Radiohead has unveiled a new song! Hours after a couple of teasing Instagram posts floated onto the Web — one of a bluebird, the other of a medievally clad woman being tied to a tree by men in True Detective Season 1 masks — the band debuted "Burn the Witch," a very promising herald of the band's ninth album, due whenever it decides to drop it. It's a great portent, a very balanced blending of Thom Yorke's soulful mature vocal style and Jonny Greenwod's increasingly focused, classically informed musical approach.
"Burn the Witch" has been a rumor (and a bootleg) among Radiohead fans for years. This version is grounded in strings strongly evoking Greenwood's tributes to the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, but with the pop emotionalism of his film-score work. Radiohead's other members add heft to the steady crescendo that builds to some trademark Yorke falsetto rhapsodizing.
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