King of Limbs released 24 hours early surprising fans who just days ago did not know a new album even existed
Radiohead have once again lived up to their reputation as the most unpredictable ? some would say awkward ? name in music by releasing their new album 24 hours early, just days after disclosing its existence.
The King Of Limbs is the band's first recording in more than three years and their second to dispense with the traditional backing of a record label. While 2007's In Rainbows was released as an internet-only download, with the added twist of "honesty box" payment system in which purchasers parted with what they thought the album was worth, the new title comes in a range of formats.
Radiohead announced The King of Limbs on Monday with a brief note on the group's website headlined, "Thank you for waiting" and stating that the release was on Saturday. Then came the decision to move the release forward a day, inscrutably explained by a brief band statement saying that since the album was ready "there was no need to wait".
More confused still were Japanese fans, large numbers of whom braved chill winds to gather at a square in Tokyo's Shibuya district. They were drawn by a post on the band's official Twitter feed suggesting something special would be happening there at 18:59 on Friday, taken by many to assume a performance of some sort.
Radiohead's Japanese record label quickly denied this but a crowd still gathered. Nothing happened, except an apology on the label's website to those "who saw the tweet and got excited".
Such obtuseness is all part of the appeal for Radiohead fans who have watched the band evolve over the past 18 years from a generic indie rock outfit to purveyors of occasionally impenetrable electronica.
A defining characteristic of this career arc has been the way every Radiohead move to wrongfoot their fans has simply made them more devoted, and numerous. The King of Limbs is no difference: amid the flood of Twitter excitement at its arrival came complaints about the band's website freezing under the strain of numbers.
Perhaps the biggest surprise came in the release to YouTube of a video for one track, Lotus Flower. This features singer Thom Yorke, a man usually caricatured as an over-serious grump, don a bowler hat to perform an exuberant, arm-twisting shimmy pitched somewhere between stage school-style interpretative dance and an over-refreshed uncle at a wedding.
On Twitter some were more impressed than others. "If I ever saw a dude dancing at a club like that I'd be kind of freaked out," was one US fan's verdict.
The cheapest version of the album for UK fans is an MP3 digital one at �6, while an extra �3 brings the CD-quality sound of a WAV file. For extra �24 these can be augmented, at a later date, with what the band's website describes as a "Newspaper Album", comprising a pair of 10-inch vinyl discs, a CD, plus "many large sheets of newspaper artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic to hold it all together".
Ehrinn Cummings Sienna Miller Cindy Taylor Halle Berry Catherine Bell
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