There’s a lot to be said for remaining one of the most exciting bands on the planet for 31 years, yet Radiohead still manage it.

‘In Rainbows’ and ‘The King of Limbs’ dropped from nowhere, and now ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ makes it a Radiohead hat-trick.

Even if you’re in the ‘Radiohead is just about Thom Yorke and his poor sartorial choices now’ camp, there’s no doubt you couldn’t escape the thrill of their next album release.

And if you don’t like them, you’ve been moaning about the fuss and declaring your inability to understand them, or the hype that follows their every aural move.

Produced again by Nigel Godrich, ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ is an elusive record, from its conception to the tracks and subject matter within it. It was always going to be this way. The band have been teasing ‘LP9‘ (a fan-given name for an album we only knew the title of hours before it was released) pretty much since 2011’s ‘The King of Limbs’ excitement died down. From track snippet references in interviews (that sees every self-respecting r/radiohead Redditor dive head-first into playing the sound clip backwards for any hidden messages or losers like me searching for clues in the radiohead.com source code), to the digital disappearing act a week before its impact date, the mystery shroud of ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ is part of its unnerving appeal.

And unnerving it sounds. This is an album all of its own virtue, so don’t compare it to any of their previous works. That’s about as useful as suggesting people who are in their teens can’t appreciate their early albums.

‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ is a cathartic listen, and likely equally so to record. If you’re a fan of the band, you likely shed a tear upon listening the first time. There’s as much heart-sleeve as we’ve ever heard, with Thom Yorke’s long-term relationship break-up last year an obvious theme, but several of the tracks on AMSP pre-dating those circumstances. It’s an album from the soul.

Suprising opener ‘Burn The Witch‘ is hogged by a guttural chorus bassline and was translated as everything from a political statement to a protest of modern life, but this opener doesn’t fit the rest of this record’s heavily-atmospheric template. As the first track shared from AMSP, it afforded Radiohead a smokescreen by by choosing to reveal it as the record’s lead track six days before release, occasionally twirling disco, bossa nova and electronica for good measure.

Eloquent and fluid, ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ veers/makes a very obvious beeline toward the cinematic. From the second song, Thome Yorke becomes as fragile as glass whilst each track and exquisite detail blooms with enormity. Weighty string arrangements seem somehow light, no matter how sombre the mood.

Could it have happened that Olafur Arnaulds and Clint Mansell clandestinely worked with the band on the exquisite piano-repeating ‘Daydreaming’? Here be the most unlikely second track (songs are in alphabetical order) but one of the record’s most treasured, with repetitive melodies that eventually come accompanied with the most vulnerable incarnation of Thom vocal.

‘Decks Dark’ is less Jon Brien, instead it flourishes with gorgeous choral backing before taking a turn for the perturbing. Towards the end we’re treated to some sweet rocking guitar, but this is as close as AMSP gets to Radiohead’s roots.

Menacingly still, the raging industrialisation of ‘Ful Stop’ is poised defiant mid-album working with anger rather than crying into a never-ending vortex of break-up tears. It’s as close as we get to 2011’s ‘The King of Limbs’, evoking those Aphex Twin references with aplomb. Further on, ‘Identikit’ follows the lush strings of ‘Glass Eyes’, as it swells with irresistible grooves that take the album further into the widescreen rabbit hole – all while Twitter continues to look for details of Thom Yorke’s marriage and if Jay Z cheated on him. It’s is undoubtedly the surprise gem of this album with its gigantic choral outro whilst being the only track on the record to flirt with pop.

‘The Numbers’ gently confused opening leads us into the beginning of the end, with ‘Present Tense’, a sequel-of-sorts to In Rainbows’ Reckoner with a moreish Latin flavour, following. But where are the guitars en-masse? “Where are those huge riffy breakdowns and where is Thom losing his shit?”, say those who haven’t listened to a ‘head album since ‘Hail To Thief’.

We’ve waited a very long time for a studio version of ‘True Love Waits’, the band’s very soul resting on this emotion-ripping album closer with calculated urgency. And the result is shimmering, beautiful, a bold signal of hope. Radiohead wanted us to listen to their most conceptual body of work as the sun’s rays left the blossom-lit sky (Oxford local time).

A Moon Shaped Pool is a moody, trippy sojourn into dead air space, deftly sketched out by a band who, at 31 years old, continue to excite and mystify. They win over every single last one of us. Still, when’s LP10 due?

‘A Moon-Shaped Pool’ is available now : iTunes | Amazon

It will be available on physical formats from 17 June 2016 – order at www.amoonshapedpool.com.