I've been reading quite a bit of commentary on Radiohead's latest release, The King of Limbs, and I've been left, more than a few times, quite puzzled. I'm not entirely sure that some critics are entirely sure what to listen for in the band's music. So today, I'm going to start with what not to listen (or look) for: 1. The length of an album is quite irrelevant when music of this quality is under discussion. Radiohead's music is intricate and detailed to an unparalleled level in the history of rock, and the only way to appreciate the fact is with repeated listenings, and I mean many of them. Music, like poetry, is about compressed power, not length. Examples? Sgt. Pepper's clocks in at 39:42, and A Love Supreme at 33:02. (I think it was Robert Christgau who started all of this, with his "consumer alerts" for albums under a certain duration and so forth. It was a wrongheaded approach, and it wasn't his only one either - the stuff he's written about this band is pretty dumb, too.) 2. The lyrics are incidental to what Radiohead is doing. And while they shouldn't be disregarded, the band's art is located in its extrapolation of the various emotional states that the words hint at. Therefore, "Feral" has as much to say, in its own way, as does "Green Plastic Trees" or "Paranoid Android". 3. I remember Thom Yorke saying something about being "sick of melody" about ten years ago (or so), and while many of his songs belie that statement, it should be remembered that what the band is really after doesn't have a lot to do with a song's tune. T.S. Eliot once said that a poet uses ideas the way a burglar uses a piece of meat: to distract a dog, while he goes about his business. This also applies to the approach Radiohead takes to melody. Try listening to "Lotus Flower" for its texture, its details, its rhythms, which are put together with such care and originality that they sound new and different with every listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8.