[3][4] During the tour for their eighth album, The King of Limbs (2011), Radiohead performed new material, including the future Moon Shaped Pool tracks "Identikit" and "Ful Stop".

[8][9] The studio, originally a 19th-century mill producing art pigment, had been used by musicians including Morrissey and Nick Cave and houses the world's largest vinyl record collection.

[8] The drummer Clive Deamer, who had performed with Radiohead on the King of Limbs tour and appeared on their 2011 double single "The Daily Mail" and "Staircase",[16][17] played additional drums on "Ful Stop".

"[25] The special edition of the album is dedicated to Vic Godrich and the drum technician Scott Johnson, who died in the 2012 stage collapse before Radiohead's scheduled show in Downsview Park, Toronto.

"[25] In December 2015, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, Yorke performed three Moon Shaped Pool songs: "The Numbers" (then known as "Silent Spring"), "Present Tense" and "Desert Island Disk".

[34] It combines electronic elements such as drum machines and synthesisers, acoustic timbres such as guitar and piano, and string and choral arrangements,[35] which feature more heavily than on previous Radiohead albums.

[36] Jonny Greenwood cited the jazz musician Alice Coltrane as an influence, saying: "I'm conscious on this record that we've been occasionally skirting round the edge of something that could be terrible, which is kind of fun ... You have big ambition and you get as far as you can with it.

[43][44] "The Numbers" begins as a "loose-limbed, early 70s jam session",[32] with strings reminiscent of Serge Gainsbourg's 1970 album Histoire De Melody Nelson.

[46][45] The special edition of A Moon Shaped Pool contains two additional tracks: "Ill Wind", featuring a bossa nova rhythm and "icy" synthesisers,[47] and "Spectre", an orchestral piano ballad.

[48] The lyrics discuss love, forgiveness, and regret with, according to Larson, "a sense that beyond tectonic heartbreak there is an anaemic acceptance that is kind of beautiful if you don't get too sad about it".

[19] Several critics felt the lyrics were coloured by Yorke's separation from his partner of almost 25 years, Rachel Owen, noting that the backmasked vocals of "Daydreaming", when reversed, resemble the words "half of my life".

"[53] The Guardian wrote that whereas Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief had addressed the era of Tony Blair and George W. Bush, A Moon Shaped Pool could become the "accidental soundtrack" to the Donald Trump presidency.

Donwood continued the weathering process in Oxfordshire during the band's winter break, with "completely different results", before photographing the works and editing them in Photoshop with Yorke.

"[9] On 30 April 2016, days before the album was announced, fans who had previously made orders from Radiohead received embossed cards with lyrics from the lead single, "Burn the Witch".

[72] The following week, Radiohead released the first in a series of video vignettes set to clips from the album by artists and filmmakers including Michal Marczak, Tarik Barri, Grant Gee, Adam Buxton, Richard Ayoade, Yorgos Lanthimos and Ben Wheatley.

[75][76] On 17 June 2016, the day of the album's retail release, participating record shops held a promotional event, "Live From a Moon Shaped Pool".

[82] The tour was supported by James Blake, Oliver Coates, the Jewish-Arabic band Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis, and Jonny Greenwood's project Junun.

[93] The Israeli musician Dudu Tassa said Radiohead selected his band to support them in the US because they wanted to bring people from Israel after performing in Tel Aviv.

[115] Chris Gerard of PopMatters felt it was "worthy of Radiohead's peerless catalog, a rich addition to what is the most vital and important string of rock albums of the last 30 years".

[107] The Pitchfork editor Jayson Greene felt the album was coloured by Yorke's separation: "The impact of trauma, a sort of car crash of the soul, is palpable.

[118] Eric Renner Brown of Entertainment Weekly praised the variety and scale: "By nature, Radiohead albums will always be somewhat epic, but this one is more consistently grandiose than any of the band's releases since 2000's masterpiece Kid A.

"[41] Jon Pareles, writing for The New York Times, wrote that A Moon Shaped Pool was perhaps Radiohead's "darkest statement – though the one with the band's most pastoral surface".

"[45] Chris Barton of the Los Angeles Times described A Moon Shaped Pool as "a rich and engrossing listen that somehow finds more undiscovered territory for a band that has built a career on doing just that".

[119] MTV's Simon Vozick-Levinson wrote: "A Moon Shaped Pool provides a thrilling answer to the existential concerns that confront any band that's made it this far ... After all this time, hearing these five old friends challenge themselves into a new phase of evolution can still blow even a jaded fan's mind.

"[50] In The New York Observer, Justin Joffe wrote that A Moon Shaped Pool was "a stunning display of naked vulnerability and a notable achievement ... Radiohead remain dedicated craftsmen of strange new sonic universes.

"[49] Like Joffe, Nina Corcoran of Consequence of Sound praised the inclusion of older songs such as "True Love Waits", writing that "Radiohead finally feels connected enough to perform them with meaning ...

"[120] In The Guardian, Lanre Bakare praised the evolution of "Present Tense" from Yorke's earlier "sketchy guitar number" to "beautifully wrought, bossa nova-tinged ballad".

"[121] The New Republic writer Ryan Kearney likened the album to "taking a warm, occasionally agitated bath; it's soothing and all, but the longer you immerse yourself, the colder it leaves you".

[122] Jamie Milton of DIY felt that A Moon Shaped Pool needed "another breakneck force shock to the system" similar to "Ful Stop", and that it contained unnecessary elements, such as the "over-tinkering echo" of "Present Tense" and the "jagged closing section" of "Decks Dark".

[124] At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, A Moon Shaped Pool was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song (for "Burn the Witch").