The Eraser - review

Now it's '06 and Thom Yorke has released an album (with a litle help from Radiohead, Beck and most recently Paul McCartney producer Nigel Godrich, whose fingerprints are a little less obvious on this one). I just mentioned Paul McCartney. Now I want to make a statement. I think it's fair to say that Thom Yorke taps into the heart of human depression through music more effectively than anyone else currently on the scene, almost to the same degree that McCartney tapped into the spirit of optimism and joy in so many of his songs back in the day. My statement ends there. The point is that this album is no different from other Thom Yorke related music in the sense that the mood is downcast, depressed and almost defeated, almost beaten. Almost. Thinking about it now, so much of Thom Yorke's music sounds to me just like the soundtrack to Winston Smith's life during Orwell's novel '1984', the only merciful difference being that there seem to be glimmers of hope and beauty interspersed throughout Thomas Yorke's songs. Wonderful songs they are too. Wonderfully right for the time we live in which is a parched grey landscape of dead money and much untruth.

Thom melds with the robots and machines to create the textured layers of this album. We all have to meld with the robots and machines thesedays. It's electronic music that will not sound totally new to most listeners of electronic music, in fact some of the arrangements are very sparse indeed, but that's hardly a criticism. As a musician and writer myself I become aware that the best instances of creating art are when one is overcome by a creative urge ("no suprises there eh Yoshi?" Shut up and hear me out you fool) and when that urge is felt most powerfully, everything becomes everything. Thankfully I get this quite often and even felt it earlier today as I lay on the beach and thought of ideas for my 2 nd novel. It's a feeling in which anything could be an idea, simply because of the mood that you are in. All of the windows and doors are opened up to you, and you could take anything, a pebble, a cloud, a sun, and create a story or song around it. Likewise when I am in this wonderfully liquid mood and am in the process of selecting a beat to rap over, be it my own or some other producer-friend, I will often pick the beat that is most spare, with not that much going on, sometimes almost boring, because I know that I'm going to need a lot of room for my presence. I think that's the case on 'The Eraser'. Thom Yorke does so much with himself, and is so inspired when he does it, that he could honestly have an acapella album and it would be interesting. The beats are somewhat empty and mixed with the man they make for some very effective art. When listening to this album the term 'effective art' really does stick around too. I mean we are really treated here to an example of a gifted artist fully in control of his faculties, using his voice to perfection, and those lyrics, as well as the delivery of those lyrics, (which is an art itself and in this regard Yorke puts himself on a par with someone like Joni Mitchell on this album) so grimey and rough, so dark, and also so beautiful and so hopeful. The Eraser leaves me with much to talk about. It leaves you with plenty of emotion.

Here's a lyric for some reason I find peculiarly linked to England:

People get crushed like biscuit crumbs
And lay down in the bitumen
You have tried your best to please everyone
But it just isn't happening.

I don't know if they call it 'bitumen' in America, but anyone who's worked near the stuff knows what a great line that is, how much it evokes. Regardless of that word and its trans-continental relevance, there's just something very British about that whole quote, and many of the other songs on this album for that matter. Thom Yorke is British. So am I.

On the very same song, the wonderfully titled 'Black Swans', Yorke uses the F-word in a chorus of sorts. It's a credit to him that it doesn't sound akward, as it often does when people who don't swear much on record attempt it. But me personally, I'm not really into it. I have to believe that if there's such a thing as beautiful words in the English language then there are also ugly ones. That's not to say that the song doesn't call for some ugliness, the first quote above shows you that the song definitely has that ruthless bite to it, (which I find very pleasing actually) but I suppose I've never been too big a fan of hearing that word sung, or even semi-sung. Incidentally, Yorke has been experimenting (I think, anyway) with what sounds a lot like hip-hop forms of delivery for a while now (most notably on the wonderful 'Wolf at the Door') this is something that Bob Dylan has also done in much of his spoken word stuff. I don't think it has its true-roots in hip-hop, my loyalty to hip-hop doesn't go that deep, but I think there's definitely something about talents like Yorke and Dylan that often meets frustration in the typical song order. Sometimes there is too much to say, and let's be honest, sometimes the world just isn't beautiful enough for one to 'sing' everything.

One could write a book about how wonderful 'Atoms for Peace' is. It's a song that contains so much experience and soul. It is as close as Yorke gets to ecstasy. The word ecstasy reminds me of how clichéd writers who don't know the depth of it use that word in relation to Sufism. And in case you didn't know, Sufism is Islam. And in Islam there's a man called the Muezzin. I'm going somewhere don't worry. Now, you'd all have heard a Muezzin in those lazy BBC or ITV news reports (in fact, in absolutely any footage of the Middle East or Islamic world). He's the guy who sings so beautifully and powerfully, in Arabic, the call to prayer, sometimes on a loudspeaker, sometimes with the simple undiluted beauty of a voice. Why am I talking about this? Because I notice again on 'Atoms for Peace', as I have noted before, that Thom is singing in the exact same scale as an Islamic Muezzin would sing verses and invocations from the Qu'ran. That's not why I love Thom Yorke though. I love him because he's a realistic good guy.

When you really admire or appreciate someone in this way, their work often doesn't come as a surprise to you because you feel as though you know them so well. For example after having got to know the music of George Harrison, and after reading his autobiography, I later listened and focused on all of the Beatles songs that he had written. It didn't surprise me in re-appraising them, that it was his songs that were amongst the deepest, most spiritual ones. Those were the ones I'd always loved. Likewise, when Prince sung 'Cinnamon Girl' on the 'Musicology' album, I felt a strange affirmation, I somehow knew that Prince would be sympathetic to the plight of Muslim-Americans post 9-11. I felt it in him somehow, and so when he sung it, I was pleasantly confirmed. Here's where I'm going; when the weapons inspector, Dr. David Kelly was found dead in London a few years back, I couldn't get my mind away from it. I kept thinking over and over about the corruption that must have led to it, to the pain and anxiety that this kind-looking man must have felt, not to mention his family. It ran through my mind a lot. In a strange way, it really hurt. I wanted to adress it in some way but I never did, I never could. But how wonderful is it to hear Thomas singing, partially it seems from Dr. Kelley's own imagined perspective, and partially from his own, displaying that same sympathy and care that I think I was feeling. It really is the most tender moment on the album when he sings,

And I'm coming home
I'm coming home
To make it alright
So dry your eyes.

That notion of redemption is heard more, I believe, in the way Thom sings it than in those actual (lovely) words. As I may have indicated with my George Harrison, Prince and Thom theory, I certainly believe that all of us conscious lovers are very much linked, and that's what I love most about the final quote that I'm going to give you, from the same song,

We think the same things at the same time
We just can't do anything about it.

It's a big old powerful world, there's an inpenetrable fortress of corruption, there's an inner-party, and it's giving us all the feeling that we are powerless. But we're not. There are moments when inner light pours out from inside of us uncontrollably, where everything is everything and the world is at our fingertips. Where we might feel or say things like 'it's time for something great...' whereupon a warm sound beams out of us and through the outer world, warming it.

Y.Misdaq aka Yoshi, 07 July 2006 (23:59)