Thom Yorke - The Eraser

When The Eraser first leaked many months ago, most of Radiohead's rabid fan base exploded with praise. It was basically a preconditioned response: there is a small but determined faction of people in the world who believe that every piece of music graced by Thom Yorke's voice is an instant classic. To be fair, he's the cultural icon of one of the most popular and inventive bands in recent memory, and an undeniably talented man. But without the rest of Radiohead there to flesh out and fortify his ideas, Thom Yorke's solo debut stumbles and falters noticeably a few times.

The Eraser felt naked, sketch-like, unfinished. You could imagine Thom Yorke writing it alone in his bedroom late at night, clad in jammies and worrying about the world's impending doom. The album artwork is itself a reflection of the record's sound: simple, two-dimensional, black and white, paranoid, unsettling. The record melds together: each song can sound the same as the last, and there is little experimentation. The middle portion of the album can become almost embarrassingly tedious. Some of Thom Yorke's lyrics are wince-worthy, most notably the lines "I'm a dog for you / I'm a lap dog / I'm your lap dog" in "Skip Divided". Simply put, The Eraser sometimes feels boring and underwhelming.

Given my problems with the record, many of you may be wondering why I placed it so highly on my year-end list. Mostly, it's the fact that, in between the record's moments of confusion and mistakes, Thom Yorke sometimes achieves gorgeousness. For example, the track "Analyse" showcases a soft, resigned piano line driven along by a stuttering drum beat, over which Thom Yorke intones "there's no time to analyse/ to think things through/ to make sense."


Thom Yorke - "Analyse"; live (???)
The dichotomy of Thom Yorke's desire to pause his life and the inevitable progression of time is paralleled by the clash between lethargic piano and insistent rhythm. "And It Rained All Night", a pulsating monster that comes in later on in the album, achieves a sort of ethereal beauty which can only fully appreciated when driving down an empty street at two in the morning. Yorke even manages to showcase some of his best lyrics in "Harrowdown Hill", in spite of his lap-dog clunkers:

Don't walk the plank like I did:
you will be dispensed with
when you've become inconvenient.
In the harrowdown hill,
where you went to school:
that's where I am.
That's where I'm lying down.

To many, The Eraser will serve as little more than an apertif for the full-band effort due sometime later this year. To others, it may be altogether ignored. As a gigantic Radiohead fan, I might be slightly biased, but I found the record's few transcendent moments significant enough to justify its low points. A record filled with these songs would undoubtedly have been nominated as my favorite record of the year. In any case, I know I won't be forgetting The Eraser's better moments any time soon.