Word: radiohead
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Sales of Pavement's fuzzed-out masterpiece don't stack up to the rounding errors on Nevermind, but its influence on Beck, Blur, Radiohead and countless other musicians of the '90s is incalculable. Lead singer and former Whitney Museum of Art security guard Stephen Malkmus expressed alienation with the same lo-fi guitar grit of Kurt Cobain, but his lyrics and vocals were models of cryptic passion. Somehow his word salads communicated both the ennui of a suburban smart-ass and an awareness that ennui isn't tragic...
...emotionally interesting releases of the summer.Thom Yorke: “The Eraser”Much digital ink has been spilled about Thom Yorke’s surprise solo album, “The Eraser,” both prior to and since its July 11 debut.As rumors about new Radiohead releases—or break-ups, depending on what blog you were reading—circulated, the internet hype machine seemed content to perform at redline, relentlessly predicting and asserting on the basis of a few pre-released MySpace tracks and characteristic industry leaks.Of course, all of this press begged...
...have stoked its outrage into an album of compelling ferocity. Lead voice Black Thought delivers focused and occasionally paranoid rants about a crumbling society ("Watch who you put all your trust in/ Worldwide we coincide with who's suffering") while producer, drummer and resident genius ?uestlove samples dystopian anthems (Radiohead's You and Whose Army?) to create a sound track to indignation that rivals vintage Public Enemy...
From the ethereal melodies to the beats layered upon beats, The Eraser is full of Radiohead music--dark, dystopian, oddly beautiful--minus the other members of Radiohead. (It was composed mostly on a laptop.) In spots, the band is missed. The Clock creates some grinding tension but never figures out how to release it, while Black Swan eddies around a chorus ("This is f___ed up, f___ed up") that hardly mines new emotional territory. You can sense Yorke's grasping for something, and with the help of producer Nigel Godrich, who oversaw Beck's midcareer-crisis record, Sea Change...
...More often than not, though, Yorke speaks for, and to, himself. On Atoms for Peace, he sings, "No more going to the dark side with your flying saucer eyes ... No more talk about the old days, it's time for something great." The Eraser isn't--but by distilling Radiohead into something intimate, it may point the way toward greatness to come...