Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 10/07/06
Label: XL Recordings

For a man so consumed with rage and electrocuted by fear for the future of the globe, Thom Yorke has been curiously selective in his efforts to smash the system. Having reliably baulked at an opportunity to rail the global superpowers at the somewhat overblown Live 8 event last summer, he is also understood to have swerved a summit with his nemesis Tony Blair. These are frankly chilling times and with Iraq at civil war in all but name and the globe melting while we piss out the petroleum, we could do with his articulate power beyond the occasional rant and windswept CND demonstrations.

Enter "Harrowdown Hill", which is surely the most locked-on, infected and damaging slash of polemic Yorke has ever committed to tape. In fact, one can think of few pieces of music that carry such terror and weight at the sinister puppeteering of 21st century politics. This track alone, depicting in quite harrowing tension the suicide of doomed MoD man David Kelly, makes "The Eraser", Yorke's first solo album, a success and a memorable exercise for both us and him.

"Harrowdown Hill", like "The Eraser" as a whole, twitches and skitters across the kind of choppy electronic waters Yorke seemed to impose on Radiohead for the brave, landmark "Kid A". We're trapped within narrow, compressed sonic walls which are slowly squeezing the very life from us and, as you might expect, Thom has the right hump. Such despair is not expressed explicitly, rather through randomised phrasing - "time is running out", "you should have took me out when you had the chance", "this is f*cked up", "it's doing me in" - which are accompanied by Yorke's genuine gift at creating epic glitchy laptop gloom.

Amongst the most potent moments here are opening track, "The Eraser", which begins with a bout of polite disgust from Yorke plus cut-and-paste Warp beats, before accelerating into your head impressively. "Analyse" is more mysterious, a myriad of spiralling keys and dusty, crumpled loops building to a claustrophobic close. "The Clock", meanwhile, picks up where the magnificent, breakthrough "Idiotique" left off, all clanging, processed alarm bells, spliced vocal ticks and swift, paranoid electro tap-dancing.

However, "And It Rained All Night", alongside "Harrowdown Hill", is perhaps the most realised moment, as Yorke envisages New York City drowning in a tidal wave of sci-fi terror catastrophe, the kind one can almost inconceivably recognise in the aftermath of 9/11. All of these compositions bear the sheet black stamp of Yorke and confirm how utterly insistent his hand clearly is on Radiohead. To that end, a couple of tracks - "Skip Divided" and "Atoms For Peace" - are rather more forgettable, marooned in a mist of wailing and anodyne grey digital mush.

If any further justification is required for "The Eraser", take a walk into "Harrowdown Hill", as the layers of transient "Low"-era Bowie / Eno synths rise against a whipping bass line and a dying man admits "I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness". You must surely marvel at Thom Yorke's insistence to challenge his audience and his enemies. It may not be pretty but, as David Kelly's family would surely attest, real life rarely is.

    by Ben Gilbert