For most bands, an album like The King Of Limbs would be a career high. For Radiohead, it was a friday.

Unlike its predecessor In Rainbows, TKOL is not a readily accessible album. Here, Radiohead’s trademark sonic density has ventured into experimentation, rather than the consolidation of their craft seen in their previous album. Layers upon layers are carefully peeled back each time you listen through to slowly reveal the true heart of the songs. More of their mystery is unravelled in the accompanying remix album, and even then, months later, some tiny detail that skipped your attention will suddenly become a vital part of the song.

This obtuseness is likely to cost a few fans, but for those who are into this kind of thing it is a stunning odyssey through a forest of sonic experimentation, produced carefully enough to hear the individual leaves. Like nature, it is full of patterns that break down into a beautiful individuality, a careful layering of sounds as intricate and organic as the trees themselves.

Taking that metaphor even further, the album is as varied as the forest itself can be. “Bloom” emerges into a lost world of intertwined rhythms and trills of melody, the strange creatures of the woods looking on as you stumble through their world. “Morning Mr Magpie” is a frantic chase through the undergrowth, antagonistic and accusatory. “Little by Little” is far out of sight of civilization, almost leaving behind those “routines and schedules, a drug that kills you” in exchange for the freedom to roam through the ancient trunks and twisted branches of its domain.  ”Feral” is what trees do at night when you’re not looking. As the small hours of the night approach, “Lotus Flower” cavorts in secret glades under moonlight, promising all of nature’s secrets. If there is indeed an “empty space inside [your] heart where the weeds take root” then this has the power to “set you free”. As the moon sets, the forest lies still and there’s “no one around”. “Codex” is a slow introspective walk through the trees, reflecting on these secrets. Dawn approaches, and birds in the branches above flit back and forth between branches, oblivious to your presence. Here is where you “Give up the Ghost” and become part of this forest. “Separator” finally burst out from the trunks into full daylight, like waking up from a “long and vivid dream”.

Retreat into nature is at the heart of The King of Limbs and is an interesting counterpoint to earlier albums that dealt with the isolation of life in a high speed urban world. Over the course of their career, they have left this urban paranoia, journeyed through endless suburbia, and finally emerged, free, into the forest. Radiohead sounds happy on this album, specifically in closing track “Separator” where Yorke sings “If you think this is over then you’re wrong” with guileless joy.

Walking through the woods, or listening to The King of Limbs, the intention may have been to explore and reconnect with nature - to rediscover what we’ve lost and cut ourselves off from for so long. In a world where our forests are disappearing and we are forgetting why this matters, this is a worthwhile quest.

After that closing note of Separator though, there’s not so much a feeling of enlightenment - of having understood nature - as there is a sense that it has understood you. Perhaps it was never a case of returning to the forest, but rather realising that none of us have ever left.