Radiohead release “The Daily Mail” and “Staircase” as a single

Radiohead have released “The Daily Mail” and “Staircase” as a two-track download single, and put both songs up on their YouTube channel. Neither is on The King of Limbs, though both come from the same period. The recordings are the ones the band filmed for their episode of Nigel Godrich's studio session series, first broadcast on 1 July as The King of Limbs: From the Basement.

“The Daily Mail” has been nearly two years coming. Thom Yorke first played it alone at the piano at a Green Party benefit in Cambridge in February 2010; the single has the Basement arrangement, with brass and two drummers. “Staircase” was first heard in June, when the band posted a clip of it from the session and Phil Selway explained that the second drummer beside him was Clive Deamer. Both were in the surprise Glastonbury set in June and on both Roseland Ballroom nights in New York in September, days after “Staircase” was on Saturday Night Live and “The Daily Mail” on The Colbert Report.

The band announced the single on their website on 12 December and took pre-orders from then, as MP3 or WAV files; Amazon's British store sells it too, and Deezer streams it. According to Music Feeds, Zane Lowe gave the single version of “The Daily Mail” its first play on BBC Radio 1 that week. The whole Basement film is out as an iTunes download today; DVD and Blu-ray copies ordered from the band's site are posted to arrive before Christmas, and the shops get the discs on 31 January.

The Independent took “The Daily Mail” as an attack on the newspaper it is named after, and floated Radiohead as unlikely contenders for the Christmas number one. The reviewer at Louder Than War took it as satire, with an opening that mocks a far-right recruiting leaflet, and thought plenty of over-earnest fans online had missed the joke.

Ed O'Brien was on XFM with Mary Anne Hobbs and on BBC 6 Music in the week of the announcement, and said the band had spent the week rehearsing four or five new songs to take on the road. We haven't got anymore stuff left over but we are rehearsing at the moment and we are rehearsing new songs because we want the tour to be creative¹². A couple of weeks in a studio at the end of 2012 might give them an EP, he said, but the plans will stay loose.

The American tour opens in Miami on 27 February, and O'Brien told 6 Music the band would rather play arenas than festivals, because The King of Limbs is so detailed in its sound. Britain, he said, gets them in the autumn. We are definitely playing the UK next year.¹⁷

The Daily Mail / Staircase