POP/ROCK
Radiohead, "The King of Limbs" (thekingoflimbs.com)
This isn't a record for the casual Radiohead fan. That said, I can't stop listening to it. It's strange and off-putting. It's the headphones record we expected. It's dark and subtle. It's unexpectedly sexy, too, not unlike the experimental trio the xx's "XX." The intentional imperfections recall Pink Floyd. Listen to the jittery "Morning Mr Magpie" and the glitchy "Lotus Flower," and you'll hear it. While comparisons have been made to past records, this album has a personality of its own. And while it's easy to give Radiohead creative props for not resting on its laurels, I can't wholeheartedly embrace the band's new direction. We like the strange, but maybe not the really strange?
RICARDO BACA, DENVER POST
Hayes Carll, "KMAG YOYO (and Other American Stories)" (Lost Highway)
Carll has a dry, chapped voice, bolstered and puckered by Texas twang. Gimlet-eyed and smart-mouthed, with a self-deprecating kind of swagger, he has positioned himself as an heir to outlaw-country royalty such as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and especially Ray Wylie Hubbard, his sometime collaborator.
The gentlest hangdog entreaty here is "Chances Are." The most puckish is "Another Like You," a bickering his-and-hers special. What makes Carll something other than a torchbearer is the frank timeliness of his lyrics, which draw few distinctions between the personal and the political. He's a sucker for a tart turn of phrase, but he doesn't let humor get in the way of narrative momentum. The title track pulls off the Dylanesque trick of lacing a comic yarn with bitter subtext.
And there are at least a few songs here that suggest the rueful side of unruliness, as the hard-drinking guitar slinger indulges in a moment of reflection. Along those lines it hardly escapes notice that on an album redolent of aggressive honky-tonk, "Bottle in My Hand" takes such a liltingly acoustic path. The lyrics allude to "trouble at the border and a far-off war/Oil in the water and the shut-down store," before eventually arriving at a pointed conclusion: "Never had a home. Just lucky, I guess."
NATE CHINEN, NEW YORK TIMES
