Thom Yorke has released a new album and it’s called Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Through a torrent. Because he hates Spotify, and music labels and all that. Brilliant. I, like anybody else with taste, am a massive fan of Yorke’s work. As usual he dropped the album without any warning, and in a way that people like to discuss. It’s actually really annoying because for all the endless articles about Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes all anyone seems to want to bloody talk about is how it was released, and not how it sounds.
“I’m going to go buy a sandwich now and write five hundred words about the cardboard box it comes in, doesn’t that sound intriguing?”
No, it fucking does not. So, with that being said, onto the business of actually talking about music.
From the open it’s clear this is not a revolution in the approach Yorke takes to making music. It’s digital and sparse. The melodies are intricate and pulsating. But it sounds far more personal than his last release, AMOK, with Atoms for Peace. TMB almost sounds halfway between the cold, rhythmic nature of AMOK and the lush musical landscapes laid out in Radiohead’s King of Limbs. It’s almost subdued and is certainly intended to be listened to as one piece, rather than individual tracks. In fact this feels like the most intimate work he’s put out for a very long time.
On Interference, the stand out track of the album, it feels like he’s singing straight to you with that incredible, spine tingling voice and a gorgeous electronic background. No one does minimalism like Thom. The track puts me in mind of Videotape, the closer of 2007’s In Rainbows, and if that’s any indication of the direction Radiohead are taking for their forthcoming studio output then I’m too excited and I may need medical attention.
As much of a fan as I am of Yorke’s more digitally focused output, I do miss the brilliant lyricist who penned Fake Plastic Trees. The lyrics here are the same fragmented, broken words that have become a trademark ever since the Kid A era. At times they’re piercingly brilliant, but the whole album leaves me longing for slightly more. This isn’t a criticism so much as a nostalgic longing.
If you’re a Thom Yorke fan, you’ve already listened and loved it. If you’re not, this isn’t exactly the best place to start. It’s as much a statement on the modern world as it is a piece of music. But, in my humble yet snobbish opinion, it’s some of Thom Yorke’s most intimate, personal work. It could only be released as a solo album, although it feels far more spontaneous than The Eraser, the last album released under his own name.
This all seems like a lovely little interlude to the main event, which is the already mentioned next LP from Radiohead. As we all eagerly await finding out how they release it (my guess is that they’ll write it in binary and hide it under park benches because fuck the music industry) this is more than enough to tide me, and all the other obsessives, over quite happily.
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