Thom Yorke

Like a mildly more cheerful Pyramid Song :joy:

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Interesting quote:

Godrich said he believes people place too much emphasis on studio equipment and “trickery”, which is less important than musical sensibility and communication. He said: “I get very annoyed with people asking me what my favourite microphone is. It doesn’t matter … One of the reasons why music has become generally worse, and I’m sorry to say that, is that people think about technology more than the actual music they’re making.”[1] He feels that “the recording process is best when fast, because it’s then the smallest obstacle to the actual music”.

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sounds like the synth lines are really from telharmonic lol

That’s interesting, and agree with the technology part to a large degree.

However, in terms of recording fast… for me, Radiohead’s best albums are Kid A / Amnesiac and In Rainbows… and they were made from long sessions

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I think the length of the session may not matter for what Godrich is talking about…for those albums the (glorious) music’s writing process emerged from those lengthy sessions for sure…but they were constantly recording and capturing. I think Godrich is more pointing to worrying less about trying to find the perfect device or dial in a perfect mic setup and focusing instead on the music…recording fast maybe means “get the ideas when they happen”

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Yeah I think you’re probably right, aligned to his previous point about obsessing over the technology

The Smile are better than Radiohead have been at any point since 2007.

I dunno… I really loved the King of Limbs, especially that From the Basement thing and all those other tracks around that point. I thought that maybe they should have been on the album… talking Staircase, Daily Mail, The Butcher, Supercollider… in fact Supercollider is one of my fave tunes from them.

Just listened to the new Smile record, as ever with these guys things tend to grow on you (I find amyway…)

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Yeah, I honestly doubt they spend a lot of time talking gear, these guys. Certainly theyre a bit more up to date than a lot of other bands, but piano, guitar, bass and drums and still the primary instruments.

In the book “Meet Me In The Bathroom” (an absolutely awesome read btw), it was reported that The Strokes stopped working with Godrich on their second album because he didn’t care about the sound of high hats: “Hats are hats”. And to Julian Casablancas, “hats are like fine wine” :joy:

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Idk—Smile and post HTTT Radiohead are equally dull/self-parodying unfortunately. The only interesting things in Smile have been the guitar parts in Thin Thing and Bending Hectic but the songs built around those parts are just meh. I’m certainly no RH hater; Amnesiac is my fav rock album of all time. But there seems to be a sort of relaxing of taste and self-criticism that happens at least by the time they get to In Rainbows. It’s a bummer but it happens to basically every artist so it’s hard to get too down about it. The comparison of anything post HTTT with anything pre is baffling to me. Everything post sounds like what someone who doesn’t like Radiohead would do to imitate them (queue generic spooky song). Also Thom’s cringy dance moves and long hair feel very mid-life-crisis. But what do I know? I’m one of the 11 people who actually loves Pulk/Pull.

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Everyone has different tastes and you can’t please everyone.

I can understand that people don’t want something to change after finding something they like, but people age, their influences change as does their process for making music, let alone sharing it with others.

For people who do make it, you gotta wonder what their drive is to keep making music.

I saw a Lauryn Hill concert and people around us were pissed and booing because she played new versions of her old songs.

It’s gotta suck when you have new creative energy but people only want to hear what you did 10-20 years ago (or longer)

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I love that tune too! But I also love In Rainbows… in fact that’s probably my favourite of their albums, with Kid A… whilst falling into self parody is a trapping that any artist(s) can fall into long term (or sometimes short term in some cases) I can’t see that being the case with in Rainbows… it was nothing like they had done before, in my view

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I think this is very much personal taste. There’s some amazing stuff on In Rainbows and especially The King of Limbs, in my opinion. TKOL is a very weird record (in a good way). I agree with your summation when talking about A Moon Shaped Pool, but even that has some excellent moments (I’m besotted with “The Numbers”).

Middle age is very weird. I think it’s a 2nd teenager-dom, but with the complexity of aging, accumulated experience and (if you’re lucky) relative wealth. Crises here seem a symptom of the stupid times we live in and an artist succumbing to that, and making art out of it gives us a window to reflect on ourselves if we want to look through it. I’m not usually one for celeb gossip, but I find it very interesting that Yorke split from his wife of many years (and I think they have kids together)… and that it was functionally amicable. That’s a weird place to be in middle age (well, in media terms it’s weird). It’s really no surprise he’s “having a crisis” of sorts.

Who cares about dance moves and long hair anyway? Let people do what they want! :slight_smile:

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My gripe, or one of them, isn’t that they’ve changed, rather it’s that they have calcified, and that they’ve done so around a sort of dull imitation of their middle period. One of the many really exciting things about Radiohead for a while was just how dramatic the change was from one record to the next. But obviously that can’t go on forever.

It’s an aside. If the songs were still interesting none of the extra-musical details would matter of course. That said I’m sure if Thom started doing Edward Jones commercials or collecting Ferraris, you might find it a bit of a turn-off. Or maybe you’re into that sort of thing.

I’m number 12. I think production wise it’s extraordinarily radical.

But I think a lot of people underestimate how wildly experimental Thom has gotten with compositions: odd time signatures, unique chord progressions and voicings, polymeters, multi-segmented song structures. The Smile has been, for me, the ultimate expression of where’s he’s come with this. It’s experimental, but in a different way from pre-HTTT. A way he prefers to experiment in currently. And All power to him Fortunately for us it’s been excellent.

I dunno. I think everything up to The King of Limbs was pretty different to what they did before. And besides, they have released only one record in 12 years since then… I kind of agree that it was exciting, but I also think that people were expecting every new record to be some kind of seismic shift forward in the whole outsider pop / rock thing… which i always thought was a bit unrealistic at best. And I think that happened because, in my view, there were so few artists really taking things forward - and that has kind of continued to this day in that field, in general terms.

Are you even “middle age”? Once you’re actually in your 40s and 50s you’re going to be surprised about how you still feel like you’re twenty-five (even if your body is sore all the time).

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I don’t know who or what Edward Jones is. Ferraris look nice I guess… maybe not great for the environment!