Once upon a time (approximately 10 years ago), there was a song called ‘(Don’t Get Any) Big Ideas’. It was a road song; not necessarily about the road, but written whilst on it. My few fleeting exposures to it over the years were comprised of increasingly poor-quality live and/or soundcheck versions. As the stockpile of never recorded/never released Radiohead songs grew, I kind of lost interest; I’m a bit of a studio rat when it comes to my listening preferences, so searching the interweb high and low for a decent recording of this song quickly became (in my mind) a waste of time.

Well, after an extremely lengthly gestation, the song has finally been birthed, albeit with a moniker change (it’s called ‘Nude’ now). So was the wait worth it? Well, yeah. Whether or not it fulfills the expectations of all the Radiohead super-fans out there, ultimately this song is a triumph because of what it represents rather than how it actually sounds.

It’s pretty hard for a band to continue progressing into its seventh studio album while still sounding like themselves in this day and age. ‘Nude’ begins with a somewhat recycled motif; the string arrangement that coaxes Thom Yorke’s voice in from the ether is melodically very reminiscent of the arrangement from Kid A’s ‘How To Disappear Completely’. However, this comparison falls apart immediately beyond that initial similarity; the strings on ‘Nude’ are warm and cozy where those on ‘How To Disappear’ were brittle and cold and fostered a sense of paralyzing paranoia. The guitar playing is very organic, aided by the clean tones and overall lack of studio trickery, and features very loose jazz/r&b figures, not unlike those that Paul Weller experimented with on latter-period Jam tunes like ‘Shopping’. What really sells this transformation, though, is Yorke’s singing. For all the comparisons to Jeff Buckley he garnered in the mid-to-late 90s, there was always an emotional disconnect that prevented Yorke from really communicating the personal in a convincing manner the way that Buckley did. On ‘Nude’, however, Yorke doesn’t just allow the listener in to act as a remote observer; he invites them in with a slap on the back and seats them for a cup of tea. Ultimately, this is a very sensual, sexy record. And not “for a Radiohead record.” It’s a sexy record, period.

Radiohead, 7. The World, 0.