Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, Thom Yorke

There is no doubt that any Thom Yorke's project is worth listening to. No matter how different and unpredictable they might turn out to be, no one should overlook any of his compositions.

Tomorrow's Modern Boxes opens with a rather quiet, Bonobo/Caribou-like melody and, as soon as Yorke's voice appears, it captures our attention. Subtle, constant, without fireworks and big drama. A plain good tune.

Guess again! (the second song) makes it clear that in this occasion, Thom Yorke is reaching out towards The Eraser sound (when it comes to melodies) but with Radiohead's distinctive voice. After layers of sound and voice modification, it is always nice to listen to his voice again.

Interference and its sparse notes brings us close to the emotive world of Yorke while he claims over and over again "I don't have a right to interfere". Even though he is actually interfering more than ever with our emotions.



The mother Lode swifts a little towards the Atoms for Peace realm. A more danceable tune that still preserves the intimacy that spreads over the whole album. Dubstep beats and Yorke's voice: pure delight.

Truth ray slows down the beat once again and the melody becomes almost bare. The importance rely on the details, the clinking chime bells, the reversed voice, the heartwarming atmosphere.

There is no ice (for my drink) is the most Portishead-like of all the songs in the album. The Third Portishead, of course, the dry, percussive, Gun Machine one.

Pink Section continues the unfinished melody from There is no ice (for my drink) and takes it into another level, more melancholic and somehow piano-driven one to transform a dry, metallic song into a warmer one.

And Nose Grows Some, closes the album nicely with a return to Thom Yorke's voice.

Overall, an album with less experiments but a great deal of feelings. A perfect company for a rainy winter afternoon.

listening The King of Limbs

Radiohead is back. Briefly, extremely (8 songs and less than 40 minutes), but they're back. Now it's time to find out what's hidden behind this The king of Limbs.

The first time I listened to the album, I did it whilst being glued to the computer and doing a thousand different things at the same time. And none right, to be honest. It became surrounding music (or as Eno would call it, "Music for elevators"), only to accompany my daily chores. And truth be told, the music didn't overcome this background status: none of the songs captured my attention, no melody distracted me from what I was doing forcing me to pay more attention to it. Yes: the first impression was one of indiference. I had read somewhere that Radiohead's new album tended towards monotony, it was lacked in variations and strength and if I had rushed into my first impressions, I would have agreed with them.

The second time I listened to it it was on the car, alone, with the volume loud enough to be able to appretiate all the elements within each song. And what a difference that made! To start, the rhythmic and electronic experimentation of "Bloom" appeals to your curiosity. Maybe it doesn't go any further than that, but it makes you admire its melodic complexity. And that is not very common nowadays in this music world saturated by simplistic little poppy songs with sing-a-long verses and repetitive choruses that seem to be afraid of departing from the 2x4 pattern.

As the songs kept playing, the initial surprise smooths away and we reach a moment of tranquility, of monotony, even, until the last movements of "Feral" arrive and its rotund bass, vibrating, brings us back to live; proving that Radiohead are far away from dead. Immediately it's the turn of "Lotus Flower", maybe the easiest song in the album and not for its simple structure, but because it attracts listeners' from the first listening. It is a good song that deserves to be listened again and again to be appreciated better.

What is curious about this second listening to The King of Limbs is realising about the different styles in the songs. The album begins aiming towards experimentation, breaking traditional structures, creating new sounds, new rhythms, proving that, the older they get, the more interested they are in trying new things. But, as the tracks evolve, we go back to a more classic Radiohead, not so much to the guitar-driven Pablo Honey or The bends, but to the Kid A Radiohead, for instance, with melodies structured around the piano and Thom Yorke's voice.

It is still quite early to decide on the value of this album, but I'm afraid that it will fall into the bottomless drawer just as their previous work did. 

music tests, 1

Goal: To test the value (real and/or subjective) af an album as a whole.
Elements: The album to be analysed, a CD/MP3 player, time.

Procedure:
1. We choose an album to be analysed. In this particular occasion, for this test, I have chosen The Bends, by Radiohead.

2. Write down any reaction prior to the audition of the album. Why have we chosen this particular album, which feelings, emotions does it arise...
- This album has been chosen because I have not listened it in almst a decade, because it is extremely relevant in the band's evolution and also because it belongs to our collective past.
- It is just touching the album, seeing the cover art, that emotions are triggered, the album seems to talk directly to our brain, to the forgotten areas of our brain were we stored the album years ago. In other words, the cover art seems to prepare us for the emotional ride we are about to initiate. The pain in the face, the half-naked body, the anxiety... an image, a thousand memories.

3. And now, we start playing the album. From beginning to end. With a pen and a notebook handys to take notes of the whole process.
- A familiar sound, not even music yet, surrounds us. "Planet Telex" begins. Before the start of the first verse, we remember the lyrics. From who knows where, without being aware of remember it, the words came back to us. And we mumble the melody, we sing the chorus.
With the second song, "The Bends", we even remember its three guitar chords . Time, suddenly, seemed to have not gone by.
And its the turn for "High and Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees" and we are touched. They haven't aged at all! They still have all theyr energy, all their dramatic power. We remember the black and white clip for "High and Dry", how it rained at the very end and how the music didn't stop. We remember who we were (or who we thought we were) the first time we listened to this album. How we lived our teen years, how we thought that we were gonna succeed in life, how we desired to escape from our family house, from our town, from everything and from everyone, how those songs seemed to talk to us, how we used to spend the Saturday afternoons locked in our bedrooms listening to the radio. Everything comes back. Painfully.
The remaining of the album keeps us going up and down, through guitar strokes ("Bones", "My Iron Lung", "Black Star"), through desperation ("Nice Dreams") until we reached the cathartic end. After shaking us, phisycally and emotionally for 50 minutes, once we are soft, fragile and with our heart wide open, here it comes "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". And its simplicity overcomes us. Its delicacy embriagates us. Life, suddenly, has a purpose: listen to music, re-live these 50 minutes again, return to our past forgetting that the present scare us and the future doesn't exist.

4. Extract conclusions from the test.
- There was a time when we were young, when we were lucky to experience the birth of Trip Hop, the explosion of Grunge, the hyperactivity of Brit Pop, the very end of Rock Català, as we were learning to live, to think, to have fun. And that is something that noone can take from us. Therefore, let's allow ourselves, every now an then (there is no need yet to live only in the past), a trip to the past. Music can be our vehicle. Let all those memories forgotten blossom. All those worries that we thought unsolvable, show themselves as small and insignificants as they really are. But be careful. Time-travel has its consequences: not everything awaiting for us is good. Let's be prepared, then, to go back to our fears, our worries, the lost goals, the unreached dreams... and maybe, only maybe, by the time the music test ends we won't know if our eyes are wet due to the emotional strengh of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" or because we have realised that we are not who we thought we were going to be.