Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your negative capability of music news and

criticism. I'm your host Ben Ratliff. You're really must not ever see. You are hearing full stop from Radio Head's first record in five years.

You are hearing full stop from Radiohead's first record in five years,

a moon-shaped pool.

Both that and James Blake's new record in three years,

the color and anything came out within the last several days in a

sudden gray my asthma that dropped upon us and that we as members of the critical press had to clean up and fight our way through

and to talk about it with me today is John Pirellis. Hey John.

Hey Ben, yes, the greatest week in British Mopery, probably in the history of recorded music.

So both of us spent some long Sundays immersed in space and darkness and lamentation in misery.

Yeah, we had to write.

We had to quickly process lifetimes of misery and dread.

That's how we make the big money.

And it's funny, I mean, we're getting used to this now.

The sudden drops yes. We're getting really used to this but these are different kinds of

records. Beyonce's record came out and you saw movies of her smashing things and making a statement about

rupture. Radiohead's record and James Blake's record come out and we're talking about dread,

and dystopia, dysphoria, absence, disconnection.

Well, you're talking breakups too on the Radiohead record. Yes well on the radio head record perhaps

we're talking about an actual breakup although who might say and on the James

Lake record we're talking about the persona in the James Lake record is constantly

talking about a breakup or some sort of romance in the past that he can't recover.

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