Radiohead pulls a fast one

HOW’S THIS FOR TIMING? Don’t look now, but Radiohead has a new album coming—this Saturday. Billed as the world's first "Newspaper Album," The King of Limbs will be released in an extravagantly packaged version on May 9, but the music itself will be out there on Feb. 19, when digital downloads become available to those who made pre-orders. Pitchfork, which broke the news this morning, points out that the band has “set aside the ‘pay what you want’ patronage model that dominated the conversation surrounding the In Rainbows release, yet have retained that album's more important business aspects: Packaging their music as a high-end collectable [sic] and controlling and monetizing its leak, which has the effect of creating what these days is a rare, worldwide, collective listening experience. Once again, we all know exactly when we're first able to hear a new Radiohead record and therefore will largely all experience it together, something almost completely lost in today's pop music landscape.” (2/14a)