A Moon Shaped Pool is the ninth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released digitally on 8 May 2016, with CD and LP releases in June 2016 through XL Recordings. Radiohead also sold a special edition from their website, containing additional tracks and artwork.
Radiohead recorded A Moon Shaped Pool in southern France with longtime producer Nigel Godrich. It features strings and choral vocals arranged by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra, and additional drumming from Clive Deamer, who performed with Radiohead on their 2012 King of Limbs tour. The artwork was created by singer Thom Yorke with longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood, who created abstract works by exposing his paintings to weather.
Radiohead promoted A Moon Shaped Pool with the singles "Burn the Witch" and "Daydreaming", accompanied by music videos, and a series of video vignettes set to clips from the album. A world tour began in May 2016, with legs in 2017 and 2018, including headline performances at festivals including Glastonbury and Coachella. The tour included a controversial performance in Tel Aviv, disregarding the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign for an international cultural boycott of Israel.
A Moon Shaped Pool appeared in many publications' lists of the year's best albums. It was the fifth Radiohead album nominated for the Mercury Prize, and was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song (for "Burn the Witch") at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards. It topped the charts in several countries, becoming Radiohead's sixth number-one album in the UK and a bestseller on vinyl. It was certified gold in the UK on 24 June 2016.
Video A Moon Shaped Pool
Background
Several of the tracks on A Moon Shaped Pool were written some time before the album recording. "True Love Waits" dates to at least 1995, and was performed numerous times over the following years, becoming one of Radiohead's most famous unreleased songs. The band first worked on "Burn the Witch" in the sessions for their 2000 album Kid A, and lyrics from the song appear in the artwork for Hail to the Thief (2003) and on Radiohead's website. "Present Tense" dates to 2008, and singer Thom Yorke first performed it in a solo set at the UK Latitude Festival in 2009.
During the tour for their eighth album, The King of Limbs (2011), Radiohead performed new material including future Moon Shaped Pool tracks "Identikit" and "Ful Stop". On tour in the USA, they recorded material including a version of "Identikit" at Jack White's Third Man Records studio, but discarded the recordings.
After the tour ended in 2012, Radiohead entered hiatus and the members worked on side projects. In February 2013, Yorke and Godrich released an album, Amok, with their band Atoms for Peace. In 2014, Yorke and drummer Philip Selway released their respective second solo albums, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes and Weatherhouse. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood scored his third film for director Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice (2014), and collaborated with longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and other musicians on the album Junun (2015).
Maps A Moon Shaped Pool
Recording
Radiohead and Godrich began work on A Moon Shaped Pool in September 2014. The band were slow to regain momentum after their hiatus and worked in "fits and starts". Yorke had few demos and there was no rehearsal period; according to guitarist Ed O'Brien, "We just went straight into recording ... The sound emerged as we recorded." The sessions lasted until Christmas and resumed for three weeks in 2015 in the La Fabrique studio near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. The studio, originally a nineteenth-century mill producing art pigment, had been used by musicians including Morrissey and Nick Cave and houses the world's largest vinyl record collection.
Work was interrupted by the recording of "Spectre", commissioned for the James Bond film of the same name. The song was rejected for the film, according to Greenwood, for being "too dark". Godrich said: "That fucking James Bond movie threw us a massive curveball. It was a real waste of energy. We stopped doing what we were doing and had to concentrate on that for a while since we were told it was something that was going to come to fruition ... It caused a stop right when we were in the middle of [the album recording]."
Godrich's father died on the day of the recording of the string sessions for "Burn the Witch". According to Godrich, "I literally left him on a fucking table in my house and went and recorded. And it was a very, very emotional day for me. He was a string player as well so it was one of those things where it felt like he would want me to go and just do this." Around the same period, Yorke announced his separation from his wife, Rachel Owen, who died of cancer several months after the album's completion. The album is dedicated to the memory Godrich's father and of drum technician Scott Johnson, who died in the 2012 stage collapse before Radiohead's scheduled show in Downsview Park, Toronto. Yorke told Rolling Stone: "There was a lot of difficult stuff going on at the time, and it was a tough time for us as people. It was a miracle that that record got made at all."
In an effort to keep the band focused, instead of using modern digital recording methods, Godrich recorded A Moon Shaped Pool to tape with analog multitrack recorders. This added creative limits, as rerecording a take meant first erasing the previous take. For the introduction to "Daydreaming", the band slowed the tape, creating a pitch-warping effect. Radiohead still used digital manipulation on many tracks; for example, Greenwood used the music programming language Max to manipulate the piano on "Glass Eyes". Drummer Clive Deamer, who had performed with Radiohead on the King of Limbs tour and appeared on their 2011 double single "The Daily Mail" and "Staircase", played additional drums on "Ful Stop". Greenwood estimated that 80% of the album was recorded in two weeks.
In November 2015, conductor Robert Ziegler, who worked with Radiohead on The King of Limbs, tweeted photos of the band recording with a string orchestra. The strings and choir sections were arranged by Greenwood and performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra with conductor Hugh Brunt; the orchestra had previously worked with Greenwood on his score for the 2012 film The Master. The strings were recorded at RAK Studios in London. Cellist Oliver Coates said: "Nigel, Jonny and Thom all have this awesome relationship, and were so animated during the recording. I remember we were laying down the cello part at the end of 'Daydreaming' and Thom said, 'That's it - that is the sound of the record.'" Greenwood had the cellists detune their cellos for the song, creating a "growling" sound. Additional string and choir parts were recorded but cut from the album.
In December 2015, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, Yorke performed three Moon Shaped Pool songs: "The Numbers" (then known as "Silent Spring"), "Present Tense", and "Desert Island Disk". On Christmas Day, Radiohead released "Spectre" on the audio streaming site SoundCloud. According to Godrich, after the band had finished recording in France, "I went off and I just put it all together myself."
Music and lyrics
A Moon Shaped Pool has been described as art rock, chamber pop, and ambient. It combines electronic elements such as drum machines and synthesisers with acoustic timbres such as guitar, piano, and Greenwood's string and choral arrangements. According to Pitchfork writer Jeremy Larson, "while lite orchestrations are nothing new for the band, A Moon Shaped Pool brings them to the fore of the songwriting, and Greenwood's arrangements do more heavy lifting than on any other album." The songs are sequenced in alphabetical order, which Greenwood said was chosen only because the order worked well.
"Burn the Witch" features col legno strings, whereby the players strike their strings with the stick of the bow rather than bowing them, creating a percussive effect. "Daydreaming" is an ambient song with a "simple, sad" piano motif, "spooky" backmasked vocals, and electronic and orchestral elements. "Identikit" has a jam-like opening, choral vocals, and "spacey" electronics, and ends with an "agitated" guitar solo. "Ful Stop" features "malevolent" synthesiser, a "bustle" of rhythms, and phasing guitar arpeggios. "Glass Eyes" has strings and lyrics evocative of an "unguarded phone call".
The Guardian likened the strings, bassline and funk rhythm of "The Numbers" to Serge Gainsbourg's 1970 album Histoire De Melody Nelson. "Present Tense" features a Latin shuffle rhythm. "Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief" combines strings with electronic percussion and a distorted synthesiser. "True Love Waits", first performed on acoustic guitar over 20 years prior, is performed on piano, with additional overdubbed pianos building as the song progresses. The special edition contains two additional tracks: "Ill Wind", featuring a bossa nova rhythm and "icy" synthesisers, and "Spectre", a piano ballad with "decaying orchestral sweeps".
The lyrics discuss love, forgiveness, and regret with, according to Larson, "a sense that beyond tectonic heartbreak there is an anaemic acceptance that is kind of beautiful if you don't get too sad about it." Several critics felt the lyrics were coloured by Yorke's recent separation from his partner of almost 25 years, Rachel Owen, noting that the backmasked vocals of "Daydreaming", when reversed, resemble the words "half of my life". Spencer Kornhaber of the Atlantic was hesitant to describe A Moon Shaped Pool as Yorke's "breakup album", but wrote that it "makes the most sense when heard as a document of a wrenching chapter for one human being." Other themes include climate change on "The Numbers" and the dangers of authority and groupthink on "Burn the Witch".
Artwork
The artwork for A Moon Shaped Pool was created by Yorke with longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood. Donwood worked in a barn with speakers connected to the studio where the band recorded nearby, allowing their music to influence his art. Wanting to move away from figurative art and create work that was more a product of chance, Donwood initially conceived a "painting Dalek" that would squirt paint at canvases, but this proved technically difficult; instead, he experimented with weather, leaving canvases outdoors to allow the elements to affect the paint. Donwood continued the weathering process in Oxfordshire during the band's winter break, with "completely different results", before photographing the works and editing them in Photoshop with Yorke.
Release
A Moon Shaped Pool was released as a download from 7pm BST on 8 May 2016 on Radiohead's website, online music stores including iTunes Store and Amazon Music, and on paid streaming services including Apple Music, Groove Music, Tidal, and Google Play Music (where it was accidentally released hours early). CD and LP editions were released in Japan on 15 June through Hostess Entertainment and in other countries on 17 June through XL Recordings.
A Moon Shaped Pool was added to the streaming service Spotify on 17 June 2016. Yorke and Godrich had made headlines in 2013 for their criticisms of Spotify, arguing that it cannot support new artists. Spotify had been in "advanced discussions" with Radiohead's management and label to make A Moon Shaped Pool the first album available exclusively to the service's paying subscribers, and not those listening to the free service, but no agreement was reached. Spotify spokesman Jonathan Prince said: "Some of the approaches we explored with Radiohead were new, and we ultimately decided that we couldn't deliver on those approaches technologically in time for the album's release schedule."
Radiohead also sold a special edition of A Moon Shaped Pool from their website, shipped from September 2016. It contains the album on CD and two heavyweight 12" vinyl records, plus an additional CD with two extra tracks: "Ill Wind" and the previously released "Spectre". The special edition features packaging inspired by the albums for 78rpm shellac records in the La Fabrique studio, additional artwork, and an original piece of master tape, less than a second in length, from one of Radiohead's prior recording sessions. As tape degrades over time, the band decided to include it in the special edition rather than have it "end up as landfill".
Promotion
Radiohead conducted no interviews and did not tour before the release of A Moon Shaped Pool. On 30 April 2016, days before the album was announced, fans who had previously made orders from Radiohead received embossed cards with lyrics from the album's lead single, "Burn the Witch". On 1 May, Radiohead deleted all content from their website and social media profiles, replacing them with blank images. Donwood said the idea had been "a way of getting rid of all of what [sic] had gone before ... It was like being some sort of evil Bond villain or something, in some lair, pressing buttons ... It was creatively brilliant fun." Pitchfork interpreted the move as symbolic of Radiohead's re-emergence.
After releasing excerpts on Instagram, Radiohead released "Burn the Witch" as a download on 3 May. It was accompanied by a stop-motion animated music video that homages the 1960s English children's television Trumpton Trilogy programmes and the 1973 horror film The Wicker Man. On 6 May, Radiohead released a second single, "Daydreaming", accompanied by a music video directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, for whom Greenwood has scored several films. The video was projected in 35mm film in select theatres. On the same day, Radiohead announced that their ninth album would be released online the following Sunday, but did not reveal the title until its release.
BBC Radio 6 Music played A Moon Shaped Pool in its entirety on the day of release. The following week, Radiohead released the first in a series of video vignettes set to clips from the album by directors and artists including Adam Buxton, Richard Ayoade and Ben Wheatley. On 16 July, after releasing the final vignette, Radiohead announced a fan competition to create a vignette for "Daydreaming" using an alternative version of the song with additional strings. In September and October, Radiohead released videos of Yorke and Greenwood performing "Present Tense" and "The Numbers", directed by Anderson.
On 17 June 2016, the day of the album's physical release, participating record shops around the world held a promotional event, "Live From a Moon Shaped Pool". The event featured a "day-long" audio stream curated by Radiohead and a recording of their recent performance at the London Roundhouse, along with competitions, artwork, and other activities. A participating shop in Istanbul closed following an attack by a gang angered by customers drinking beer and playing music during Ramadan. Radiohead released a statement saying: "Our hearts go out to those attacked tonight ... We hope that some day we will be able to look back on such acts of violent intolerance as things of the ancient past. For now, we can only offer our fans in Istanbul our love and support."
Radiohead toured Europe, North America, and Japan from May to October 2016, joined again by drummer Clive Deamer. They began a second US tour in March 2017, culminating in a headline slot at the April 2017 Coachella festival in California marred by technical problems. A European tour followed in June and July with several festival shows, including Radiohead's third headline performance at Glastonbury Festival in the UK. The tour drew criticism for its inclusion of a date in Tel Aviv on 19 July, disregarding the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign for an international cultural boycott of Israel. Radiohead began a tour of North and South America in April 2018.
Commercial performance
A Moon Shaped Pool debuted at number one in the UK Albums Chart, becoming Radiohead's sixth UK number-one album. It reached number one in Ireland, Norway and Switzerland, and the top ten in several more countries. It was certified gold in the UK on 24 June 2016. Following the physical release in June, the album returned to the top of the UK album chart with combined sales of 44,000, 39,000 of which were physical units and 10,500 vinyl, making A Moon Shaped Pool the week's bestselling vinyl record in the UK. It was the UK's fourth-bestselling vinyl album of 2016, behind David Bowie's Blackstar, Amy Winehouse's Back to Black and the Guardians of the Galaxy film soundtrack. "Burn the Witch" was the year's 26th-bestselling vinyl single in the UK.
Critical reception
A Moon Shaped Pool has a score of 88 out of 100 on the review aggregator website Metacritic, based on 43 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim." Patrick Ryan of USA Today wrote that "the brooding, symphonic and poignant A Moon Shaped Pool ... was well worth the wait." Chris Gerard of PopMatters felt the album was "worthy of Radiohead's peerless catalog, a rich addition to what is the most vital and important string of rock albums of the last 30 years." Jamieson Cox of the Verge praised the album's string arrangements and "emotional magnanimity". Andy Beta of Rolling Stone described it as "a haunting, stunning triumph" and Radiohead's "most gorgeous and desolate album to date", praising its timbres and melodies. Fellow Rolling Stone critic Will Hermes wrote that "it's Yorke's voice that holds the emotional centre, and it's never been more affecting ... [A Moon Shaped Pool is] one of their most musically and emotionally arresting albums."
Sam Richards of NME described A Moon Shaped Pool as "an album of eerie, elusive beauty that is strange, shimmering and uncertain all at the same time." Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote for AllMusic that "there's a melancholic comfort to its ebb and flow, a gentle rocking motion that feels comforting; it's a tonic to the cloistered, scattered King of Limbs and even the sleek alienation of Kid A." Pitchfork editor Jayson Greene felt the album was coloured by Yorke's separation: "The impact of trauma, a sort of car crash of the soul, is palpable. The music here feels loose and unknotted, broken open in the way you can only be after a tragedy." At the end of the year, Pitchfork named "Daydreaming" and "True Love Waits" the 24th and 9th best songs of 2016 respectively.
Eric Renner Brown of Entertainment Weekly praised the album's variety and scale: "By nature, Radiohead albums will always be somewhat epic, but this one is more consistently grandiose than any of the band's releases since 2000's masterpiece Kid A." Jon Pareles, writing for the New York Times, wrote that A Moon Shaped Pool was perhaps "[Radiohead's] darkest statement - though the one with the band's most pastoral surface." He praised Yorke's vocals and Greenwood's string arrangements, writing: "Both Mr. Yorke and Mr. Greenwood are relentlessly inquisitive listeners, lovers of melody and explorers of idioms, makers of puzzles who don't shy away from emotion." Chris Barton of the Los Angeles Times described A Moon Shaped Pool as "a rich and engrossing listen that somehow finds more undiscovered territory for a band that has built a career on doing just that." MTV's Simon Vozick-Levinson wrote: "A Moon Shaped Pool provides a thrilling answer to the existential concerns that confront any band that's made it this far ... After all this time, hearing these five old friends challenge themselves into a new phase of evolution can still blow even a jaded fan's mind."
Justin Joffe, writing for the New York Observer, praised the album as "a stunning display of naked vulnerability and a notable achievement ... Radiohead remain dedicated craftsmen of strange new sonic universes." Like Joffe, Nina Corcoran of Consequence of Sound praised the inclusion of older songs such as "True Love Waits", writing: "Waiting five years to hear previously released tracks is worth it precisely because Radiohead finally feels connected enough to perform them with meaning ... waiting to release a studio recording of a song over two decades old allowed Radiohead to peel its words when riper than ever." Mike Diver of the Quietus, however, felt the inclusion of older songs gave the album the unwelcome feeling of a compilation album, writing: "Certain tracks feel less than fully fleshed out, really given the treatment that their age warrants ... There's simply so little spark here, barely glowing embers and blackened dust where once Radiohead blazed a fascinating, furious trail for others to attempt to follow."
Jamie Milton of DIY felt that the album needed "another breakneck force shock to the system" similar to "Ful Stop", and that it contained some unnecessary elements, such as the "over-tinkering echo" of "Present Tense" and the "jagged closing section" of "Decks Dark". Nonetheless, Milton concluded: "These are gorgeous, human, complete works - some of the best of [Radiohead's] remarkable career." Alexis Petridis of the Guardian criticised the "suffocating gloom of the lyrics", but felt the album was an improvement over The King of Limbs, writing that Radiohead had "[achieved] something they've never achieved before ... Alone among their commercial peers, Radiohead are held to not just release albums but make grand artistic statements worth dissecting and poring over."
Accolades
A Moon Shaped Pool was the fifth Radiohead album nominated for the Mercury Prize, making Radiohead the most shortlisted act in the award's history. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, it was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song (for "Burn the Witch"). It was also shortlisted for the Independent Music Companies Association Album of the Year Award, which goes to the best album released on an independent European label. It appeared on numerous publications' lists of the best albums of 2016.
Track listing
All tracks written by Radiohead.
Personnel
Adapted from the album liner notes.
Charts
Certifications
Release history
Notes and references
External links
- Official website of the album
- Official website of Radiohead
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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