Why Everyone’s Talking About Radiohead

They’re not pop icons. They’re not sex symbols. And although they’ve created some of the most electrifying and melodic guitar-driven rock in the genre’s history, they’ve chosen to only dabble in that occasionally for almost two decades now.

A new Radiohead album is always a big deal, because the band is one of the most creative, accomplished, and flat-out technically skilled groups making music today.

It doesn’t matter. When Radiohead releases a new album, it’s an event. Music critics drop everything and reach for their headphones. The band’s worldwide fans go crazy. Some even pick up pictures of frontman Thom Yorke, eat the pictures, and post videos of their crazed consumption online. (You can blame Reddit for that one.)

A quintet of British musicians that painstakingly crafts wildly experimental art rock, Radiohead revealed its first album in five years, “A Moon Shaped Pool,” on May 8. (That was the digital release date, with CD and vinyl issues to follow June 17.)

Radiohead being Radiohead, this was no standard album release. The band, which once offered up a complete studio album (2007’s “In Rainbows”) as a pay-what-you-want download, kicked off interest by deleting its entire official Internet presence (website and social media profiles) on April 30.

The following week, the group suddenly delivered videos for “Pool” tracks “Burn the Witch” and “Daydreaming,” and then immediately announced the album’s title and digital release date.

Radiohead made another typically atypical move by releasing the album for streaming on Apple Music and Tidal but not Spotify. Perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising, given that Yorke called Spotify “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse” a few years ago.

Then again, the band did make “Burn the Witch” and “Daydreaming” individually available for streaming on Spotify. Why? Because Radiohead.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2oS2hoL0k”]

A new Radiohead album is always a big deal, because the band is one of the most creative, accomplished, and flat-out technically skilled groups making music today. The critical reception to “Pool” has been exceedingly positive, with an aggregate score of 86, indicating “universal acclaim,” on Metacritic. It’s nothing new for Radiohead, which has five albums on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. That’s one more than Prince, Pink Floyd, or Stevie Wonder (each have four).

At a time when some proclaim popular music a dying art, the excitement and acclaim for “Pool” are heartening — especially for a band that no longer shows any interest in appealing to typical alt-rock sensibilities. “Pool” is brilliant and beautiful in places, but it’s as challenging as anything Radiohead has ever released — and that’s a high bar.

Radiohead will forever get the benefit of the doubt simply for the untouchable one-two punch of “The Bends” (1995) and “OK Computer” (1997). Both albums are universally acclaimed, but they’re very different. The former is a dazzling, blistering display of pop-rock songcraft; the latter is a haunting, almost neurotic account of the world around us.

For the most part, critics and fans stuck with Radiohead through the subsequent five albums between “OK Computer” and “Pool,” even as the group’s radical experimentation seemed intended to confound everyone who loved the early albums. (In particular, the band shelved the lead guitar work of Jonny Greenwood, one of the most talented guitarists in modern popular music, for the majority of albums “Kid A” and “Amnesiac.”)

[lz_related_box id=”133908″]

As engagingly haunting as “Pool” is, it’s no bold new musical statement. And old-school fans hoping the band would return to the guitar-rock majesty of its early songs will find slim pickings among the mostly meditative tracks here.

One of the album’s best songs, the heart-rending closer “True Love Waits,” is the furthest thing from new. This is its first released studio recording, but the tune dates back at least two decades, and an excellent live version appeared on 2001’s “I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings.” (The “Pool” version trades in Yorke’s acoustic guitar strumming for a cooler piano arrangement, creating an entirely different feel.)

That’s not the only chestnut on the new album. The band started working on what would become the opening track, “Burn the Witch,” in 2000, and a few other songs incubated over the years as well. Suffice it to say, the guys can be a bit perfectionistic.

Oh, yeah: the photo-eating thing. A fan on Reddit was so pessimistic the band would actually announce the new album by May 6, he said he’d eat a photo of Yorke if proven wrong. Several other Redditors joined the challenge. They were wrong — but they made good on their promises, for better or worse.

Which makes it very much a Radiohead story — and that’s something to be admired in an increasingly homogeneous media landscape. The band has no interest in appealing to the lowest common denominator, but that gives it the freedom to craft a record as weird and wonderful as “Pool.” These days, that’s definitely an event.