A Moon Shaped Pool
A Moon Shaped Pool is the ninth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released digitally on 8 May 2016, with a retail release on 17 June 2016 through XL Recordings. It was produced by Radiohead's longtime collaborator Nigel Godrich.
Radiohead recorded A Moon Shaped Pool in RAK Studios in London, their studio in Oxford, and the La Fabrique studio in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. It features strings and choir arranged by the guitarist Jonny Greenwood and performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra. Several songs, such as "True Love Waits" and "Burn the Witch", were written years earlier. The lyrics address climate change, groupthink and heartbreak. Many critics saw them as a response to the split of the singer, Thom Yorke, from his wife, Rachel Owen. Radiohead's longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood created the abstract cover by exposing his paintings to weather.
Radiohead promoted A Moon Shaped Pool with singles and videos for "Burn the Witch" and "Daydreaming", a viral campaign of postcards and social media posts, and a series of video vignettes. Radiohead toured in 2016, 2017 and 2018, with headline performances at festivals including Glastonbury and Coachella. Their performance in Tel Aviv drew criticism from supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign for an international cultural boycott of Israel.
A Moon Shaped Pool was named one of the best albums of the year and decade by many publications. It was the fifth Radiohead album nominated for the Mercury Prize, and was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards. It topped the charts in several countries, becoming Radiohead's sixth number one on the UK Album Charts, and was a bestseller on vinyl. It is certified platinum in the UK and Canada, and gold in the US, Australia, France and Italy.
Background
Several songs on A Moon Shaped Pool were written years before the recording. Radiohead first performed "True Love Waits" in 1995, and attempted to record it several times, but could not settle on an arrangement. Over the years, it became one of their best-known unreleased songs. Radiohead first worked on "Burn the Witch" in the sessions for Kid A and again in subsequent album sessions. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, first performed "Present Tense" in a solo set at the UK Latitude Festival in 2009.During the tour for their eighth album, The King of Limbs, Radiohead performed new material, including the future Moon Shaped Pool tracks "Identikit" and "Ful Stop". On tour in 2012, they recorded two songs at the Third Man Records studio in Nashville, Tennessee, including a version of "Identikit", but discarded the recordings as substandard. After the tour ended that year, Radiohead entered hiatus and the members worked on side projects.
Recording
Radiohead began work on A Moon Shaped Pool with their longtime producer, Nigel Godrich, in their Oxfordshire studio in September 2014. Yorke had prepared few demos and there was no rehearsal period. According to the guitarist Ed O'Brien, "We just went straight into recording... The sound emerged as we recorded." Radiohead were slow to regain momentum after their break and worked in "fits and starts". They initially worked on songs written by O'Brien, but found that they did not fit Radiohead. O'Brien saved the material for his debut solo album, Earth.The Oxfordshire sessions lasted until Christmas. In 2015, Radiohead spent three weeks in the La Fabrique studio near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, building on their recordings. The studio, originally a 19th-century mill producing art pigment, had been used by musicians including Morrissey and Nick Cave and houses the world's largest vinyl record collection. Instead of using computers, Godrich recorded to tape with analog multitrack recorders, inspired by Motown and early David Bowie records. This added creative limits, as rerecording a take meant erasing the previous take. According to the bassist, Colin Greenwood, this forced the band to "make decisions in the moment; it's very much the opposite of having your album stored on a terabyte hard drive".
For the introduction to "Daydreaming", Radiohead slowed the tape, creating a pitch-warping effect. The guitarist Jonny Greenwood used the music programming language Max to manipulate the piano on "Glass Eyes". "Identikit" developed from loops of Yorke's vocals recorded during the King of Limbs sessions. The 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".
The strings and choir sections were arranged by Jonny Greenwood and performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra, with Hugh Brunt as conductor. 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. For "Burn the Witch", the players used guitar plectrums rather than bows, creating a percussive effect. Yorke described "Daydreaming", finished early in the La Fabrique sessions, as a breakthrough for the album. Greenwood had the cellists detune their cellos, creating a "growling" sound. Additional string and choir parts were recorded but cut.
Godrich's father died on the day of the recording of the strings 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." The special edition of the album is dedicated to Vic Godrich and the drum technician Scott Johnson, who died in the 2012 stage collapse before Radiohead's scheduled show in Downsview Park, Toronto. Yorke's ex-wife, Rachel Owen, died of cancer several months after the album was released. 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."
Work was interrupted by the recording of "Spectre", commissioned for the 2015 James Bond film. The film producers rejected the song as "too dark". Godrich said: "That fucking James Bond movie threw us a massive curveball. It was a real waste of energy... In terms of making A Moon Shaped Pool it caused a stop right when we were in the middle of it." In December 2015, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, Yorke performed three Moon Shaped Pool songs: "The Numbers", "Present Tense" and "Desert Island Disk". On Christmas Day, Radiohead released "Spectre" on the audio streaming site SoundCloud. Jonny Greenwood estimated that 80% of the album was recorded in two weeks. After Radiohead finished work in France, Godrich edited and mixed the album in London.
Music
A Moon Shaped Pool incorporates art rock, folk, chamber music, ambient music and baroque pop. It combines electronic elements such as drum machines and synthesisers, acoustic timbres such as guitar and piano, and string and choral arrangements, which feature more heavily than on previous Radiohead albums. The Guardian characterised A Moon Shaped Pool as more restrained and "pared back" than Radiohead's earlier work. Jonny Greenwood cited the jazz musician Alice Coltrane as an influence, saying: "I'm conscious on this record that we've been occasionally skirting round the edge of something that could be terrible, which is kind of fun... You have big ambition and you get as far as you can with it."The songs are sequenced alphabetically. Greenwood said this was chosen only because the order worked well. "Burn the Witch" features "pulsating" strings and electronic percussion. "Daydreaming" is an ambient song with a "simple, sad" piano motif, "spooky" backmasked vocals, and electronic and orchestral elements. "Ful Stop" features "malevolent" synthesiser, a "bustle" of rhythms, and phasing guitar arpeggios. "Glass Eyes" has manipulated piano, strings, and lyrics evocative of an "unguarded phone call". "Identikit" has a jam-like opening, choral vocals, and "spacey" electronics, and ends with an "agitated" guitar solo.
"The Numbers" begins as a "loose-limbed, early 70s jam session", with strings reminiscent of Serge Gainsbourg's 1970 album Histoire De Melody Nelson. "Present Tense" is a ballad with bossa nova elements. "Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief" features strings, electronic percussion and distorted synthesiser. "True Love Waits" is a piano ballad with polyrhythmic loops and textures. The special edition of A Moon Shaped Pool contains two additional tracks: "Ill Wind", featuring a bossa nova rhythm and "icy" synthesisers, and "Spectre", an orchestral piano ballad.
Lyrics
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 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 wrote that A Moon Shaped Pool "makes the most sense when heard as a document of a wrenching chapter for one human being".Other themes include climate change and call for revolution on "The Numbers", and the dangers of authority and groupthink on "Burn the Witch". Yorke feared that political songs alienated some listeners, but decided it was better than writing "another lovey-dovey song about nothing". He was conscious that lyrics such as "a river running dry" and "the system is a lie" were cliches, but felt there was no other way to state them: "How else are you supposed to say 'the system is a lie'? Why bother hiding it? It's a lie. That's it."
The Guardian wrote that whereas Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief had addressed the era of Tony Blair and George W. Bush, A Moon Shaped Pool could become the "accidental soundtrack" to the Donald Trump presidency. Of the refrain "one day at a time" from "The Numbers", Yorke said: "One day a time, mate, you will be impeached shortly, mate. You are not a leader, love... You can't sustain this. It's not gonna work. One day a time. We ain't stupid."