“The Numbers,” which Radiohead fans have previously known as “Silent Spring,” counsels, “We are of the earth/to her we do return,” and comes as close as Radiohead gets to a call to arms: “We’ll take back what is ours,” it insists. The production hints at Buffalo Springfield’s “Expecting to Fly,” with stately swells of guitar and gusts of strings.

source : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/arts/music/radiohead-a-moon-shaped-pool-review.html

There’s Desert Island Disk with its suggestion that “different types of love are possible” and The Numbers, which is also that rarest of things, a Radiohead track that doesn’t just vaguely resemble another artist’s work (anyone still intent on depicting Radiohead as a latterday Pink Floyd might feel their ears prick up at Decks Dark’s burst of Atom Heart Mother-ish choral vocals) but actually seems to be a direct and obvious homage to something else, or possibly two things: the resemblance of the tumbling piano parts to those on John Martyn’s 1971 instrumental Glistening Glynebourne might be purely coincidental, but the similarity of the intense orchestration, circling bassline and loose-limbed funk rhythm to Melody, the opening track of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1970 Historie De Melody Nelson, definitely is not. They’re certainly not the first people to mine that song’s arrangement for inspiration, but it says something about Radiohead’s inventiveness that they can warp music already plundered by everyone from Beck to Belle and Sebastian into something that sounds entirely their own.

source : http://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/may/08/radiohead-a-moon-shaped-pool-review?CMP=share_btn_tw

En décembre, lorsque Thom Yorke avait joué ce titre inédit en marge de la Cop21, il portait un autre nom : “Silent Spring”. Connu pour son engagement écologique, Thom Yorke avait toujours dit qu’il n’écrirait pas de chanson au sujet de ses convictions en la matière car ce serait forcément “merdique”. Eh bien il se contredit avec “The Numbers” et on applaudit. Car cette chanson est un appel vibrant à se lever, se responsabiliser et à reprendre espoir.

“We are of the earth/To her we do return/ The futur is inside us/It’s not somewhere else”, chante-t-il (Nous venons de la Terre/C’est à elle que nous retournons/Le futur est en nous/Ils n’est nulle part ailleurs.)  “We call upon people/People have this power/The numbers don’t decide/Your system is a lie…We’ll all take back what is ours” (Nous en appelons au peupe/Le peuple a ce pouvoir/Les chiffres ne décident pas/Votre système est un mensonge…Nous reprendrons ce qui est à nous).  Non seulement elle n’est pas niaise mais c’est même une des merveilles absolues de cet album avec sa mélodie simple, son intro mystique à la Alice Coltrane, ses guitares et son piano rappelant Pink Floyd, ses arrangements de cordes très Melody Nelson et sa manière de sonner lâche, aérée, comme si deux mélodies éparses dialoguaient en parallèle (à la façon de The Beta Band). Hymne futur, vous verrez.

source :  http://culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/musique/rock/radiohead-signe-un-joyau-de-spleen-avec-a-moon-shaped-pool-239285