Album review: Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

So it proves with their ninth studio album, a “surprise” release on Sunday. The electro wonkiness of 2011’s King of Limbs has been toned down, with Thom Yorke and co retreating to the pastoral comforts of piano and acoustic guitar, across a collection brimming with bleakly catchy moments.

But this shift toward the familiar is accompanied by the frontman’s darkest lyrics, as he gazes out at a world riven with conflict and paranoia, and drinks deep of the despair. He is full-of foreboding on opening track, ‘Burn The Witch’, and thereafter his disposition does not turn any merrier. By the time the 11-track project closes with the haunting ‘True Love Waits’, it feels as if we’ve been on a tour of the stygian reaches of the singer’s soul.