On Friday, Radiohead premiered their second new clip in a week's time. A music video for hypnotic hymn "Daydreaming," the video was cut by Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson. This followed Tuesday's reveal of "Burn the Witch."
Yesterday, at 7:00 p.m. in the U.K. (2:00 p.m. Eastern), the band let loose new album A Moon Shaped Pool. Their ninth studio full-length, the effort opens with both previously-released singles and delves deep into the group's musical history.
As progressive artists constantly reinterpreting their output, the LP contains fresh compositions alongside new workings of familiar Radiohead tunes. The album's closing selection, "True Love Waits," appears here in its debut studio version, though it's been performed in concert by the band since 1995 and appears as an acoustic encore on their stopgap 2001 live album, I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings.
Even lead single "Burn the Witch" was workshopped by the musicians as early as the sessions for their year 2000 epic, Kid A. The new album's "Identikit" has also been previously performed, appearing on the band's 2012 broadcast of Austin City Limits.
The instant, online drop of Pool is consistent with the group's pioneering release strategies, previously issuing albums on an experimental pay-what-you-want scale. Radiohead always has a finger on the pulse of cyberculture, though frontman Thom Yorke explained to The Guardian the group's distrust of Internet commoditization:
"We were so into the net around the time of Kid A," he says. "Really thought it might be an amazing way of connecting and communicating. And then very quickly we started having meetings where people started talking about what we did as 'content.' They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this 'content' which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it?"
A Moon Shaped Pool is available online now, with a physical release scheduled for Friday, June 17. Below, watch the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed "Daydreaming."
