More pointed, however, are the song’s lyrics, which could be interpreted as an indictment of our culture of surveillance and our willingness to participate in it. The darker arrangement of “Burn the Witch” alone is a pointed reminder that anxiety-inducing music is just as necessary, too. Today’s music is defined by emotional clarity and explosive confidence-strut to Beyoncé, groove to Drake, cry to Adele, feel whatever Kanye commands you to feel. The song’s sense of dread is, odd as it might be to say, almost refreshing. Is he referring to the Verve-esque string section that gives the song its tense rhythmic drive? Or the ominous menacing that stalks the song once the drumbeat kicks in? Truthfully, though composed with more precision and ambition than what we’ve settled for on the radio these days, “Burn the Witch” is as perfectly pitched to set fire to the festival stages and music halls Radiohead is set to tour this summer as any of its most recognizable hits. That “Burn the Witch” fits so squarely in Radiohead’s oeuvre makes that claim a bit confusing. As the first new official single since 2011’s King of Limbs, The Guardian’s Michael Hann sums up the song perfectly in his review, which calls it “the kind of return the world might have hoped for.” It’s a return that had longtime fans operating in a state of, to quote “Burn the Witch,” “a low-flying panic attack,” especially after a representative from the band’s management firm teased that the new album that the song is promoting will sound “like nothing you’ve ever heard.”
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