The European tour was postponed after the temporary stage collapsed in Toronto's Downsview Park, killing a drum technician and injuring three other members of Radiohead's road crew.

Though its unconventional production and shorter length divided listeners, The King of Limbs was named one of the best albums of the year by publications including Rolling Stone, The Wire, NME and PopMatters.

[12] The guitarist Ed O'Brien said: "The brick walls we tended to hit were when we knew something was great, like 'Bloom', but not finished ... Then [Colin Greenwood] had that bassline, and Thom started singing.

[13] On 24 January 2010, Radiohead suspended recording to perform at the Hollywood Henry Fonda Theatre to raise funds for Oxfam responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The show was released free online that December as Radiohead for Haiti, and included a performance of the King of Limbs track "Lotus Flower" by Yorke on acoustic guitar.

[14] In February, at a benefit concert in aid of the Green Party, Yorke performed songs including "Separator" (then titled "Mouse Dog Bird") and "Give Up the Ghost".

[17] The title derives from the King of Limbs, an ancient oak tree in Savernake Forest in Wiltshire, near Tottenham House, where Radiohead recorded In Rainbows.

[18] According to Rolling Stone, The King of Limbs saw Radiohead move further from conventional rock music and song structures in favour of "moody, rhythm-heavy electronica, glacially paced ballads and ambient psychedelia".

[19] Another Rolling Stone writer, David Fricke, wrote that some tracks "hover and throb more like suggestions than songs, exotic murmurs in no hurry to become declarative statements".

[26] Pitchfork said it comprised "aggressive rhythms made out of dainty bits of digital detritus, robotically repetitive yet humanly off-kilter, parched thickets of drumming graced with fleeting moments of melodic relief".

[31] O'Brien said that Radiohead felt the ideal album was around 40 minutes long, and cited What's Going On (1971) by Marvin Gaye as a classic record shorter than The King of Limbs.

[34] He and Yorke drew trees with eyes, limbs, mouths, and familiars,[34] creating "strange multi-limbed creatures" inspired by Northern European fairy tales.

[40] The NME reporter Matt Wilkinson argued that the surprise release was "a stroke of genius" that created excitement and "made being a fan seem like you're part of a brilliant, exclusive club".

[15] However, the NME deputy editor, Martin Robison, dismissed it as a promotional exercise: "the pose of anti-consumerism to win fans, then the total exploitation of that loyalty via consumerist means".

[41] The video inspired the "Dancing Thom Yorke" internet meme, whereby fans replaced the audio or edited the visuals,[42] and "#thomdance" became a trending hashtag on Twitter.

[48] Influenced by free newspapers such as LA Weekly or London Lite, the Universal Sigh is a 12-page tabloid printed using web-offset lithography on newsprint paper.

[1] On 16 April 2011, Radiohead released more tracks from the King of Limbs sessions, "Supercollider" and "The Butcher", as a double single for Record Store Day.

[64] In 2017, Radiohead collaborated with the composer Hans Zimmer to record a version of "Bloom" for the BBC nature documentary series Blue Planet II.

[67] In September, Radiohead played two dates at New York City's Roseland Ballroom and performed on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live and an hour-long special of The Colbert Report.

[72] On 16 June 2012, the stage collapsed during the setup for a show at Toronto's Downsview Park, killing the drum technician Scott Johnson and injuring three other members of Radiohead's road crew.

[87] PopMatters' Corey Beasley wrote: "The King of Limbs is a beautiful record, one that begs more of a conscious listen than its predecessor, but one that provides equal — if different — thrills in doing so.

[90] The Quietus critic Ben Graham felt it could be Radiohead's best work, writing that it returned to the style of their albums Kid A and Amnesiac with "a greater maturity and weight of experience that enriches both the songs and the process".

Mark Pytlik of Pitchfork wrote that it was "well-worn terrain for Radiohead, and while it continues to yield rewarding results, the band's signature game-changing ambition is missed".

[83] In the Los Angeles Times, Ann Powers wrote that The King of Limbs had divided listeners, with some finding it too low-key, abstract, or "doomy", or too similar to Radiohead's previous work.

"[1] The King of Limbs was named one of the best albums of 2011 by several publications, including the Wire,[95] the Guardian,[96] Mojo,[97] NME,[98] PopMatters,[99] Uncut[100] and Rolling Stone.

[38] In a 2015 article for Stereogum, Ryan Leas concluded that The King of Limbs was "very good, occasionally great music by a pivotal band that nevertheless felt like something of a letdown because it wasn't, ultimately, some genius stroke none of us expected".

[93] Many listeners preferred The King of Limbs: Live From the Basement,[94] including Leas, who wrote: "You hear muscle and movement and bodies existing where the now tapped-out ingenuity of Radiohead's electronic impulses has begun to make their recorded music brittle.

"[93] Writing for the New Republic in 2016, Ryan Kearney criticised Yorke's use of idioms, which he felt had worked on previous albums but less so on the "musically diffuse" and less "transportive" King of Limbs.

[102] In 2021, the Consequence of Sound critic Jordan Blum and the Stereogum writer Chris DeVille wrote that The King of Limbs remained Radiohead's most divisive record.

[103] Blum and DeVille attributed the disappointment to expectations set by the "warm and approachable" In Rainbows,[94] whose innovative pay-what-you-want release had boosted Radiohead's influence.