Fluxblog
July 7th, 2019 3:19pm

No Room For Mess


Thom Yorke “Impossible Knots”

Thom Yorke’s non-Radiohead work is often quite good, but has a way of demystifying his assumed genius and reminding us all that every member of Radiohead is crucial in achieving what they have over the past three decades. When Yorke is left to his own devices he tends to stray from straightforward melody and concise structure in favor of pulsing, gradually building electronic compositions that could easily pass for music released on labels like Border Community, Kompakt, and Hyperdub. To my ears, it always sounds like music that the other members of Radiohead might reject for being too derivative of contemporary artists, or aim to edit into tighter and/or more dynamic songs that would move far away from the apparent emotional and compositional goals of the work. It’s music that exists because Yorke is alone and he’s free to let go of familiar strengths and explore less developed elements of his skill set without having to compromise.

Anima, his fifth solo album including his record as Atoms for Peace and his score for the remake of Suspiria, is the point at which working in electronic music is no longer a “less developed element of his skill set.” It’s been 13 years since The Eraser, and nearly 20 years since he first started seriously working within this tradition on Kid A. Whereas The Eraser now feels somewhat tentative in hindsight and still fairly rooted in Radiohead-ness and both Amok and Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes often felt slightly tossed off, Anima sounds like it comes from a place of full confidence. It doesn’t have a “side project” air about it; it feels like a major career statement that is meant to be taken as seriously as any of his Radiohead work.

And yet I am not terribly moved by it. For the most part this is art I appreciate far more than I actively like it, and the song I enjoy the most – “Impossible Knots” – sounds like a late period Radiohead song that just happened to find its way to this record rather than whatever the band does next. To some extent this is purely a matter of what musical ideas get me going at this point in time: I prefer a busier composition, I want more harmony, I would rather a song move between distinct dynamics than subtly build upon small grooves. “Impossible Knots” has wonderfully jittery groove to it, starting with rattling high-hat sounds and the slow thud of its bass drum and moving into a bass line that seems like a line moving through a series of mazes. Yorke sings in his airiest falsetto, but that’s the only part of the composition that feels loose and free, as the synth drones feel weighty and oppressive like excessive humidity on a hot day. The song doesn’t allow for much in the way of cathartic release, but in the larger context of the rigid and dour Anima, it actually does serve as the climax of the record as the penultimate track. And maybe that’s part of why Anima doesn’t fully connect with me at the moment – this is quite enough claustrophobia for me, thank you.

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