Radiohead - "These Are My Twisted Words" Review

Shortly after being leaked and subsequently flooding its way throughout the net, Radiohead's new song "These Are My Twisted Words" was officially released this Monday, Aug. 17th, as a free download on the band's personal blog. "We're pretty proud of it," remarked Jonny Greenwood, an understandable admission as the song reveals a dramatic leap forward for the group. Granted, it includes many long-established Radiohead elements: the wintry tone, the ambiguous time-signature, the atmospheric guitars and vocals. However, the band integrates these elements with fluidly mature musicianship to create one of the most authentically psychedelic and inwardly probing pieces they've released to date.

The lengthy instrumental introduction sets the tone with interwoven guitars that shimmer and undulate like variegated light reflecting off a lake surface as their droning reverberation invites the listener to submerge deeper and deeper into the sound. At 2:38, Thom's sparse vocals arrive, careful not to disturb the trance already underway, yet immediately getting under the skin and raising goose bumps with beautifully sinuous phrasing.

This overall fluid performance is the song's most striking aspect. Radiohead songs tend to have very rigid, meticulous arrangements, even when they are shooting for a fluid-like feeling. For example, In Rainbows' "Weird Fishes" applies a similarly brain-tickling, arpeggiated interplay of guitars, yet the painstakingly complex melodies are clearly intended to be played the same way each time. "Twisted Words," on the other hand, confidently eschews any sense of rigidity allowing it to move more freely and flow more deeply. Some may find the playing to be sloppy, yet there is still an inherent precision in the guitar work; the song is just shooting for a very different result than usual.

Here is a piece that in no way attempts to be a pop song. It falls more in line with the drone'n'drum-driven mood pieces of 70's Krautrockers like Can and Neu. Radiohead has drawn upon these groups before, particularly with songs like Amnesiac's "Dollars and Cents," yet often the result sounds like the idea of Krautrock being employed but not fully coming to life. This time they have truly tapped into the pulse and arrived.