Radiohead’s Yorke Flies Solo
Everything’s in its right place for Thom Yorke.
Radiohead’s wiry frontman has announced that his first solo album, The Eraser, is set to hit stores on July 11.
But don’t go getting all paranoid android thinking the Grammy-winning British art rockers are going to disappear completely.
In a message to Radiohead fansite W.A.S.T.E., Yorke emphatically denied that bandmembers have any intention of going their separate ways with his new musical foray.
Instead, he reports that Radiohead has been feverishly working in its U.K. studios on new tunes for the band’s highly anticipated seventh album, which Radiohead has been road testing with a short tour that began earlier this month in Europe. The tour makes its way to North America in June via intimate theater venues, as well as a June 17 headlining gig at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee, before wrapping up in August.
“Yes it’s a record! No, it’s not a Radiohead record,” the singer wrote in a post dated Friday. “As you know, the band are now touring and writing new stuff and getting to a good space, so I want no crap about me being a traitor or whatever splitting up blah, blah…this was all done with their blessing.”
And while The Eraser is his own baby, Yorke tells fans he doesn’t like referring to the disc as a solo project, claiming “it doesn’t sound right.”
Solo or not, the new disc is going to be distributed by Indie label XL Recordings and feature nine tracks produced and arranged by Nigel Godrich, the famed Radiohead collaborator who shepherded the group to prominence via his work on The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A and Hail to the Thief.
“The elements have been kicking round now for a few years and needed to be finished, and I have been itching to do something like this for ages,” Yorke said in his post. “Inevitably, it is more beats and electronics.”
Billboard reports that one song, “Black Swan,” will be featured over the closing credits of Warner Independent Features’ upcoming thriller A Scanner Darkly, which Richard Linklater is adapting from the classic Philip K. Dick sci-fi novel.
The film’s score was rumored to be written entirely by Radiohead, but the band will instead contribute a limited amount of music along with Yorke’s new tune.
As for their long-awaited creep back to the stage, Yorke & Co. kicked things off with the May 1 tour opener in London, which saw the unveiling of new songs “Arpeggi” and “Bodysnatchers.” Radiohead was forced to cancel a May 10 concert in Amsterdam after the unexpected death of drummer Phil Selway’s mother. The band has rescheduled the show for Aug. 28.
Here’s a complete track listing for Yorke’s The Eraser:
“The Eraser”
“Analyze”
“The Clock”
“Black Swan”
“Skip Divided”
“Atoms for Peace”
“And It Rained All Night”
“Harrowdown Hill”
“Cymbal Rush”
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