Radiohead return with “Burn the Witch” and a puppet Wicker Man

Radiohead released “Burn the Witch” on 3 May, two days after their website and social accounts went blank, with a stop-motion film in which a village inspector is shut inside a wooden effigy and set alight. It is the first single from their ninth album, which will be their first since The King of Limbs in 2011, and their first new song since “Spectre”, the unused James Bond theme they shared at Christmas. It is out on XL.

Nigel Godrich has said the band worked on the song in the sessions for Kid A, Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows, and the words “burn the witch” are printed in Stanley Donwood's artwork for the Hail to the Thief booklet. Thom Yorke mentioned it on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, in 2005, and it was teased briefly on stage in 2006 and 2008.

Chris Hopewell, who made the “There There” video in 2003, directed the film for his company Jacknife. Its village is built in the style of Gordon Murray's 1960s Trumptonshire series for children (Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley), and its ending is Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man.

The key animators were Virpi Kettu, who also worked on “There There”, and Oli Putland, both once of Aardman, the Wallace & Gromit studio. Kettu told Billboard that a crew of about a dozen built the sets, shot and edited the film in 14 days, turning out as much as 30 seconds of footage a day. At Aardman 12 seconds or fewer is the usual pace, and her Wallace & Gromit work ran at about four. That's physically impossible. I had not slept for two weeks.¹⁰

She never met the band. Clips went back and forth, the plan was clear from the start, and Thom Yorke is very decisive when it comes to things like this.¹⁰ She learned the film was out when she woke on 3 May to an inbox full of emails.

Jill Mapes made the song Pitchfork's Best New Track and calls it the most unsettling and beautiful thing the band have done since “How to Disappear Completely”, with the strings working as a second percussion section. DIY says it has an adventure and warmth that The King of Limbs lacked. Michael Hann, writing in the Guardian, calls it brilliant, though rock with strings is not quite what the band's manager Brian Message promised of the album, like nothing you've ever heard⁵.

Marc Hogan, also at Pitchfork, reads the film as a jab at nativist politics, from UKIP and Marine Le Pen's National Front to Donald Trump's campaign. Kettu has a reading of her own, and Billboard is careful to say it is not the band's or the director's. The cheerful village is there to pull against a dark song, she says, and the film may be about the refugee crisis in Europe and the blaming of Muslims, of a piece with the “we know where you live” cards fans had been sent. They wanted the video to contrast with what they're playing and to wake people up a bit.¹⁰

“Burn the Witch” stop-motion video by Chris Hopewell, premiered 3 May 2016· Radioheadwatch on youtube →