JOIN USA Moon Shaped Pool is the ninth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. The ever-evolving band has a fresh approach, artfully controlled and never contrived.
To this end, Jonny Greenwood has done some great orchestral synthesis. Much of Thom Yorke’s lyrics relate to heartbreak. The album is not so much of a stormer as a creeper, with its well-crafted ambient, cosmic, electro-acoustic blend. The multi-layered soundscape is meditative, ethereal, cosmic, spooky, eerie, elusive yet edgy.
The opening song, ‘Burn The Witch’ is about how one can be crucified by media today. ‘Daydreamin’ has somnambulant and trance-like soundscape with grand string arrangements, giving it an operatic touch (“Dreamers/ They never learn/ They never learn/ Beyond the point/ Of no return/ Of no return”)
‘Decks Dark’ uses a space metaphor matched by operatic but sombre and sublime music.
A diversity of musical variety is demonstrated in ‘Desert Island Disk’, which is a folk hymn, ‘Ful Stop’ (a dirge with a choir backup), ‘Glass Eyes’ (chamber music) and ‘The Numbers’ (folk-jazz). ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief’ begins as a slow-paced epic track gathering momentum as it progress and then drowns in echoing guitars and operatic strings.
The album ends with ‘True Love Waits’, which Radiohead first performed in 1995 and again numerous times over the years, but was never released on an album. A studio version of the song, rearranged as a minimal piano ballad, finally finds a place in this album.