Thom Yorke - The Eraser
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Thom YorkeEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2006-07-11
Music Label: Xl Recordings
Soundtracks:
- The Eraser
- Analyse
- The Clock
- Black Swan
- Skip Divided
- Atoms For Peace
- And It Rained All Night
- Harrowdown Hill
- Cymbal Rush
Free Music Notes for The Eraser
Free Music Review: Thom Yorke's Best Since _Kid A_
Hit: 5 Stars
Yorke takes what he & his bandmates started en masse on _Kid A_ and strips it all the way down here. People will call this "minimalism" & not mean it as a compliment. The detractors of this album will mean that its minimalism, as Raymond Carver notes about his critics, "smacks of smallness of vision and execution." Oh how wrong these people are. It's as if, like a master storyteller on the level of Carver, Yorke had to get alone to begin to make sense of the unlimited sound in his head, get in touch with his mind, spirit, and body. Indeed he does this in a way that pleases and disorients as consistently as he did on _Kid A_, an experience quite amazing for this reviewer.
Just listen to "The Clock." It's Yorke dancing his own hyperactive dance with himself. You've got the insistent percussion of the variety of throat sounds with which he accompanies himself on top of busy drum and click tracks. If this is minimalism, it comes in spasmodic jerks. The repeating harmonic track, mostly some sampled guitar and a few notes from a keyboard, is by and large sparse, but I assure you that the emotion is not sparse when he goes into a harmonic melisma with himself around the four minute mark. I know of no singer who can wring as much pathos from an "oooooohhhhhh-oooo-oooo."
"Black Swan," with its "this is f****d-up" refrain seems destined to be the most famous track from this album. Its bass line alone instantly chisels itself in your psyche. It has a once-more spasmodic quality that instantly chisels its high notes in your psyche, making you pay attention. This contributes to its jazzy quality, the kind of jazz that only Yorke can make with himself (with a little help from Nigel Godrich). His fluid and almost improvisational-seeming delivery of his lyrics recalls classic jazz singers like Mel Torme; I know, Yorke is not traditionally associated with this guard. Rest assured that if you snap your fingers to this CD, it will be a much more frenetic experience than snapping your fingers to Tony Bennett or other pre-postmodern jazzifiers.
Every song on here is strong and doesn't disappoint if you take it on Yorke's terms. He certainly offers nothing to those who want to hear "Paranoid Android," part 2. It seems the reviewer below me has been expecting this kind of thing for the last nine years, much to his chagrin, when he writes that _The Eraser_ is "a lot like rafting down a river--only there are no rapids, bends, turns, or drops. it's like your facing forward the entire time, going 5 miles an hour. it can be pleasant, but would you really want to do it for an hour?" I agree with him on a level; there is a kind of trapped vertigo here. But one that I love (and could handle for an infinity of hours). Like the best artists (Beckett comes to mind), Thom Yorke takes stasis as its own virtue. _The Eraser_ can be a very gloomy experience. But I must disagree with this reviewer when he says "there are no rapids, bends, turns, or drops." Granted, they come "in a silent way," for a large part, but they are there. No crashing power chords like in "Creep," but more of a hyperkinetic mental quality, the kind that computer blips and beeps capture wonderfully. Perhaps an acquired taste, I guess.
My favorite piece in these regards is "Atoms for Peace," based around a simple sine wave riff, with some sine wave percussion thrown in for good measure (and on top of that--could you have guessed?--a repeating discordant sine wave harmony along with, gasp, a few bars of subdued guitar). In a few words, Stockhausen-inspired minimalism at its starkest. The melody that Yorke sings over this absolutely catapults the song into a riveting listening experience when it hits the chorus. He is certainly passionate about his subject matter, it is just that his subject matter does not call for dramatic dynamic shifts within the song.
This is not to say that the dynamic does not shift from song to song. From "Atoms for Peace" to "And It Rained All Night" there is a considerable shift in mood and intensity. And "It Rained . . ." has a true breakdown in the middle. If it isn't a "rapid" it is at least some sort of unquantifiable musical quasar.
I was tempted to give this 4.5 stars, if only for the reason that some of Yorke's vocal melodies hearken to others on Radiohead albums. I have decided that this is part of his impeccable approach and am giving it a perfect five. What great composer does not revisit his own past? The difference from the men and the boys is whether or not the composer makes his revisitations new. Yorke does this in the most memorable fashion. I'll let you find out for yourself. You'll hear melodic snippets from _Amnesiac_, _Hail to the Thief_, etc. You'll listen to the whole album. And think "I've heard that before." At the same time the world will seem altered.
Yorke has done the seemingly impossible in his career. He has practiced his craft for almost fifteen years without one single artistic failure. Indeed, he actually seems to be getting better with age. He has taken the keyboard minimalism of _Kid A_to its full fruition here. One can only imagine what new frontier he and Radiohead will open on their next album. One thing never to expect with Yorke, though: more of the same. If you truly open your ears here, you will hear the constant revolutions of his soul, and that is a wonderous thing to be able to capture, for an artist or a listener.
The Eraser Poster
The Eraser is a solo album by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. It was produced by Nigel Godrich and comprises of 9 songs written and played by Yorke. The album art was created by Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since 1994.Some writers and fans have taken to calling this album Kid B, the (obvious) implication that it's the companion piece to Radiohead's masterpiece of electronic rock. And while The Eraser does compare favorably to that work, it's no longer ahead of its time, just simply of its time. We can't all be visionaries all the time, however, and it's understandable that Yorke wants to play with his computer more than he gets to with his rock and roll band. Looped bubbly bloops, sleight drones, and curious bleeps complement Yorke's distinctive vocals throughout. The album at times sounds like demo versions, as if they were an update of the way Pete Townshend used to do solo versions of all his songs for the Who. It's tough not to expect the rest of the band to come in and "complete" a particular song. But once you get used to the fact that this isn't going to happen, the album reveals itself as a delightful, occasionally brave work that's as playful as it is melancholic. --Mike McGonigal
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