There are few artists that remain my all-time faves. Usually, these are artists behind albums that have ushered me through various phases of my life, spoke to my soul, comforted, inspired, excited — and these are artists that continue to do so, whether they're still creating new music or not.
Radiohead holds a place near the top, and every time the UK's iconoclastic avant rock band pushes out new material, I feel that old familiar thrill. The past several years has seen them become more blase about releases, usually, giving little or no warning before dropping a new LP and seeming to re-invent themselves with each one.
Yesterday, Radiohead unleashed a brand new single and video for the ominous track "Burn the Witch," which finds Colin Greenwood's distinctive groove-flexing bassline underscoring scraped and plucked violin passages that become part of the song's ominously chugging rhythm, as Thom Yorke's ever-haunting sky-touching wail delivers brooding lines like "Stay in the shadows / Cheer at the gallows."
No word yet on when a new album is coming, but they've already announced a tour and the release of this single likely means we'll get something at any time. I can't wait.
Watch the video below. Purchase a copy of the single HERE. If you want to read something more depthy about it, Pitchfork.com decodes the politics of the video and offers a rather long analysis of its origins HERE. (Apparently it's inspired by Gordon Murray's '60s-era stop-motion claymation series Trumptonshire Trilogy, and the rag draws parallels between that program's content and the content of Radiohead's song and video).
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2016.