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Atoms For Peace: Thom Yorke can't catch a break
Seems like everyone is slagging Thom Yorke lately. I was watching the current BBC series I’m in a Rock n Roll Band last night, and Gene Simmons of KISS went out of his way to specifically name Yorke as a bland performer, a singer who disrespected the hard-earned money his fans spend on a show by just standing around—at which time the program dissolved into a cartoon-based motion graphic sequence depicting sullen Radiohead members slowly rocking back and forth on stage like starving, scurvy infected sailors. Yet, follow that up with a review of any of the new Atoms for Peace shows, and the first sentence in some way jabs Yorke’s “new” incessant and spastic dance style. This guy just can’t catch a break.
And these people just don’t get it.
Yes, anyone who has witnessed a Radiohead performance in the past has seen a serious musician cranking out serious arrangements, fronting a band of other serious performers who busy themselves quite seriously over an array of instruments to seriously reproduce the sounds of the recorded material. Whew.
Maybe Thom just wants to dance.
In the past we’ve seen glimpses of him doing the “stationary bobblehead” dance. Occasionally this has turned into the awkward “imaginary hula-hoop.” Now he is gyrating constantly.
And why shouldn’t he. He’s finally bringing his solo material, The Eraser from 2006, to an audience. The album’s nine tracks exhibit a tangible starkness and convey a sense of electronic solitude: it is easy to imagine Thom alone in the studio playing every instrument in every arrangement. And yet, despite the tone of the material, the swansong and group namesake “Atoms for Peace” exhibits a deep–seated optimism and yearning for connection, “so many lies, so many lies, so feel the love come off of them and take me in your arms.” And “I wanna get out, and make it work” seems to be the mantra behind the production.
So he’s formed a supergroup. With his producer Nigel Godrich on keyboards and veteran Joey Waronker on drums, he’s got great backup. But the real coup here is adding Mauro Refosco on percussion from David Byrne’s band and Flea on bass. These two have opened up the songs, adding new funk layers to songs like “the Clock” and “Skip Divided.” The overall effect tends to go the other direction of Radiohead by replacing the synthetic sounds on stage with more organic notes. The result adds a palpable depth to the music and fresh energy to the stage and new material keeps popping up. Add an energetic Flea to the mix and you get why Thom is dancing.
I guess at some point we need to let Gene Simmons know that things have changed: his hair looks awful and Thom Yorke is hula–hooping all night.
