165. A Moon Shaped Pool, ten years later

I.

A Moon Shaped Pool came out ten years ago. That means Radiohead hasn’t made an album in ten years. There is nothing new in sight.

I love A Moon Shaped Pool. It sounds more cinematic than any other album the band has made. We have Jonny Greenwood’s classical string compositions, played by the London Contemporary Orchestra, to thank for that.

It is quite a heavy album and very personal for Thom Yorke. He sings about loss, processing grief and trying to pull himself back together. From Decks Dark: “Then into your life, there comes a darkness / There’s a spacecraft blocking out the sky / And there’s nowhere to hide.”

Yorke had been with the woman he had just separated from for half his life. He had also been in Radiohead for half his life. I can well imagine he was ready for something new. If you want, you can paste the lyrics about farewell and a newfound freedom onto the approaching end of the band as well.

In Glass Eyes, Yorke sings that he gets off a train. He finds himself in a frightening place, sees only concrete-grey faces. He feels a panic attack coming on, wonders whether he should turn back. He needs to get out of there. “Where the path trails off and heads down the mountain / Through the dry bush, I don’t know where it leads / And I don’t really care.”

Perhaps it wasn’t only his love for his ex-wife that was fading, but also for Radiohead. “I feel this love to my core”, he sings in the outro of Glass Eyes. “I feel this love go cold.”

While I waited for Radiohead news, Yorke and Greenwood put out three albums with their new band The Smile. With pleasure, free from the Radiohead straitjacket. Freedom. Greenwood made fantastic film scores¹. Yorke released Anima, a wonderful solo album. The remaining band members were busy with their own projects and Colin Greenwood is touring as one of the Bad Seeds with Nick Cave.

Will there ever be anything new from Radiohead? Or will the band only occasionally play shows with older material? True love waits, Yorke sings on one of Radiohead’s most beautiful songs. I’ll cling to that. Just don’t leave, Radiohead. Don’t leave.

II.

Much attention this week for the hundredth birthday of Sir David Attenborough. Rightly so. The British filmmaker brought wonders of nature into living rooms via television. His voice is indispensable to the nature documentary genre, which he practically shaped himself.

A hundred years old or not, Attenborough is still making films and series. In recent years he has not merely shown a snapshot of nature — he also looks backward and forward. In his hundred years on earth, he has seen the world change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not at all. In his documentary Ocean, released last year, you see shocking images of how the oceans are being destroyed and what that means for us in the long term.

This week I watched A Gorilla Story on Netflix. One of the most famous sequences from Attenborough’s filmed life is about fifty years old. In it he visits a family of gorillas in Rwanda, where a young ape named Pablo delightfully nestles against the filmmaker. A moment Attenborough has never forgotten.

Descendants of the gorilla family filmed back then can still be followed today. They hold a special place in Attenborough’s heart. “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know”, says the wildlife filmmaker.

The new documentary weaves new footage of the current family with scenes from the past, while the elderly Attenborough recalls memories and narrates the new story. At the same time he pays tribute to his predecessor, biologist Dian Fossey, who founded the gorilla reserve.

Not that it becomes the grand Attenborough show. It’s all about the gorillas. And we follow them as they seem to live through a Shakespearean drama. Complete with banishments, brutal violence, jealousy and revenge. Go and see it.

PS.

Next month a new sketch show by Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm) begins. I have no idea what chaos awaits us this time, but executive producer Barack Obama can already be seen alongside David in the teaser.

On my blog for NU.nl I wrote about the AI clone of Ruud Gullit. The former footballer was on RTL Tonight a week ago talking about artificial intelligence and I got the distinct feeling he has no idea what he’s talking about.

Karin Spaink, co-founder of the digital civil rights organisation Bits of Freedom, passed away this week. “Exit Spaink — my very last piece”, she wrote in her farewell blog. “If everything has gone according to plan, I passed away this morning — a death I chose myself, and which I discussed and prepared for months.”

I haven’t been gaming much lately, but this week a few trailers appeared for games I’m excited about. Stranger Than Heaven, for instance — an ambitious new game by the makers of the Yakuza and Like a Dragon series. The story begins in 1915 but spans fifty years and takes you to various cities around the world. One of the characters is Snoop Dogg with a hilariously braided beard.

And there is a remake of Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo Switch 2. Online I read a lot of criticism of how the characters look, but I actually love the puppet-like aesthetic.

The second season of Daredevil: Born Again is done. It was a very strong season that draws parallels with Trump and ICE. If you’re into Marvel but have drifted away recently: this series is well worth trying. I enjoyed the hard-hitting action, the political scheming and the courtroom drama.

You just read blog №165, written in the week of 4 to 10 May 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and receive it in your inbox every Sunday for free.