All Music has posted a full review of Thom Yorke's Eraser, due for release on Tuesday. The following is the text of the review. There are pretty pictures and soundclips in the link:


Featured Review: Thom Yorke, The Eraser
By Andy Kellman

Radiohead's Dead Air Space weblog has been tracking the band's progress as they make their way toward the follow-up to 2003's Hail to the Thief, from studio sessions to rehearsals to performances, in the form of numerous asides ("morrissey stayed in the room im in ooooo he was here for three months were here for six days") and documentations of the whole process ("jonny is hastily writing out scores for a string quartet who are comign tommoro"). So, on May 11, it was a surprise to see Thom Yorke allude to a finished and imminent solo album with a link to its attendant website beneath a heading of "!!!!." Throughout the months, the weblog had been filled with all kinds of chatter, both flippant and revealing, yet none of it had anything to do with The Eraser.

For an album that has appeared out of thin air — one that was "quick and fun to do," as Yorke mentioned in an email through Radiohead's information service — The Eraser, set to be issued this Tuesday, has developed into an event. Yorke's label for the release, XL, has conspired with longtime associate Stanley Donwood on a series of strategic marketing ploys. The front of XL's headquarters, located in London's Ladbroke Grove, is currently coated by a mural that matches Donwood's linoleum-cut artwork for the album, which takes up the entirety of a five-panel, double-sided fold-out sleeve. Throughout the past few days, a very large replica of the man on the front of The Eraser, equipped with headphones and a copy of the album, made stops at several London locations (including Battersea Power Station, the scene of Pink Floyd's floating pig stunt 30 years ago) depicted on the sleeve. And then there's the animated website, which requires some patience. (For contrast, the flashiest gimmick for Radiohead's first album was a super-limited run of FM headphone sets that allowed recipients to listen to the radio on their heads.)

The amount of outside input that has gone into The Eraser's scheming only hints at the accuracy of Yorke's assertion that the album shouldn't be considered a standard solo release. He couldn't have made this music by himself. Nigel Godrich, whose relationship with Radiohead also exceeds a decade, played a major role in shaping the album. It wouldn't have been illogical to print his name alongside Yorke's on the front of its sleeve. Yorke has acknowledged the producer, who is also credited with arrangements and "extra instruments," for the album's cohesion, tight editing, and song-oriented nature. Without Godrich, The Eraser would've likely sounded a lot closer to the kind of stray-idea patchwork experiment that so many other long-boiling side projects resemble. And, to a somewhat lesser extent, Yorke needed his bandmates as well; some of the sounds were pulled and manipulated from a bank of the band's unused recordings.

The Eraser is an intensely focused and steady album made of nine songs that last a grand total of 40 minutes. It doesn't have the dynamics — the shifts of mood, tempo, volume — held by any Radiohead album, and it's predominantly electronic, so it's bound to rankle many of the fans who thought Yorke's band left rock & roll too far behind with Kid A. It's definitely not the kind of album you put on to get an instant shot of energy, and at the same time, it doesn't contain anything as sullen as "How to Disappear Completely." Since it is so balanced from song to song, it might seem too unwavering on the first couple listens, but the details that separate the songs from one another become increasingly apparent with each successive listen. Despite the album's reliance upon machine beats and synthetic textures, Yorke's untouched, upfront vocals and relatively straightforward lyrics should be enough to bring back some of the detractors. In fact, Yorke would have no trouble taking these songs on the road with a piano and an acoustic guitar.

"Black Swan," the standout, which was chosen by screenwriter/director Richard Linklater to play over the end credits of A Scanner Darkly, comes across as a less guitar-heavy and more subdued version of Amnesiac's "I Might Be Wrong."


Thom Yorke - Black Swan
Peek beneath the surface and you'll see that there's a lot more seething involved: "You have tried your best to please everyone/But it just isn't happening/No, it just isn't happening/And it's f*cked up, f*cked up." The opener, the title track, asks the album's first set of probing questions (of which there are quite a few): "Are you only being nice because you want something?"; "You know the answers, so why do you ask?" Along with the thoroughly sweet "Atoms for Peace," it vies for the album's prettiest-sounding five minutes, elevating into a chorus of hovering sighs as Yorke projects lightly with a matter-of-fact tone, "The more I try to erase you, the more, the more, the more that you appear." He then discreetly switches the placement of "you" and "I" as a way to demonstrate the messiness of his relationship.

On the explicitly political end is "Harrowdown Hill." Anchored by a snapping bass riff and percussive accents that skitter and slide back and forth between the left and right channels, Yorke defeatedly states, "You will be dispensed with when you become inconvenient," and asks "Did I fall or was I pushed?" referring to Dr. David Kelly, a United Nations weapons inspector who was outed as the source of controversial off-the-record quotes in an edition of the London Observer.


Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill
Kelly told the paper that the trailers he inspected couldn't possibly function as Iraqi germ warfare laboratories. Shortly after a series of events that led to his testimony at a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the British government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction, Kelly's body was found on Harrowdown Hill, his death ruled a suicide.

It's no shock that the first Thom Yorke album entails some heavy subject matter and sounds as close to a version of Radiohead minus four of its members as one can imagine. What distinguishes The Eraser from the Radiohead albums, beyond the aspects mentioned above, is its ability to function in the background or as light listening without the requirement of deep concentration. The constant stream of soft, intricately layered sounds, while not without a great deal of tension in most spots, can be very comforting.

As for Yorke's band, they're currently without a label. Their contract with EMI ended with Hail to the Thief, and they opted not to re-sign. As they've worked on and off during the past several months, they've amassed enough new material to incorporate a fair amount of it into their current live sets. Regardless of their label situation, the next album is planned for release in 2007. It seems certain that the frontman's unexpected and well-executed not-solo debut has done absolutely nothing to slow the progress.

Relevant links:

Dead Air Space
http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/

The Eraser
http://theeraser.net/

The Eraser Mural
http://www.greenplastic.c...r_mura.php

Have You Seen This Man?
http://www.have-you-seen-...man.co.uk/

I would agree. It is like Radiohead light. An interesting listen though and the one song that says the 'F' word about 30 times is really good. Forgot the name of that one. Other than that song, the album doesn't really grab me and I'm a big Radiohead fan.