Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

Instead of seeing your friends on this fine, sunny spring day, you've decided to spend the rest of the day indoors. Normally you're not this big of a nerd, but hey, with a new Radiohead record at the precipice of release, everyone embraces their inner boring nerds. It happened back in 2007 when the band announced the release of In Rainbows ten days before release, creating the model for "pay what you wish" album buying for the future to come. Or back in 2011 when the band stated The King Of Limbs would come out in five days, only to release it in four. The band's continued dedication to keep us on our toes and totally fuck up our plans for whatever we were going to do is ingrained in that Radiohead charm.

The murmuring of what was in store began last month, when their manager Brian Merchant mentioned at a talk that the new record would be coming out in May. The band would later nix this in a statement, noting that Merchant wasn't actually their manager to any extent. Then earlier this month, the band "erased" all of their internet presence which signaled that yes, this is album is real, we're just going to mess with you a bit. A day later the band would tease their new ritual sacrifice filled video, and release their long buried "Burn The Witch" in the same day. The creepy and fucked-up claymation video was polarizing, and not even we could agree whether or not the song was good. Three days after we thought we were done arguing ourselves to death, the band released a new teaser on Instagram, which would become another new song and video for "Daydreaming." But more than a new video, the band announced the release of their new album, which would come today at 2PM EST.

So here we are. Ready to dive into a new Radiohead record, ready to argue with for houirs our friends where it fits into the rest of their discography and how it compares to Kid A and OK Computer, ready to remind our cynical friends that yes, Radiohead is worth all the hype.