Radiohead, THE KING OF LIMBS

Not everyone can bat a thousand. Even Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player who ever lived (contestable), had to suffer through a couple of rimshots in his day. For Radiohead, The King Of Limbs is that rimshot.

Released with little fanfare a few weeks ago on the band's Web site (it'll be out physically in late March, if you're still into that kind of thing), The King Of Limbs is only 37 minutes long, which is the start of my problems with it. Not that I don't like short albums, but after the long wait since In Rainbows (that was three apartments ago, for Chrissakes), I expected a little bit... more.

But it wouldn't be such a bad thing if Radiohead blew my head off for 37 minutes straight. Not so here. For 37 minutes, Radiohead dodges, ducks, dives, and, uh, dodges the bloody point. Neither fish nor fowl, The King Of Limbs operates in in-between mode: not quite a guitar album, and not quite an electronica album, Radiohead sound like they don't know what they want to do.

It opens with "Bloom," which is pretty enough, even if it sounds like vocalist Thom Yorke is drowning in his own words half of the time. "Morning Mr Magpie" builds off of an interesting rhythm section, all clicks and clacks, but it goes nowhere. It isn't until the album's third track, "Little By Little," with its Middle Eastern guitar flourishes and relative momentum, that Limbs reveals a song I wouldn't mind hearing live.

From there, it's on to dubstep (the less said about "Feral" the better) and the album's single, "Lotus Flower," which is the most forgettable, vanilla song Radiohead has produced since Pablo Honey. The second half of the album provides us with some of the 'head's quieter moments, but they pale in comparison to previous work.

So, there you have it. A middling record from a bunch of geniuses. They didn't exactly phone it in but the album's a rimshot, to be sure. Just so long as Yorke & Co. don't decide to pull a Jordan and become baseball (er, cricket) players, we'll all tune in next time.