Having been a long-time
fan of Radiohead,
it might go without saying that I have also tracked Thom Yorke's solo
career. Although his various side projects have never quite matched
his work with Radiohead, he has always been an interesting figure to
follow.
Artist: Thom Yorke
Venue: Tempodrom
Location: Berlin,
Germany
Date: 1 June 2018
Opening Act: Oliver
Coates
Setlist:
01. Interference
01. Interference
02. A Brain in a Bottle
03. Impossible Knots
04. Black Swan
05. I Am a Very Rude
Person
06. The Clock
07. Two Feet Off the
Ground
08. Amok [Atoms for
Peace song]
09. Not the News
10. Truth Ray
11. Traffic
12. Twist → Saturdays
13. Pink Section
14. Nose Grows Some
15. Cymbal Rush
First Encore:
16. The Axe
17. Atoms for Peace
18. Default [Atoms for
Peace song]
Second Encore:
19. Spectre [Radiohead
song]
Oliver Coates is the
principal cello with the London Contemporary Orchestra and thus
performed a key role on Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool
(2016). He opened his solo
set with a beautiful traditional piece apparently specifically
requested by Thom Yorke. Thereafter, however, he stuck to his own
material, which can, in various forms, be described as cello with
electronic beats, cello with sorrowful synth, and cello with guitar
effects. The latter was the most successful: in
the best moments,
Coates worked with tones
reminiscent of My
Bloody Valentine. The downbeat synth tracks were respectable, but
perhaps too subdued and restrained. The beats did nothing for me.
Thom
Yorke came out with his regular collaborator Nigel Godrich and
visual artist Tarik Barri. Godrich has produced Radiohead and Yorke
since 1995 and is/was a member of Atoms
for Peace. Barri has been collaborating with Yorke for several
years now, including on the "City
Rats" installation for the ISM Hexadome.
It
is unclear exactly what material this tour was intended to focus on;
Yorke's last album was Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
in 2014. However, since 2015, he's been slowly introducing new songs
into his sets, leading some to suspect that a new album is in the
works. At this show, he played seven or eight unreleased songs
(depending on whether you count "Saturdays" as a unique
song) but only five of Boxes'
eight tracks. In addition to two songs from Amok
(2013, with Atoms for Peace) and four from The Eraser
(2006), the biggest surprise was "Spectre", Radiohead's
rejected James Bond song.
The
show opened on a high note with Yorke sitting at a keyboard for the
gradual lead-in to "Interference". After that, he mostly
stuck to guitar, bass, and electronics. Godrich mostly stuck to his
spot behind a laptop and a stack of electronics, but he also picked
up the bass on occasion and sometimes walked over to Yorke's set-up
to manipulate something while he was elsewhere. I also caught Godrich
adding some heavily processed backing vocals.
The
new songs largely
followed in the mold
of Tomorrow's Modern Boxes:
dark, murky electronics with Yorke's wispy, sporadic, manipulated
vocals. Any hints of guitar
or bass are blended into the mix such as to make the provenance of
the sound difficult to determine with certainty. Yorke's beats tend
to be unusually punctuated and subtly complex. The
sound is primarily
electronic, and the rhythm is important, but it's not strictly
dance-oriented. There's something vague and obscure about his music
that makes it difficult to put your finger on or label conveniently.
The
older songs ended up being the predictable highlights simply by
virtue of being more deliberate, melodic, and clear. Yorke's politics
have always been fairly easy to read if you take the time to listen,
but he made that easier in the songs on The Eraser,
where the songs have more traditional verse-chorus structures and the
lyrics are (relatively) easier to follow and understand. His more
recent material tends to be less explicit and more
free-flowingly structured.
Barri's
visuals ran the gamut of forms and patterns that one could imagine
accompanying modern electronic music. It's a good strategy for
someone as low-key and reserved as Yorke to have such a strong and
varied visual component, because it certainly helps make
the scene more interesting. However, Radiohead have always had a
great stage and lighting set even when they could get away without
it, so Yorke is presumably no stranger to these sorts of
considerations. This is why I was a bit disappointed by the "City
Rats" installation: I had expected more, and thankfully the
visuals at this
concert were quite a bit better. The
style was substantially different and much more active. Barri didn't
seem to follow the rhythms too closely, but the energy with which the
visuals moved and developed matched the varying intensity of the
music.
While
I appreciated Yorke's sense of adventure in trying out so much new
material, I didn't find it particularly engaging. His music is
enjoyable, but hard for me to focus on. I often found myself drifting
and distracted despite my best intentions and legitimate interest. At
times I found myself more focused on the visuals than on the sound.
Some people tried to dance, but the unusual heat and the humidity of
a rainstorm dampened and exasperated the mood of the audience.
Yorke's solo work doesn't provide much to hold on to, and the show
felt wilted and formless as a result. "Spectre" was quite
another matter, but without any accompaniment to the piano and
vocals, it too felt robbed of its power.
Scores:
Oliver Coates: C-
Thom Yorke: C+
Tomorrow's Modern
Boxes: C-
Amok
(Atoms for Peace): C+
The Eraser:
B-
