Radiohead's "Give Up the Ghost", a highlight from The King of Limbs, is an evaporation song, one that seems to be exiting and entering your consciousness at the same moment. They have a knack for these songs -- "House of Cards" off In Rainbows, was another one. Like "House of Cards", "Ghost" is built on a patiently rocking, palm-muted guitar strum. It's a lulling sound, and it's made even more so by the white noise and bird calls that surround it. Over this luminous haze, Yorke softly repeats a primal sentiment-- "Don't hurt me." The phrase, an echo of a thought that most people carry around with them everywhere they go, slowly melts into the background of the track, becoming part of its heartbeat. A shimmering, reverberant choir of Thom Yorkes pours in, adding new shades to his bare plea-- "Gather up the pitiful/ In your arms." At the edges of the mix, Jonny Greenwood's little patterned finger-picking figures burble away quietly, and the whole song begins to slip subtly, beatifically, out of your grasp, like a conversation half-heard from a far room as you nod off. The second it has shimmered out of view, you lean forward to replay it, convinced that you were a little closer to unlocking its life-affirming point that time around.
to all of this.
