If you think this is over, then you're wrong.

Well the big news of the week in my life is the sudden release of Radiohead's album, King of Limbs. Like most people I'm sure, I felt totally blindsided by this, especially since I was resigned to never hearing another Radiohead release after Thom Yorke told Pitchfork that the recording industry was dead, it took too much energy to write a studio length album, and that he'd rather try his hand at writing classical music.

What?

I don't know either, but luckily that was all lies, possibly at the expense of one of the most powerful music websites on the internet. When you remember Thom Yorke is a jerk, it all makes sense. When he had said that instantly my mind went to the abysmal "symphony" at the end of Muse's latest attempt at trying to bench more then their own weight, The Resistance. I imagined in horror Thom Yorke directing the sappiest symphony ever written. Though if anyone could do it, it'd be Radiohead. The soundtrack to There Will Be Blood certainly pushes the boundries of art and soundtrack, written by Radiohead talent and possibly the genius behind the band, Johnny Greenwood.

So a few days ago, Waste.co.uk sends me this cryptic message: Preorder the album today! At first I think it's spam, since Waste has been pretty silent since In Rainbows toured. But then I read it again.

What album, I ask?

Radiohead?

Where the #*%@ have I been?

After some quick research, I discovered that the entire industry had been smacked in the face with this, and I didn't have to worry too much about me becoming a erudite Luddite, lost under a rock of work while up in the clouds of writerly fantasy. There was indeed a Radiohead album, and I was one of the many confused by its sudden appearance.

Though Radiohead can do no wrong in my heart (and you should know I'm coming from there before reading any more I have to say), I have a feeling that these gimmicks are going to get old real fast. Not to mention how distracting they are from the music itself, which is where all the attention ought to be. With In Rainbows, the big splash was that you could name your price for the music, a commentary on illegal downloading yadda yadda, and what was a solid-but-not-their-best album got lost under a slew of commentary on the marketing gimmick. I buy all my own music, or get it via Microsoft subscription, because I respect artists and the hardships of creation. I feel anyway that the theft of music has died down considerably, which makes the message of the gimmick all that much more transient and paranoid.

Certainly more music is out there than is bought, but what music hasn't been bought a high percentage of that is music that wouldn't have been bought anyway, and so the illegal downloading has merely served to allow consumers to take risks on things they wouldn't shell out cash for, causing many more artists than ever to rise to stardom. If there's a problem with the industry, it's not the lack of fancy DRM tricks, it's the poor quality of the industry, overall. The big acts that struggling corporations like Warner are pushing, for example the Black Eyed Peas, are terrible excuses for mechanical production. People are paying what they think it is worth, that is, nothing. So Radiohead's social commentary in the form of marketing strategy is distracting at best, at worst completely unaware of the industry, pretentious, and self-absorbed.

So enter their latest ploy, announcing the album one week before releasing it. The true reasons behind this are still totally a mystery to me, the best reason I can come up with is that they're avoiding leaks and giving the criticism industry a big knee in the balls. They even told the industry that they were releasing a day after they actually did release, so that everyone was playing catch-up yet again when the album finally did surface. Of course the net was still flooded with everyone having their own say the moment the album hit the waves, but with a divisive band like Radiohead, that's inevitable. Here I give my pennies too, I haven't read anyone else's review so probably I offer nothing new, but I like to make my own conclusions and then read others to see how I stack up to the general opinion.

All this has served to make the album itself truly "invisible," like Thom Yorke shaped into my pocket (Cf Lotus Flower), and only solidifies my worry that Thom Yorke is an ass.

Now all this would probably be forgivable if the album was truly a match for Kid A, a culture-defining rock album for the next generation, now that they've already defined our own. So with my heart racing and my wallet aching, I threw down my 50 bucks and with great celebration, ready to have my mind blown for like the seventh time by this band of misfits and assholes, I hit the play button.

Bloom comes on sounding like 15 Step run through a meat-grinder, and I think, yeah, it's different, I could get into it. I look through the playlist. What the hell? Good Morning Mr. Magpie? There's a little nod to the hardcore fans. Now I'm excited.

I'm into the music, I'm singing along to Mr. Magpie, and then I look again.

What?

I'm on the last song? What the...

The album clocks in at 38 minutes, making it their shortest LP to date. Which isn't the weirdest bit. I felt like I'd only heard about 10 minutes of actual music, and maybe 3 different songs. As if time had been compressed, and I'd lost about 28 minutes somewhere. Did Radiohead invent the worst time machine ever?

This album is probably Radiohead's ennui at its highest peak. In Rainbows began to show signs of it, a lack of luster that isn't even present on the slow Amnesiac, a hopelessness and depression that has hung over their music since Hail to the Thief, only in King of Limbs that depression is hard to get around. Even Kid A had the sense to throw in the fist pumpers "National Anthem" and "Idioteque" and In Rainbows had the "Body Snatchers" to get your butt out of your chair. But King of Limbs is so subdued that listening to it's practically approximating REM sleep.

Possibly out of a love for the band, possibly out of some need to validate all the money I'd just payed them, I listened to it several more times, realizing that I liked every song on the album, but just somehow it wasn't exciting. Kid A left me dazed when I first heard it, as if I had seen something bigger than the 50 minutes of music that the disk held. OK Computer was a little more intellectual in reward, but I felt it was time well spent. King of Limbs just left me feeling like I hadn't actually listened to it, and needed to hear it again to make sure it wasn't an illusion.

Then yesterday I give it another listen, because now the songs are stuck in my head, and suddenly it all snaps together. It's still sadly not the dance music of Kid A, but the crystaline beauty of "Codex" just suddenly glimmered in the right way, "Feral" ticked all the right experimental buttons, and "Separator's" hook finally worked for me. Perhaps its temporary insanity from my fears of Radiohead's steady decline into mediocrity, or the buyer's remorse kicking back, but suddenly I heard something beautiful, that might be considered one of Radiohead's best albums. After knocking at the door until my hand was bloody, a nice butler opened up and said, "would you like to sit at the fireplace?"

Kid A immediately shook me into modern music, stripped me down and made love on a December afternoon, and I'll forever remember it as my first time. King of Limbs might not be the passionate lover that Kid A was, but perhaps it's the old friend that Paul Simon sang about, who "sat on the park bench like bookends, newspaper blown through the grass..." something that you don't quite recognize at first, but one that lasts. A little melancholy, but meaningful. I won't know just yet, but what glimpses I've got into the album makes me wonder, will it?