanna harp on Radiohead. Far from it.

Every record of theirs I view as an experiment to push the boundaries of music, laughing at the very notion of genre. This one did exactly what its predecessors did in that regard, and I’ve no doubt that the group will take what they learned from The King of Limbs and create something even weirder and more amazing on their next outing.

I’ve just got my fingers crossed that it’s more fun to listen to than this was (and a few minutes longer, too!).

Radiohead – The King of Limbs

So this is just a quick little blip about the recent updates to the iOS software on Apple devices that was pushed a few weeks ago.

I don’t know that I ever cut loose about it on this site, but to anybody who’s ever let me “get into it” about smartphones or iPhones or digital media players or anything like that, this is probably something they’ve heard before.

In March of 2010 I got an iPhone to replace the aging messaging phone I’d had previously. At first, I was hesitant to the entire idea. The notion of a single device absorbing all the functions of my menagerie of gadgets seemed nonsensical. Why would you want one device to perform many functions at an average level when you could have a handful of specialized ones that performed exceptionally? As a lover of gadgets, I was hesitant to consolidate.

But, needless to say, I took the plunge. My skepticism was validated by the lack of functionality afforded by the old ‘iPod’ app native to iOS. One of the main reasons I like iTunes (in spite of the fact that in the old days it was a tremendous resource hog, and more recently due to the shameless plugging of services like ‘Genius’ and ‘Ping’) is that you can utilize a wealth of metadata to customize the way your music collection was organized.

Me? I like my records alphabetized by artist, and subsorted by year of release. As I type this I realize there’s a whole can of worms to be opened on the merits of various schema, but we should save that for another day. The takeaway here is that I’m very particular about how my music is organized. In particular, I like collections of songs from various artists (mix tapes, etc.) and other media (soundtracks) to be sorted separately from ‘regular’ albums.

iTunes will happily oblige such a configuration (Sort: Albums By Artist/Year, ‘Compilations’ set to ‘On’), and as of the introduction of video functionality, the iPod could manage well enough too. I was irked, to say the least, when the iPod App supported next to none of these features.

Browsing on the iPhone via artists took you to a giant list of every artist in your collection, roughly half of which had only a single song to their name. This drove me mad!!! A huge selling point of the iPhone is that it plays music, but nobody every bothers to mention that it does a terrible job organizing a library.

I’m not naïve; I know that audiophile music junkies such as myself are not the target audience of this functionality. It’s for people who listen to the same 6-7 albums while they walk to school or work out at the gym. But still, in the three years this software has been developed, it’s weird to me this was never addressed.

With the iOS 5 update, the iPod App was replaced by the Music App, and with it, a tiny little additional setting to “Group By Album Artist.” And just like that, my artists list is clean and tidy, and all the other miscellany reside in the compilations list. So for the moment, I’m placated. Still can’t sort by year of release within a given artist, but whatever.

Cleaning up the artists list solved a big usability issue of mine, and I’m grateful for that much. I’m also happy the newer models finally upped the storage capacity to 64 GB, because I’m just now starting to hit the ceiling on 32 GB. That said, I’m done hoping that they’ll open this thing up to be fully customizable.

However, in the unlikely event that the Music App was given some real love, I’d be mad appreciative.

Word on the street is that Marcus Mumford and his crew have a new LP due early (February?) of next year. New tracks have been played at festivals and other shows over the past few months, but the following caught my ear:

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‘Ghosts (That We Knew)’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

(Kudos to Philadelphia’s 104.5, via CoS)

The obligatory “thank god it’s a track that is not on Sigh No More” comment aside, I do like this song. Mumford & Sons has a knack for slower songs that pick up pace, and even though this one never reaches the frenetic pacing of some of their previous songs, it’s still got a very cool spark to it.

I don’t really have much else to say about the track, I just know that even from the first listen it tugged at my emotions the way Sign No More did when I heard it for the first time. Let me know what you think!

Say what you will about Cure frontman Robert Smith (IE: he was really, really goofy in The Love Cats video), but he seems to be carving out a fantastic little niche for himself.

The gimmick is simple: up-and-coming artist with an electronic bent lets Robert Smith do their vocals.

This worked out beautifully with last year’s re-imagining of Crystal Castle’s ‘Not In Love’, and once again on his recent collaboration with The Japanese Popstars.

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‘Take Forever (ft. Robert Smith)’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

Clocking in at just under 6 minutes, the song almost ends at the halfway point, but The Japanese Popstars and Smith obviously knew what they had was good, and they wisely reboot the song for a second go-’round.

The synth is in places soaring, in others subdued. The guitar lines also make a subtle but ever-present contribution to the work as well. The lyric “yeah you know / tonight will end / it always does” is glibly insightful, and fits perfectly with Smith’s crowing despair-infused lyrics.

‘Take Forever’ is a solid track, and if Smith and his contemporaries can keep this up it’s good news for everyone. I’m glad he’s shied away from a full album, because I think when stretched to LP length the effect might be diluted. It’s more fun to get a concentrated dose of Smith’s brand of brooding infused with some new musical ideas every couple of months.

A few weeks ago I was completely stoked by the opening track off of Blood Pressures, ‘Future Starts Slow‘ (listen on the previous post), and at that time I was skeptical that the rest of the album could live up to it.

It’s always a happy day when I’m proven wrong about something like that.

There ended up being quite a few other standout tracks on the rest of the record, most of which are best enjoyed with a good deal of volume behind them. Mosshart’s vocals continue to astound and impress, and that back-alley wail of the guitars carries you through the album.

The opening noise-feedback of ‘Satellite’ initially annoyed me, but I came to enjoy it on account of the creative chorus and vocal composition. ‘Heart Is a Beating Drum’ has a lot of spunk to it, with a melody that, even through headphones, hits you right square in the chest and demands your attention. ‘Nail In My Coffin‘ borders on manic, with buzzing guitars and swirling distortion, as well as the “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” chorus that makes the track my sleeper hit of the album.

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‘Nail In My Coffin’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

‘Wild Charms’ is a segue track, abruptly slowing the pace of the album, but to good effect. A dour, down-tempo, short number here let’s us catch our breath, and the strung-out bassline of the proceeding song ‘DNA’ comes off a hell of a lot cooler because of it. The latter has gotten some good traction thus far in the music blogosphere, and the acclaim is well-earned.

Following that is another favorite of mine, the emotional, somewhat sensual ‘Baby Says‘.

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‘Baby Says’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

The lyrics are coherent, but still vague enough as to elude any obvious narrative. This works to its advantage though, as most of what makes this song so captivating is in the phrasing and word choice. A sample of lyrics follows,

Baby says, she’s dying to meet you
Take you off and make your blood hum
And tremble like the fairground lights

Baby says, if ever you see skin as fair
Or eyes as deep and as black as mine
I know you’re lying

Baby says, a howl of romance I get
From all you sleeping dogs
You thugs of god
I’ll get one yet

The notion of “thugs of god” seemed a really cool, dark idea to play with, and the swinging, almost slow-dancey vibe of the song really, really impressed me. It has quite the cinematic feel to it, which I’ll admit I’m a complete sucker for.

‘The Last Goodbye’, perhaps the most exposed, vulnerable track on Blood Pressures grew on me in time. It seems out of place, and I guess it is, but the addition of strings give the track a different sound, which lends the album more texture than it would have claim to otherwise. The last three tracks are solid enough that I always listen to the end, though they’re perhaps not particularly notable in their own right.

Blood Pressures is an album that I likely would have hated a few years ago. On the first go, it seems flat and loud, with no clear ‘radio-friendly’ place to start. I’m glad I was able to get my foot in the door with ‘Future Starts Slow’, however, because The Kills have provided us with an incredibly rich album that also just outright kicks some ass. That’s the mental characterization I have of this music: a little dirty, even a bit violent, but all heart. That raw emotion channeled through Mosshart’s intoxicating voice makes for a force to be reckoned with.

And reckon you should. The album is worth your time, no questions asked.

The Kills – Blood Pressures