By JJT (written for ThinkChristian.net)

With A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead finds a strange peace at the eye of its postmodern storm.

I’ve long been an admirer of Radiohead’s dystopian, postmodern, synthetic psychedelia. To be honest, however, many of their most impressive albums have been difficult for me to listen to for very long. Like a painful film, a heated conversation or an emotional breakdown, their songs have traditionally possessed a type of energy that is fatiguing over time. That’s what caught me so off guard once I finally got to sit with their new release, A Moon Shaped Pool. Gone is the aural razor wire and acidic lyrical assault. Instead, the listener encounters a warm and symphonic – while still complex and challenging – conversation about death, identity, acceptance and something like grace.

It would miss the point to call A Moon Shaped Pool Radiohead’s “kinder, gentler” album, yet the songs are definitely more personal and inviting than anything in their catalog. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who has launched a thriving side career as a film composer (There Will Be Blood) and is currently composer-in-residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra, pushes himself well past the guitar-as-weapon style that has made each of Radiohead’s albums interesting and challenging. Here his primary role seems to be as an orchestrator who happens to have a guitar and an arsenal of incredible effect pedals. The result is a collection of resonant songs that defy convention and yet remain compellingly listenable, revealing new layers with repeated exploration.

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