Last we heard from Radiohead or their frontman Thom Yorke, the band was exploring the glitchy electro-kraut soundways they'd been mapping since In Rainbows. Over the weekend, though, they deleted themselves from the internet. Something big was afoot. They'd gone totally analogue: their web page and Facebook and Twitter, all gone; their whole digital presence seemingly purged. Fans received mail-out leaflets mysteriously teasing something called "Burn The Witch."
And here it is: the first Radiohead single in five years.
In that same analogue spirit, it's a baroque '60s number, sweeping and melodromatic like Yorke singing over a Scott Walker composition. The video, too, belongs to that era, animated in the stop-motion style of the BBC's Trumptonshire. But you wouldn't call its depiction of English country life quaint.
"Burn The Witch," directed by Chris Hopewell, is a retelling of the 1973 British horror classic The Wicker Man. Wrought in cheery blobs of clay, the smiling, waving, perfectly cordial townspeople woo an outsider, then burn him as human sacrifice inside of a giant wooden effigy.
We can only hope the gift of his life encourages a bountiful crop (new Radiohead album) by next solstice.
Radiohead goes analogue in “Burn The Witch,” their first new single in 5 years by chris hampton | Chart Attack.
