Spectreview: Thom Yorke – ANIMA

-DODGER BLUE-

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“If you could do it all again
Big deal, so what?
Please let me know
When you’ve had enough”

In 2019, over three decades since the members of Radiohead started making music together and two decades since they tried (and ultimately failed) to change the landscape of music forever, Thom Yorke’s artistic M.O. essentially hasn’t changed at all. At 50 years old, he’s certainly wiser and less of a firebrand, but his penchant for misanthropy and anxious, apocalyptic imagery has remained a constant throughout his numerous side projects and guest spots. His solo albums, curiously, are a near facsimile of what he brings to the table in his band; consequently, anyone familiar with Radiohead’s music might get the feeling that there’s always something missing in his work. A crucial tunefulness? A sense of abandon or compositional ambition? Barring perhaps his first record The Eraser back in 2006 (which has surprisingly aged wonderfully), Yorke has yet to release anything on the level of his band’s best works, for reasons that seem obvious but are hard to pin down.

ANIMA, surprised released last night, maybe go down as the most focused, thematically tight of Yorke’s solo records, even if most of the album is still what Yorke is known for nowadays: colorless, skittering beats and dead synths, like a wad of gum with the flavor long chewed out. That’s his aesthetic, of course, and you have to assume it coming into his work. ANIMA, according to Yorke, takes place in the daily subconscious, quite possibly his own, bloated by constant information and the distinct anxieties of the world today. Sound familiar? Being a town crier allows you a lot of “I told you so” moments when the bad starts getting worse, and when Yorke sings about “sliding violins [cued] in sympathy” on “Not The News,” it comes off as jocular and self-aware, yet another trip around the block. Self-awareness is actually a huge part of ANIMA, as Yorke’s communing with his audience more about the petty details of his life, especially about the sky-high expectations he lives with as an artist (quick-paced “Impossible Knots”) and the resulting dream of starting over as an unknown (the soft, elegant “Dawn Chorus”). We potentially see that reawakening on the sublime, haunting closing track, “Runawayaway” a song that’s sonically linked to Amnesiac’s “Like Spinning Plates” but graced with a circuitous guitar line and a string section underlining Yorke’s mantric declarations of distrust. The greater problem here is that electronic music, rhythmic music, has evolved so much since Godrich and Yorke broke those barriers on Kid A, that Yorke just feel like less of a pioneer here and more of an artist stubbornly refusing to evolve. ANIMA ends on its best moment, but there’s a lot of formless, extended grayness to trudge through, specifically the cookie-cutter opening numbers “Traffic” and “Last I Heard (…He Was Circling The Drain)”, and overall the album’s length and insistence on matte textures make for a cerebral if unstimulating listen. That’s not to say it’s not worth your time, as there are plenty of moments that are genuinely touching, but it’s becoming even more obvious where Yorke wishes he was when his fingers hit the keys.

Recommended after four days of insomnia.