Radiohead made famous the concept of using the Internet to sell music so the fact frontman Thom Yorke is using some inventive way to distribute his next solo album comes as no surprise. He’s basically “pulled a Beyoncé” though instead of iTunes he opted for the controversial BitTorrent a site best known for pirating music not buying it (note: Moby beat Yorke to this idea last year).
Yorke is no doubt an artist to get excited about but one can’t help but feel a little disappointed that the album he recently teased on Tumblr turned out to be his own and not Radiohead’s. Still there are reasons to be both tickled and bummed about Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.
The good: “Pink Section” and “Nose Grows Some” unite for something eerily transcendent and hypnotic and likely the most alluring things he’s written — be it for himself Radiohead or Atoms For Peace — in years. The most ambitious track here “The Mother Lode” backs Thom’s falsetto with some slippery R&B drums which might sound like an audition for Hyperdub but I’m sure Kode9 would gladly release it as a 12-inch.
The bad: The demanding seven-minute-long “There Is No Ice (For My Drink)” is far too empty and plodding for someone of Yorke’s ilk to charge money for; this should’ve been leaked as an outtake. And both “Interference” and “Truth Ray” are stripped down to the point of nothingness.
For anyone who appreciated Yorke’s debut solo album 2006’s The Eraser Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes offers a similar sortie. But like The Eraser it sounds like one-fifth of Radiohead recorded it on a MacBook during one long night suffering from insomnia. For some fans that might be all they need but considering everything that he’s given us over the years it doesn’t seem like enough.
