Radiohead: Predicting Every Track On The New Album

By Jack Smurthwaite / February 18, 2016

After a four year break from touring, Radiohead are booked to play festivals all over the world this year. Naturally, speculation is high that a new album is on the way to accompany these shows. The thing is, they're an unpredictable bunch. Their last album, 2011's The King of Limbs, was announced just five days before release. The album before that, 2007's In Rainbows, was one of the first pay-what-you-want albums. You could literally pay nothing for it if you wanted to. In 2014 lead singer Thom Yorke released his second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, as the first ever paid download on BitTorrent. He also announced it the same day it was released. At this point, we have no idea when (or how) the band will drop the new album on us. For all we know, it's coming out tomorrow, for free, through Limewire. But when they do release their albums, Radiohead also have a history of bringing back unreleased songs that are years - even decades - old, and reworking them into something wholly different and beautiful. Nude, a track from In Rainbows, dates back to the mid/late '90s but didn't see an official release until 2007. Clearly the band like to tease us with songs way in advance, so here are 13 unreleased tracks that could finally find a home on the new album.

13. Silent Spring

This one's almost guaranteed to be on the new album. When Thom Yorke played it at his most recent solo show at Pathway to Paris he paused briefly half way through the song to inform the audience that "this is Jonny's bit." We can assume from this that Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood had a hand in some part of the creative process. Sonically and lyrically the song is reminiscent of much of Neil Young's work, of which Yorke is a big fan. Through his lyrics "And we are of the earth / To her we do return" Yorke seems to be channeling his commitment to environmental activism. It's arguably the closest thing to a protest song the band has recorded since their politically thematic album Hail to the Thief in 2003. Even in this solo acoustic version, the song sounds fully-formed. Radiohead have a tendency to debut songs as acoustic solo tracks and then drop incredible full band reworks of the songs (see: Thom's early version of Lotus Flower and the final full band version). Silent spring is probably one of safest bets to be made on potential LP9 tracks. It's also one of the most exciting.