Radiohead
– A Moon Shaped Pool
This isn’t the sound of a band reinventing itself. It’s the sound of a band exhausted from reinvention, turning the lens inward, and finding ghosts in the reflection. A Moon Shaped Pool doesn’t whisper because it’s afraid—it whispers because it knows you’ve been shouting too long to hear anything else. It’s Radiohead as alchemists again, transmuting grief, memory, and dread into something weightless and magnetic.
Best of…
Thom Yorke floats over these songs like a tired prophet, his voice more fragile than it’s ever been, but somehow more pointed. There’s heartbreak stitched into every phrase, a quiet unraveling that seems too private to be shared—but here we are, eavesdropping on the end of something. Jonny Greenwood’s strings creep in like fog: never showy, always unsettling. The arrangements don’t bloom—they dissolve, leaving shapes in their place.
If OK Computer was the scream and Kid A the disassociation, A Moon Shaped Pool is the haunted stillness that follows. It’s not warm. It’s not cold. It’s a murmur in the back of your skull, the last song in the club before the lights come on. What makes it great? Its refusal to chase past glories. Its quiet courage to just be—weird, worn, and whispering truths into the void.
Choice Tracks
Burn the Witch
A brutal opening wrapped in cellophane. The strings jab like warning sirens. Yorke’s falsetto rides atop like a death omen on parade. It’s Radiohead’s most urgent moment in years, and it snarls with a polite, terrifying grin.
Daydreaming
This is the sound of walking through the ashes of something once bright. Piano notes drift and flicker. Time stretches. Yorke’s voice sounds like he’s already halfway gone. The backward vocals at the end don’t need deciphering—they feel like mourning.
Decks Dark
There’s a spaceship in the sky, and no one’s surprised. This track coils around itself, blending Rhodes piano, murky beats, and a choir that doesn’t comfort. It captures that specific dread of realizing the end won’t be loud—it’ll be quiet.
The Numbers
This one carries a pulse—almost a groove. Acoustic guitar laced with sinister optimism. It could almost pass for hopeful if it didn’t feel like a warning coded in music. When the strings swell, it’s less sunrise, more wildfire.
True Love Waits
Finally, the ghost is named. After years of existing only in live versions, it lands here not as a grand finale, but as a goodbye letter sung through tears. Stripped of its youthful hope, it’s devastating. The love still waits—but the lovers have moved on.
A Moon Shaped Pool doesn’t demand your attention. It asks for it, quietly, like someone knocking once and leaving if you don’t answer. But if you let it in, it lingers. It reminds you of the weight of memory. And that, sometimes, is heavier than noise.