My review of Thom Yorke’s The Eraser:
First off, I am going to adopt a rating system, though not one that involves stars or letter grades. I hate those because they lack a definite sense of commitment. Instead, I am going to guess how many times I will play this CD in the next month, and that will be my rating. I only have time to play about 20 CDs all the way through in a month, so if I play one more than 7 times, I think it’s pretty damn good. I doubt that I’d play a CD more than 15 times, but I have a few times before. I played Radiohead’s Pablo Honey 20-30 times the first month I had it back in 1992. And everyone knows how much I played NIN’s Pretty Hate Machine back in 1990-1. Truth is, I love to hear CDs that make me want to listen to them more than I actually have time for. So, there is my commitment.
Looking back at some of the reviews that I’ve done recently I can tell you:
DM’s “Playing the Angel” got about 7 plays in the first month.
FL’s “At War with the Mystics” got 8 or 9.
AF’s “Funeral” just blew me away, as did RH’s “Hail to the Thief.” I probably listened to the former 20-25 times from November-December of 2004 and the latter about 20 times during the summer of 2003.
That said, my guess is that I will probably play Yorke’s The Eraser 7 or 8 times in the next month. Thus, I give it “7.5 plays” on my silly new scale.
Here’s why:
The vibe of the new CD is minimalist electronica. But if you had to pick just one of those descriptors, it has to be minimalist. The instrumentation is spare, Yorke’s voice is straightforward and unaffected, the lyrics are simple and heartfelt, the arrangements are neither fussy nor complicated, etc…
There are only nine songs here, each about 4 ½ minutes long. And they all tend to be arranged the same way: There is a long initial section composed of a standard verse/chorus pattern (this section often repeats). It is followed by a breakdown/development and completed by a finale/synthesis.
There is very little that is surprising or even (I am tempted to say) new. The songs tend to sound like Kid A / Amnesiac B-sides. And that ain’t bad. I dig those CDs…even if I am an alcoholic. On the other hand, what saves many of the B-sides is when the band kicks in. And since this is a solo/side-project (whatever Yorke wants to allow us to call it), it never does. The effect of this is to concentrate one’s attention even more intensely on Yorke’s voice, which in my estimation is the best part of the new CD. I read a Rolling Stone review of the CD—they give it 4/5 stars—with the following quote: “There's no percentage trying to read autobiography into Yorke's songs, or anybody else's -- the question isn't whether they're about him, it's whether they're about you.” In fact, that is the best point the review makes, even though it is simply a principle and could have appeared in any review. Yorke’s images have a cumulative effect. They stack up and amount to something. And the way they emanate from Yorke’s cold, thin, wavering voice is part of the effect. His voice is colder and lonelier than it has ever been. The isolation is even deeper than on any Radiohead CD. And the concerns, while simpler, are by dint of their simplicity more elemental.
The Songs:
1. The Eraser
In the interview that Ryan posted, Yorke said the CD’s main theme is that of trying to forget but being unable to do so. The stuff we push away comes back. That theme is the strongest in this song and the closer “Cymbal Rush.” Here the music is almost completely built around a few piano chords that you hear right at the beginning. They are dissected over and over again, cut up, moved, and pasted…and despite all this, indeed because of all this, they never go away.
2. Analyse
This song reminds me of NIN’s “Something I Can Never Have” because it plays with the decision to let a chord be major or minor. The lyrical idea seems to be that to think critically is a kind of forgetting. It takes time and space to make the mind a blank and to work from the blank to decision. But perhaps objectivity should come in for a little condemnation. Although…it is the only thing that prevents Fox News and Al Jazeera from being legitimate news sources.
3. The Clock
This is a song about environmental consciousness. It is accusatory of both the politicians who decide and the people who blindly wish that they could go on in their fairy-tale existence. The music is like an angry dream.
4. Black Swan
“This is your blind spot, blind spot / It should be obvious, but it's not.” What if you succeeded and blotted out the painful reality? Well, everyone else would see you bumping into walls. They might appear as enemies. Black Swans. “Be your black swan, black swan / I'm for spare parts, broken up.”
5. Skip Divided
Yorke bottoms out his voice on this one. I THINK this song is about the futility trying to find your answers by forgetting yourself in another person. All our big connections are wrapped up in little facts about time and place and these press us, make us lonely.
6. Atoms for Peace
This is an incredibly optimistic song. In a way, it’s the heart of the CD. Yorke even mentions the word here, though with a fair amount of violence: “Peel all of your layers off / I want to eat your artichoke heart.” But mainly he is talking about being reality-centered and the manageable(!) pain that that implies. There is some very nice guitar and synth work at the end. A simple but hopeful drone!
7. And It Rained All Night
This is my favorite song on the CD. If any of us could write lyrics like this we would be famous:
And It Rained All Night
And it rained all night and washed the filth away
Down New York airconditioned drains
The click click clack of the heavy black trains
A million engines in neutral
The tick tock tick of a ticking timebomb
Fifty feet of concrete underground
One little leak becomes a lake
Says the tiny voice in my earpiece
So I give in to the rhythm
The click click clack
I'm too wasted to fight back
Tick tack goes the pendulum on the old grandfather clock
I can see you
But I can never reach you
And it rained all night and then all day
The drops were the size of your hands and face
The worms come out to see what's up
We pull the cars up from the river
It's relentless
Invisible
Indefatigable
Indisputable
Undeniable
So how come it looks so beautiful?
How come the moon falls from the sky?
I can see you
But I can never reach you
I can see you
But I can never reach you
8. Harrowdown Hill
This song is about the suicide death of Dr. David Kelly, the scientist who was trying to blow the whistle on the British government’s claims about WMD in Iraq. Yorke calls it the angriest song he has ever written:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5092160.stm . The last minute of this song is my pick for the most starkly beautiful bit on the CD. It reminds me a lot of old Peter Gabriel, which I quite like.
9. Cymbal Rush
This song is the logical closer, the counterpart to The Eraser. Yorke gets the dread of the comfort-seekers exactly right.
But…
I will always think he focuses too much on their plight, as artists often do. I prefer just to point out the bright spots, to live in them when I can. But I do see how that can appear provincial and small.
Still, beautiful stuff in this song.
Jeff
