More about: Radiohead
Beth Gordon's 8-year-old son gives us a helpful track-by-track review of Radiohead's latest
So Radiohead's latest, bewildering, brilliant album is here. But, if you're at the water-cooler and don't know what to say about it, here's a handy review by an eight-year old so you know what's what.
Beth Gordon recently shared on Twitter her son's track-by-track review of Radiohead's ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool - which you can listen to here.
After nearly the entirety of the internet chipped in with their thoughts on the collection of tracks, it's interesting to see what the youth of today think about indie-music's shining light.
The little scamp called 'Burn the Witch' "festival like" which is a pretty glowing reaction compared to 'Daydreaming' which gets, "A long song kind of boring" - brutal. Track four, 'Desert Island Disk' is initially the child's favourite, yet later 'Tinker Tailor...' gets a special circle round it and is now called, "My favourite song on the album".
For 'The Numbers' he says, "reminds me of Kung fu Panda", which we assume is a good thing? There have been quite a few sequels, but if it's the original you'd assume it's a positive. 'True Love Waits', the album closer is assessed as "could make people cry", not wrong there, either. At this point I think I'm meant to say, 'This kid gets an A'.
You can see the full review here, and to be fair a lot of it is spot-on, although the 7/10 for an album that makes you cry is a bit harsh:
A track-by-track review of @radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool (by my 8-year-old). #AMoonShapedPool pic.twitter.com/CkNNYkT6Fb
— Beth Gordon (@bethgordon) 8 May 2016
Head on over here to read our review of the album, which is a little bit more in-depth.
The Wall Street Journal: "It makes the experimental accessible while still challenging, through the breadth and depth of its expression, the definition of what constitutes popular music in 2016.”
Rolling Stone: "Radiohead's least rock-oriented album in the 21st century doubles as its most gorgeous and desolate album to date.”
The Sydney Morning Herald: "A Moon Shaped Pool, as with its eight predecessors, is not a bundle of laughs. It doesn't want you to throw open the windows and sing, or claim your place in the world because dammit you deserve it. This is not about self-help or coming to some understanding.”
The Telegraph: “A Moon Shaped Pool turns out to be Radiohead's most melodically accessible collection, almost meditative in its ethereal mid-tempo loveliness, yet shot through with the kind of edgy details that never quite let a listener relax. It is chill-out music to put your nerves on edge.”
Gigwise: "For a band who have already come to both defy and define genre at every turn, having torn up the map of where music should lead them, Radiohead now take a turn down a previously untrodden, sumptuous garden path.”
The New York Times: "The future is dire, the past a blur and the present heartbroken yet hinting at possibilities on Radiohead’s “A Moon Shaped Pool,” its ninth studio album and perhaps its darkest statement — though the one with the band’s most pastoral surface.”
The Guardian: "You’d hesitate to call it more poppy – this is still an album on which standard verse-chorus structures are very much subject to subsidence, and on which the instruments buried deep in the mix frequently seem to be playing an entirely different song to those in the foreground – but it’s certainly sharper and more focused.”
Pitchfork: "So what is new on A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead’s first studio album since 2011’s The King of Limbs? Very little, which to me is what immediately makes it so great.”
NME: “[The album] features a beautiful combo of strings, piano, electronic experiments, Jonny Greenwood's spidery guitar lines and Yorke's exquisite-as-ever lyrics."
More about: Radiohead
Photo: WENN
