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Radiohead releases ‘King of Limbs’ earlier than expected, unveils new video

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On Monday, Radiohead did music writers the world over a favor, announcing that a new album would be released in days, and therefore bringing to an abrupt halt numerous day-after-Grammys so-called ‘think-pieces,’ as the globe rushed Radiohead stories/items to the Web.

‘The King of Limbs,’ the band announced, would be released on Saturday, available in digital formats and what the band dubbed a ‘newspaper format,’ which included vinyl pressings, a compact disc and 625 ‘tiny pieces’ of artwork, to be shipped in May.

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Yet those who had planned to spend Saturday morning with ‘The King of Limbs’ can now devote the final business day of the week to the album instead. ‘With everything ready on their website, the band decided to bring forward the release rather than wait until the previously announced date of Saturday, Feb. 19 to deliver the music,’ read a statement from the act’s publicity firm, Nasty Little Man.

It’s not uncommon for an act to rush an album out once it has leaked, but simply posting it because everything is ‘ready’ is still something of a rarity. The band, of course, had a slightly more cryptic reasoning: ‘It’s Friday... It’s almost the weekend... It’s a full moon....’

It took this writer three tries to load the Radiohead site without a Web timeout message, but ‘The King of Limbs’ was downloaded safely and quickly within five minutes of first visiting the site this A.M. While you wait for the download, Radiohead also posted a video for the glitchy-rhythmic track ‘Lotus Flower,’ which had been a regular in the band’s sets for some time now. It is embedded above.

Pop & Hiss will, of course, be reviewing ‘The King of Limbs,’ in the near future.

-- Todd Martens

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