Radiohead newspaper

EXTRA, EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT (OR NOT): To promote Tuesday’s physical and digital release of King of Limbs (yup, you can now download it from iTunes, Amazon MP3, et al.), Radiohead has sent out a small army of vendors in 61 cities around the world to give out free copies of The Universal Sigh, a one-off newspaper. The contents of the 12-page paper are a bit like Radiohead’s liner notes: abstract, wordy, pretty serious, filled with scratchy artwork and perhaps hinting at some kind of mystery, Ben Sisario noted in the N.Y. Times. NME, meanwhile, greeted The Universal Sigh with a “What Does It All Mean?” item. The paper contains stories written by the authors Jay Griffiths, Stanley Donwood and Robert Macfarlane, along with references to Norse mythology and Goethe, and drawings of not readily identifiable creatures. The band gets big points for originality—but that’s hardly surprising. (3/30a)