Thought I'd be unoriginal and live blog on the album in a fairly stream of consciousness style that'll be uninteresting to read.
Ohh Bloom gets off to a nice start, little bit like backdrafts, quite a wintery feel to the song.
Builds to a nice epic crescendo in the middle of the song,
Nice rattling drums
Morning Mr Magpie
Ahh think this is one that must have been knocking around for ages, a slightly funkier amnesiac track so far.
Nice kicking feel to the vocals
Again this has quite a building feel to it, like the nice kick to the lyrics.
Already I'm enjoying the more dynamic range to the songs, building and dipping down.
More guitary feel too Little by Little
Again though there's a real feeling of building to climaxes in this album so far.
Very up and down guitar rhythm to it, nice drums but maybe the blandest so far
The title to Feral seems appropriate to the feel so far, a little bit reminiscent of pulk/pull so far, in a good way.
Certainly feel the more electronic direction is a good way for them to go at this point.
Well already halfway through the album.
Things starting to feel a little samey now with Lotus Flower
Not really sure what to make of this one so far, can see it growing on me
Ahh nice to have Thom showing more of a vocal range again.
Just feels like this one is missing something, but I can see it growing on me.
It strikes me that having more compact albums means you get less wildcards on the album which I think I prefer.
Odd start to Codex but now seems to be revealing itself to be the ethereal piano track of the album
Yeah this is nice, real warmth to the vocals.
There have been some very nice strings on the album, are they strings, and I’m not even sure? (This is why I don't write so much about music)
Very chilled sort of wish it had been longer and went to other places. Odd fade out.
But it fades in to give up the Ghost
Ooh acoustic guitars and a choir feel, just what it needed to do at this point. Very nice
Certainly been a consistent feel throughout this album, there's been a very dreamlike feel to the album, even for Radiohead. Just right for listening to around midnight.
And onto Separator the final track already.
Drums have somehow felt more live and more electronic than on in rainbows for a while.
Feels quite a lot like lotus flower so far
Nice use of vocal harmonies
Oh a nice rhythm coming in to contrast with the bass, it's needed more things like this throughout the album, more contrasts.
Back to a nice building feel again, it's built to a more upbeat feel, getting more complex and hypnotic as it goes along.
In Summary then
I like it a lot more than In Rainbows, it does all feel more like a strong e.p than an album, it’s consistent though with a few weaker spots, but maybe they'll be growers. It still feels like we're never going to get anything truly adventurous from them again, like they're past doing anything truly surprising, since Amnesiac they just seem to have taken their influences and blended them together.
I completely understand why they'd want to go in the direction of shorter albums, with more consistent themes, after HTTT was a bit of a mess, but I think that still remains my favourite post-amnesiac album on first impressions, I like a bit of variety to albums, for them to take you to different places throughout, as it is all the songs on this album tend to feel a little too samey, you don't get any real jolts as a song takes you out of the trance you were in. But maybe it's good for them to do a few albums like this.
It certainly does have a dreamlike feel throughout, and it still takes you through different emotions throughout, through excitement, tension, reflective, sad but it surprised by ending on quite a happy, upbeat note. At least it felt that way to me, so I'll certainly be looking forward to any B-sides that come out and be interested to see what they do next. This is good because I had got to a point where I’d thought they weren’t really for me anymore.
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