Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes
Thom Yorke
(Self released)
Three Stars
Ever since Radiohead shoved the "pay-what-you-want" download model into the mainstream consciousness with In Rainbows in 2007, their frontman Thom Yorke has been viewed as a de facto leader in groundbreaking music-distribution experiments.
He's pushing the proverbial envelope once more with this second solo album – a belated follow-up to his often-brilliant 2006 missive The Eraser – by releasing it via BitTorrent for US$6 (Dh22).
Publicity was guaranteed, then, before anybody had the chance to unzip Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. Expectations are high, too, considering that the mould-breaking In Rainbows was also the British indie-rock Pied Pipers's last truly essential record to date.
Here, however, the art doesn’t quite match the artifice.
The opener, A Brain in a Bottle, proves a deceiving intro, with a stuttering start that, for 30 seconds at least, will have you pondering whether Yorke has made good on his love for abstract techno.
The album's whole package – from its postmodern birth and Tron-esque elements to its cover artwork – conspires to galvanise such sensations. But when Yorke's distinctive, vulnerable falsetto eventually kicks in, anchored by burbling basslines and skittering beats, it all feels like a logical continuation of Amok, the 2013 debut album from his Atoms For Peace project.
Speaking of continuations, Interference returns to a slightly odd avian interest in the crow family, previously seen on The King of Limbs album track Morning Mr Magpie, when Yorke blankly intones: "We stare into each other's eyes like jackdaws/ Like ravens". The overriding emotion is one of resignation, with the words "I don't have the right/ To interfere" forming a departing coda.
That low-key vibe snakes through most of Tomorrow's Modern Boxes like a particularly downcast sine wave. But just when you think you have the record stylistically pinned, its seven-minute centrepiece There Is No Ice (For My Drink) arrives – and delivers the rewired take on minimal techno that A Brain in a Bottle initially promised, overflowing with cut-up vocals that creep around the corners of your speakers.
Sure, you could argue for days how it's fine and dandy for a musician who has sold millions of units via very traditional channels to take business risks now that he's made a stack of cash. But while Tomorrow's Modern Boxes isn't likely to forever alter the way we all buy music – and isn't Yorke's best or most coherent work – it's sure worth the asking price.
aworkman@thenational.ae
