A Moon Shaped Pool: Radiohead's beautifully broken dream

There's a moment in every great Radiohead album where the floor gives out beneath you. Could be the swirling static of Climbing Up the Walls, the gut-punch falsetto in How to Disappear Completely, or that moment Idioteque turns the apocalypse into a dancefloor anthem. On A Moon Shaped Pool, that moment isn't a single jolt - it's a slow, mournful erosion, like watching your reflection fade in rippling water.

Released in 2016, A Moon Shaped Pool feels like Radiohead's most emotionally exposed record. It's haunted by the ghosts of love, regret, and time - so much so that it often feels like an album made from memory itself, stitched together from half-remembered dreams and old reels of lost film. Unlike the nervy paranoia of OK Computer or the glitchy alienation of Kid A, this is a record that sighs rather than screams. And honestly? It's one of the most quietly devastating albums of the decade.

The sound of a band in slow motion

Radiohead has never been about easy listening, but there's something uniquely hypnotic about this one. The album leans heavily on Jonny Greenwood's orchestration, weaving anxious string arrangements through Thom Yorke's spectral melodies. It's the kind of sound that doesn't just settle in your ears - it lingers, wraps around you, and makes itself at home.

Take Burn the Witch, the album's opener. It kicks things off with urgent, stabbing strings - think Psycho meets political unrest - building toward a fever pitch that never quite explodes. It's tense, yes, but also strangely restrained. And that's the key to A Moon Shaped Pool: it doesn't need to hit you over the head. It just seeps in.

Then there's Daydreaming, a song that sounds like it was written in the aftermath of a dream you can't quite remember. Yorke's voice drifts weightlessly over ghostly piano, the melody dissolving as the song moves forward. By the end, his voice is stretched and reversed, looping back on itself like a tape that's slowly unspooling. It's a heartbreak you can hear.

Love, loss, and that final blow

Lyrically, A Moon Shaped Pool feels more personal than Radiohead's usual cryptic poetry. Of course, it's still shrouded in enough mystery to keep the conspiracy theories alive (Yorke could sing the ingredients on a cereal box and fans would find hidden meaning), but there's an unmistakable undercurrent of grief here.

Yorke had split from his longtime partner Rachel Owen before the album's release, and you can feel the weight of that loss pressing down on these songs. True Love Waits, a track that first appeared in stripped-down form in the '90s, finally finds its way onto a proper album - but instead of the warm acoustic version fans knew, it's reimagined as something stark and fragile. The once-hopeful refrain ("Just don't leave / don't leave") now sounds like a ghost whispering through an empty house. And when the album ends, it doesn't crash or fade out - it just… stops. Like someone cut the tape.

Where does it fit in the Radiohead universe?

So, where does A Moon Shaped Pool sit in the grand hierarchy of Radiohead albums? It doesn't have the immediate, world-shifting impact of OK Computer or Kid A. It doesn't reinvent the band's sound like In Rainbows. Instead, it feels like a culmination - like a long exhale after years of holding tension.

That said, it's not an album for every mood. There's a heaviness to A Moon Shaped Pool that makes it difficult to throw on casually. It's beautiful, but in the way an overcast sky is beautiful - melancholic, hazy, a little distant. Some might find it too subtle, too slow, not as sharp-edged as their more iconic work. But that's exactly what makes it special. This isn't a record that shouts for attention. It waits for you to find it.

Final verdict

A Moon Shaped Pool is Radiohead at their most delicate - aching, atmospheric, and quietly stunning. It may not have the immediate hooks of their biggest albums, but give it time, and it'll haunt you in the best way possible. Like a dream you can't shake, like a memory that won't quite fade. It's not their boldest statement, but it might be their most human.

FINAL SCORE: 8.5/10