Burn The Witch

Much like other tracks in their pantheon of hits, repeated listening sessions transform into compelling investigations amidst atypical soundscapes that skillfully balance mature concepts against an intellectual & musically aggressive guise.

The accompanying music video provides a disarmingly colorful and paranoid cast of characters executing programmed tactics of normalcy until their disturbing aspirations proceed to emerge from the cracks of their community’s unstable social and political foundation.

Other malevolent signs rise through the supposedly harmless facade of the stop animation commune, including a severe what-the-fuck moment that involves robed men in deer skull masks performing a hypnotic sword dance routine while circling a blonde girl tied to a tree.

Regardless of the imminent danger, the video’s ho-hum pair of observers treat the situation, and several others, with unnerving calm. An infuriating, albeit enlightening comparison to flashes of our own reality, with our system reliant upon a hierarchy of rules and social traditions that — in truth — are nothing more than a national circus to herd the masses.

The song’s embedded message is a moral reflex from Yorke and company, wrapped in a musically refined package delivered in surgically dramatic form. Each aural incision exacted through Jonny Greenwood’s obsession with the con legno technique, incorporating jutting, percussive strikes from the orchestra’s rosin-tinged bows simultaneously navigating the backbone of Philip Selway’s restrained groove. It is a clever strategy that broadens the song’s innate lyrical tension as Thom Yorke’s haunting voice resembles a distant specter in the midst of this clay-town-gone-Wicker-Man, capped off with the unsettling juxtaposition of the denizens enthusiastically waving goodbye against the backdrop of a tower awash in flame.

The image suggests regardless of outside appearances, human behavior rarely changes in terms of cycles and consequences. A theme that is all the more jarring when you consider that this type of animated art form heralds from what people designate as a simpler time in entertainment and life in general, along with its all-too-obvious association with timeless Christmas specials like “Frosty the Fucking Snowman”. Except this stylistic incarnation resembles a Grade A fan fiction scenario where a young Paul Thomas Anderson embarks on a playdate with Alfred Hitchcock. An impressive and impressionable decision that exhibits the daring inclinations of Radiohead’s 20+ year presence, constantly challenging and compelling their audience in a way no other group can in this static-filled modern age -

With uncompromising artistic vision and clarity.