A review of Thom Yorke at Kings Theatre 11/27/18

I like Thom Yorke’s solo stuff better than his work with Radiohead.*
Leave now if you’d like.

I feel that, while Radiohead might have a deeper, fuller sound at times, Yorke’s solo work (The Eraser, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, and I'm including Atoms For Peace) is a truer representation of the man, unfettered by anything. What we hear is exactly what’s in his head. I’d also like to think that the visuals from his current tour, crafted and performed live by Tarik Barri, is what Yorke sees in his mind’s eye when creating that music. Even if that’s not the case, holy shit was this a mind-bending experience.

When I saw Atoms For Peace back in 2013, I was astonished at how low key their visual set up was. When I see clips from Radiohead shows, I feel the same way, but this recent tour was exactly what I would have expected and what felt the most fitting for this music and the man who composed it.

Standout moments from this exceptional evening included “Interference” as the somber opener, “Black Swan”, “The Clock”, two of the half dozen unreleased tracks, “Impossible Knots”, and “I Am A Very Rude Person”, that latter with a really fantastic, bright guitar line, and especially “Amok” and, most of all, “Default”. While the connection between the music and visuals was perfect on every track, things came to a head on “Default", the penultimate song. Just utterly breathtaking.

Yorke is set to release a new solo album in early 2019. Hopefully with these new tracks on it.

* Although, please don't get me wrong, I think they’ve got some legitimately amazing music in their catalogue.

A review of Thom Yorke's "Suspiria" score

I compare Thom Yorke to Trent Reznor all the time. And if you don’t, then I kind of don’t think you’re into either them or their stuff. So, when it was announced that Yorke was scoring his first film, I immediately thought of Reznor’s first outing with The Social Network and how well he and it did. 

Headline: Reznor’s first score is better than Yorke's first score.

Side A

1. A Storm That Took Everything - The hungry, howling dissonance of the void.

2. The Hooks -  Spare, sinister piano, then lush orchestration. All underscoring a wet, brutal crime.

3. Suspirium - Inexplicable sorrow and beauty.

4. Belonging Thrown in a River - Horror movie strings, tension.

5. Has Ended - Psychedelic unease, overtones of totalitarianism.

6. Klemperer Walks - sick regality

7. Open Again - Cultist celebration

Said B

8. Sabbath Invocation - Mass

9. The Inevitable Pull - Deep, unsettling, navigating a dark space filled with monsters. More sparse piano.

10. Olga’s Destruction - Nervous piano bouncing off tiled walls and long shards of glass. Feels like a broken music box.

11. The Conjuring of Anke - Haunted mansion piano, complete with choir of ghosts

12. A Light Green - First overtly electronic moment. Alien, jarringly inirganic.

13. Unmade - Clear, bright, choral. 

14. The Jumps  - Soft, with some disturbance. Warm, touch of Badalamenti. Another warm, round synth feel

Side C

15. Volk - Sharp, stabs of panic. Inorganic disease. When the drums come in things just get more confusing. Some classic 70’s horror movie vibes.

16. The Universe Is Indifferent - Same session as "Has Ended" perhaps. Has some of the same feel.

17. The Balance of Things - Balance is maintained only for a moment before things slide over the edge into the darkness.

18. A Soft Hand Across Your Face - More Badalamenti vibes.

19. Suspirium Finale - a fuller exploration of the original.

Side D

20. A Choir of One - long, uncomfortable drone. Hypnotic but not very interesting.

21. Synthesizer Speaks - Last gasps of talking computer. The end is truly unsettling, like...turn this off, it's freaking me the fuck out.

22. Room of Compartments - rising choir of screams. This is perfect for Suspiria.

23. An Audition - frantic pursuit

24. Voiceless Terror - More mangled, manipulated screams. Horrifying.

25. The Epilogue - based on the sick, dead sound of this, no one made it out.

There's no sense of unification or flow here and everything feels scattered. Whether or not this was intentional and made to fit with the chaotic, nightmare feel of the film...I don't know. Because I haven't seen it yet. Again, comparing it to Reznor's work on TSN*, it's more swirls of sound and color, swaths and patches, with the occasional clear picture included. Personally, I love "Suspirium" and "Suspirium Finale", and side D is a lot of really solid and terrifying sound manipulation, but that's all I took with me. The rest is fine. It's...just fine. It's less traditional than I was expecting from Yorke, which is fucking saying something. It's also a letdown for me. I think Yorke's non-Radiohead stuff is his best work**, and thought this was going to be a triumph from front to back.

There were three things I was certain of when I first saw Yorke was set to score Suspiria. First, that it would be a challenging listen but, overall, rewarding, second, that it would be startlingly unique, and third, that it would stand out among all other scores, let alone the stagnant swamp of all those shitty bland horror scores out there and launch a Reznor-esque side career in film scoring. There’s no way to be sure of that third one until some time goes by, but I was wrong about the first one, and (kinda) right about the second one. There are a few truly brilliant moments, but not enough to make up for the featureless ones. 

Looking forward to whatever Thom Yorke does next.

* Yeah, I know that's not really how things are done, but I am going to continue to do this.

** Save for maybe two dozen absolutely perfect Radiohead creations.