There was a lot of trepidation with regards a new Radiohead album. 2011’s The King of Limbs was a great album but not up to the lofty heights of their previous oeuvre. A Moon Shaped Pool had such build-up and hype that it absolutely had to deliver the good. When lead single “Burn the Witch” arrived; all those anxieties and tensions dissipated. Nervy, politicised and string-laden: a golden Radiohead track that mixes the orchestral touches of Kid A and the dark undertones of Hail to the Thief. Complete with a Trumpington-inspired video and one of Thom Yorke’s finest vocals in years – the Oxford legends back to their very best.
Who knows what a “low-flying panic attack” actually is (a drone? an airborne virus?), and who cares if that stabbing string arrangement lends this single more jittery paranoia than its lyrics. Burrowing deep into the language of English folk music, Radiohead rewrite “Karma Police” for the new millennium, as if gobsmacked that this sentiment is still relevant twenty years later.
The Fat Angel Sings 