May 03--Leave it to Radiohead to return with a song that evokes a nightmare as much as an oddly catchy single.
After Internet rumblings that the British quintet was up to something, perhaps heralding its first album in five years, a video for "Burn the Witch" appeared Tuesday on the band's newly resurrected website. No further information about new music was offered, but this latest Radiohead sighting affirms that the band is still holding itself to a high standard. "Burn the Witch" brims with disturbing imagery over escalating strings and Thom Yorke's deceptively serene crooning.
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In the initially disarming claymation video, a bureaucrat enters a seemingly placid village that slowly reveals its disturbing underbelly until a horrific finale straight out of the 1973 U.K. cult film "The Wicker Man." It's all framed in pastoral bliss that suggests David Lynch's "Twin Peaks," a bird chirping over the sound of crackling fire at the fade.
Yorke sounds as if he's hang-gliding, even as his words suggest he's about to crash: "red crosses on wooden doors ... abandon all reason ... shoot the messengers." The refrain -- "this is a low-flying panic attack" -- is set against a string section that evokes Bernard Herrman in panic-stricken "Psycho" mode. The band becomes a rumble that ends in a disorienting screech. Pleasant dreams.
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