Brutal and beautiful; serene and scary, Radiohead’s album “A Moon Shaped Pool” is the band’s finest since the turn of the Millennium.Those who have caught the British group live – or solo sets by Thom Yorke – have heard hints of a fair few tracks here, going right back to before 2000 in fact. The band has a way of toying with songs before finally committing to them: “Give Up the Ghost” was haunting Yorke long before it showed up on “The King of Limbs” in 2011. That spooky refrain – “don’t hurt me” – is now replaced by words such as “this is a low-flying panic attack.” Which says it all.There must be a fair few fans who had given up hope of anything as radio-friendly as Radiohead’s early music. The over-lauded “Ok Computer” was followed in 2000 with an abrupt switch: “Kid A” was even better and initially looked a one-off brave experiment. It proved to be the first in a run of more alternative music that took risks and sometimes succeeded.This new 52-minute meditation is not a return to real commercialism – or as close as Radiohead ever got in its Parlophone days. Still, it may well make an impact on the Billboard charts.This ninth studio album is also sonorously strange, with brooding synths and drums. The sugaring is on the bitter pill of sometimes dark, difficult, depressing, and despairing messages.The opening track, “Burn the Witch,” has been around for years. It now teams Yorke’s falsetto with chirpy stings, arranged by Jonny Greenwood. Especially with the video version, it is easy to miss the menace building up. But what was that opening line? “Stay in the shadows, cheer at the gallows.” The gallows? The images show a friendly world like a 1960s British TV show, “Trumpton,” which gradually morphs into “The Wicker Man” cult horror film. The stings get more agitated, prompting closer attention to the lyrics: “Burn the witch, we know where you live.”It is frankly astonishing. However, if you don’t like coded political or ecological messages hidden under layers of ambient and acoustic charm, then look elsewhere. A lot could be read into the words: refugees, the blaming of people different from oneself. Or a warning against doing nothing in the face of the Thought Police: “Abandon all reason/ Avoid all eye contact/ Do not react.”Some of this doomy spirit surely comes from Yorke splitting up with his partner for 25 years. Elsewhere he notes “I feel this love runs cold,” “different types of love are possible,” and “broken hearts make it rain.” “The Bends,” way back in 1995, perfected that sweet-and-sour approach to music: “She tastes like the real thing, my fake plastic love…”The closer is “True Love Waits,” a number around since 1995 and a live favorite. “Don’t leave… true love waits in haunted attics,” Yorke croons. This is not an instant upbeat piece of entertainment but a thoughtful slow grower that will gain on repeated plays.It is delivered yet again with an unconventional release strategy. In the past, we have had surprise Radiohead releases and “pay-as-you-want” downloads. This time the band deleted all of its online presence before putting the music n Apple Music, Amazon and Tidal, not Spotify, with physical releases to follow only in June on XL Records.Rating: *****.
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