I Still Hope A Moon Shaped Pool Isn't Radiohead's Swan Song | Retro Review

Ten years since a hype cycle I dream will happen again.

May 12, 2026

In May 2016, I curated a film screening for my art school, one of the last hurrahs I had before graduation. With works titled “Eidos” and “I Am Monster Fly” (as well as my own “Enter The Kingdom”), it was very much a college film screening. As viewers were shuffling into the art building’s basement, I curated a very specific two-song playlist for before the show: “Burn The Witch” and “Daydreaming” by Radiohead, both of which had come out the week before the screening. One of my college friends who I bonded with over our love of the band requested them on repeat, which I was happy to oblige. Having those songs, as well as the following album, were a chance to be a part of something we’d never been before: a Radiohead hype cycle.

The band’s previous album, 2011’s The King of Limbs, is a fine effort, but I was too young at the time and the hype for the album wasn’t fervent enough to feel like I was engrossed in it. A Moon Shaped Pool came out when I was 22, old enough to have been a fan of the band in the context of a mature adult (i.e. listening to OK Computer late at night and coming up with reasons to be sad to make the music fit). To have a brand spanking new Radiohead album, let alone one as affecting and as memorable as A Moon Shaped Pool is, was an event that remains an iconic music moment in my lifetime, even a decade after its initial release.

The aforementioned two singles, released just a week or two before the actual album, twinge with the unease that defines much of A Moon Shaped Pool. Big Brother, intense strings and groupthink dominate “Burn The Witch”, which was teased with mysterious postcards sent to the band’s fan club I wish I was a part of at the time. It’s one of the album’s more intense songs, moreso than anything from The King of Limbs. It helps that it was written much earlier than when AMSP was recorded, as a few songs on it were, and it also helps that the stop-motion music video is still one of my favorite of all time. “Daydreaming” is just that, a hazy walk through Yorke’s mind as he struggled with the separation from his longtime partner Rachel Owen during the record’s formation. Both songs sound so gray, with the band’s signature art rock as muted as they’d ever made it. But the beauty in each composition elevates both tracks, and there’s not a moment across the rest of A Moon Shaped Pool that aren’t as difficult as they are essential to the band’s story.

“Decks Dark” has always been, to me, one of their more underrated songs. Its pianos, both descending and sturdy, and a moody outro making it a catchy one, with Yorke bringing to mind “Subterranean Homesick Alien” with the theme of spaceships and the darkness of humankind. The following “Desert Island Disk” continues themes of isolation, more folk-sy but still distinctly Radiohead. So much of the band’s previous discography pops up in places, but never defines AMSP, allowing it to stand on its own as an exploration of Yorke’s innermost feelings and the band’s own place in the pantheon of music. The album’s creation followed the discarding of “Spectre”, the theme Radiohead made for the James Bond film of the same name; both that rejection and that song’s sound come into play on this album.

“Ful Stop” is the album’s longest track and its most musically harrowing, building up to an extended climax where the weight of all five band members is apparent: Jonny Greenwood’s haunting arrangement, Colin Greenwood and Ed O’Brien’s dueling guitars, and Phil Selway’s skittering percussion make it a highlight at the heart of the album. It’s a contrasting song to what follows, like the short, string-driven “Glass Eyes” and it’s feverishly delivered lyrics (the slurs Yorke says “Hey it’s me” to open the song still makes me chuckle each time). “Identikit” is the one track on AMSP where synths make a prominent statement, but only after a slinky buildup inspired by freeform jazz and the band’s jamming. Again, it feels as organic as the band had sounded in years, wizened by their success and their own stories.

The record chugs to its end with several longer tracks, and I’ve always placed “The Numbers” with “Decks Dark” as one of Radiohead’s most underrated tunes. The way the intense strings make their presence known at its climax over the understated guitars and soft drums turn a beautiful melody into a commanding one. “Present Tense” takes In Rainbows and puts it in black & white, melancholically wonderful but opaque as hell, with some of Yorke’s most beautiful performances on the whole album. There are plenty of moments across A Moon Shaped Pool that will remind you of past efforts, but make no mistake, the album is its own wholly formed product.

The penultimate “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief”, which has to be the longest titled Radiohead song having not done the research, serves as an airy, eerie leadup to “True Love Waits”, perhaps the most affecting song Yorke and the band ever put to tape. Nothing more than his voice and a piano make up the track, leaving all feelings bare as Yorke pleads for intimacy when it just won’t come. Written around 1995 and finally put to a studio recording 21 years later, “True Love Waits” was old enough to drink when it finally released but carries all the weight of a young songwriter cementing his style. It’s even more crushing knowing it was made amid Yorke’s separation from Owen, as well as her eventual death from cancer several months after this album came out.

Are my thoughts on A Moon Shaped Pool colored by how I initially consumed it? Perhaps. But anyone of any age can appreciate the heart-wrenching beauty that only an act as revered and as wise as Radiohead is made here. It’s the reason the hype cycle existed around the album to begin with, and the way the whole record lived up to its immeasurable expectations is still incredible. I often go back to that film screening, sitting in the front waiting for viewers to shuttle in; though no work from that night made it big time, we were all experiencing a moment we may never experience again. The various Radiohead side projects since A Moon Shaped Pool have been a nice distraction, but the yearn for a new Radiohead hype cycle to take part in won’t leave me until I (and a new generation) get to go through it once again.

Verdict: 9.6/10