Radiohead's "The King of Limbs" offers rich detail - for a price

Radiohead are masters of surprise. Going back to Kid A, the 2000 album that followed 1997's prog-rock landmark OK Computer with a left turn into ambient-electronic experimentation, the acclaimed British quintet have grown practiced at turning every release into an event that catches their fan base unawares.

Last time around, with 2007's In Rainbows, the Thom Yorke-fronted band of Oxford townies got everybody's attention by releasing their music - at first, anyway - as a pay-what-you-wish download, embracing a music-should-be-free ethos they could well afford, having already spent a decade selling millions of CDs and packing arenas.

With the eight-song, low-key, melancholy The King of Limbs (****), which came out Friday, Radiohead has startled its legions of followers again.

The shock began with the news of their eighth studio album's very existence. In the wee hours of Valentine's Day morning, shortly after the Grammy Awards were over and done, a message was posted on the band's website that The King of Limbs would be released via digital download starting last Saturday. Later, it was moved up a day, delivering an extra jolt of delight to fans already quivering with anticipation.

The news germane to the future of the music business is that The King of Limbs does not come gratis. Instead, the download, at thekingoflimbs.com, costs either $9 for MP3 files or $14 for higher-quality .wav files.

(For those craving physical product to hold in their hands, there are other options. The album will come out on CD and vinyl March 28. And on May 9, for either $48 or $53, a "Newspaper Album" - whatever that means - version will be released that comes with two vinyl EPs, a CD, the download, and loads of artwork.)

The pay-what-Radiohead-wishes model signals that the "honesty box" idea behind In Rainbows proved not to be viable. The band never released download figures, but a consumer-research firm found that 62 percent, given their druthers, paid nothing. The other 38 percent coughed up, on average, all of $6.

Enough about the business, though: What about the music? What kind of Radiohead record is The King of Limbs? Is it

(a) A long-awaited return to epic rock à la OK Computer?

(b) Another out-of-the-blue reinvention? or

(c) More of the same from the band that specializes in fidgety, electronic-organic soundscapes that capture digital-age alienation and unease better than any of its contemporaries?

The correct answer is c). Not that that's a bad thing. The King of Limbs is a brief, often beautiful record that's likely neither to turn disbelievers into Radiohead heads nor to disappoint ardent fans who have been waiting with bated breath for word from Yorke and his multi-instrumentalist and chief creative collaborator Jonny Greenwood since In Rainbows.

The album kicks off - or more aptly, sputters to life - with "Bloom," in which a piano loop soon encounters clattering electronic percussion and live snare-drum rhythms, coupled with Yorke's typically lovely yet dystopian vocal, as he urges listeners to "Open your mouth wide / The universe will sigh."

From there, it's on to the hypnotic bubble and squeak of "Morning Mr. Magpie," which would appear to be a screed against music-industry avarice, with Yorke pointing a finger at a greedy bird he accuses of having "stolen all the magic / took my melody."

And so it goes with The King of Limbs, a richly detailed recording that never calls undue attention to itself while rewarding repeated close inspection. The band works an electronic discomfort zone similar to such fellow travelers as Animal Collective and Aphex Twin, while serving up a few overtly inviting tracks.

There's "Lotus Flower," in which Yorke's flighty falsetto promises "I'll set you free." It comes with a black-and-white video that finds the singer dancing as if he had no control over his own limbs while wearing a bowler hat in the style of Charlie Chaplin or Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.

"Codex" is a solemn but gorgeous piano ballad nearly rapturous in its elegant depression. And both the band and Yorke sound frisky on the upbeat and itchy "Little By Little," on which the singer playfully does a courtship dance with a repetitive guitar riff and his audience: "I'm such a tease, and you're such a flirt."

At a mere 37 minutes, The King of Limbs might itself seem like a mere tease, little more than a tasting course from a band saddled with the burden of being considered the most "important" of its time. But by sneaking up on us and avoiding bold artistic statements, The King of Limbs nimbly sidesteps those burdensome expectations, delivering quietly satisfying music that doesn't bother to be all that surprising, this time around.