RAdiohead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EB5NhI2RQQ

Hi everyone –

Over the last 18 months or so, Thom and I have been working on a collection of songs with drummer Tom Skinner*, something we have latterly named The Smile.

The album is just about finished - Nigel Godrich has produced it, and we’re nearly at the track-listing stage, where there are 6227020800 possible song orders.

Until that’s decided - here's one song: it’s called ‘You Will Never Work In Television Again.’

Our regards to you and yours,

From

Jonny

* he plays with Sons of Kemet - look them up - delightful. ***

^ thanks, I forgot to add the explanation

It’s the track I enjoyed the least from the Glastonbury set, I still don’t like it that much. waiting on the rest of the album hopefully soon, the rest of the set had some promising moments.

Didn't hear the Glastonbury set, I'm pleasantly surprised by this. I didn't expect anything this raw & rockin'

Apparently, a relative is annoyed with me for buying myself the Kid A Mnesia art book. "Who buys themselves that kind of book?" they asked. They had wanted to buy it for me, for Xmas.

It rules

This might be the first time I laugh at a meme on the radiohead subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/radiohead/comments/rwwoac/you_will_never_work_in_television_again/

According to the subreddit it’s 13 tracks long and this is the tracklist (order not yet confirmed):

porous
the same
free in the knowledge
speech bubbles
opposites
skating on the surface
panavision
thin thing
you will never work in television again
blue eyed fox
the smoke
just eyes and mouth
we don't know what tomorrow bring

Getting hyped for this.

"porous" is better known as "open the floodgates", a song thom was playing back in 2009

The radiohead effect: after listening to this song three times today I’ve done a 180 degree turn and now I really like it.

omg I have that too

Re the meme above, yes I did wonder about that..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEPEqZnTwdo

this one's extremely eh

yeah, total momentum killer after the killer first single.

this sounds like a lot of early solo thom yorke songs i forgot

Lol I’m the opposite I like this one way better than the first one. It’s got some afrobeat groove going on that I’m a fool for. Also love those horns.

I’m assuming a full album release this weekend?

the groove could be good but they don't really do anything with it, feels like a sketch that they didn't have enough people in the band to fill out. just meandering and forgettable as is

Co-sign Moka

Sounds maybe like he heard Sault?

I'm liking it, but then I like Stereolab and it sounds like a 'lab outtake

Iirc correctly Fela Kuti has been an influence since Kid A.

Sault does it way better, and they both seem heavily influenced by Kuti and Can and I’m not complaining.

Well, I like it and think it is good

I like it, too (much more than the "punk" of the first single). Wasn't saying Yorke heard Sault as an insult.

Watching the stream for the second show and whoa. There’s some amazing songs there. Particularly loving “open the floodgates” so far.

This is by far the best Radiohead side project so far. I don’t see how several of these couldn’t have made it for an actual Radiohead album.

phil and ed and colin were sacked

Lol next song I think is “free in the knowledge” sounds like a distant cousin to “karma police”… has a very distinct OK Computer flavor to it.

I’m feeling bad for the sacked members, specially Ed. These are the sort of songs he’s been wanting Radiohead to play since Kid A.

don't feel bad for them. ed is part of the beatles touring band now, phil's working on sanding down every rough edge he ever had, and colin is focusing on lucrative bass solo for runway gigs

Hmm, that means one of them is a “masked singer” then.

These are the sort of songs he’s been wanting Radiohead to play since Kid A.

not at all? the mood here is largely an extension of the jammiest parts of the last two rh albums, not anywhere near three minute guitar pop songs.

not really feeling this material in general

i like "we don't know what tomorrow brings" and then "free in the knowledge", "open the floodgates" and "you will never work in television again" are alright.

The two songs I've heard so far are really lacklustre

the smile stuff is great

with ufo and dog latin here tbh

literally not surprised by which board members feel this doesn't do enough

in the spirit of reciprocation, i am not surprised by those who do ;)

save us fooorks

I don’t know if I’d consider OK Computer an album of three minute guitar pop songs.

For starters most of the songs in OKC are over 4 minutes.

idk what you're talking about then bc the sentiment ed expressed a few times around kid a to httt was along the lines of wanting to make thtee minute guitar pop songs

and this is material is largely as far away from pop as rh have ever been and in the way i find least compelling

Did it leak? Or are we talking about the two singles and the webcasts?

sorry, i learned how to google

also, more evidence for ed being sacked, phil as well

Their many devoted sleuths may suspect that, in the long tradition of stratospherically successful, decade-spanning rock groups, the guys just don’t love hanging out together anymore. (When Ed O’Brien released his solo album last year, he admitted that only the drummer Phil Selway had asked to hear it.) It was heartening, then, to see Yorke and Greenwood, the core songwriting duo, derive such palpable joy from their live debut as the Smile on a Glastonbury livestream last May. They enlisted Tom Skinner, the fidgety jazz drummer of Sons of Kemet, as their high-energy Selway substitute.

His songwriting aspirations go back to 1996, when Radiohead embarked on OK Computer. He planned to propose some material of his own, before self-doubt – and deference to Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood – got the better of him. Making Earth, “I kept asking: what would they think?” he says. “But that was stopping me stepping fully into me.” Has Yorke heard the album? “No. Philip [Selway, drummer] asked, so I sent it to him. But I wouldn’t want to do the U2 thing” – smuggling music unbidden into people’s phones. He smiles evenly. “If they want to hear it, that’s great. And if they don’t: whatever.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/09/radioheads-ed-obrien-humanity-has-only-really-learned-from-disaster

surprised that i like this ("the smoke")

I want to break down that riff from 'The Smoke' at some point, it's in 4/4 but they slide the phrases around so that it feels odd/awkward at certain points.

And the drumming is fantastic, deceptively simple but keeping those 16ths going at that tempo is Funky Drummer shit.

the arrangement is really nice too, sophisticated but light. the radiohead mode i like the most fwiw, tom barely there and in falsetto more a mood board than anything. restrained-funky rhythm section a la can. and a lot of almost-substantial clouds in the arrangement.

to me this sounds like the I get a little bit genghis khan song or like modern adult contempo dangermouse stuff, pretty dismal

haha i like the adult contemporary aspect of it

I can guarantee I'll forget about this song and hear it in some diff context and be like oh yeah this is pretty nice

isn't it so weird how that works? tho i probably won't hear it in a different context anytime soon!

Oof I wasn’t aware of the rest of the band - besides Phil - not being supportive or even interested at all of EOB’s solo album. That’s fucked up. Even if they don’t think it’s their cup of tea, it’s basic human decency to at least ask what he’s up to. They’ve been co-workers for three decades ffs.

Maybe AMSP is actually the last Radiohead album.