All Of My Madness

Thom Yorke “Guess Again!”

The funny thing about Thom Yorke is that he drifted away from rock music because he felt it was banal, but culture has shifted in a way that the electronic music he makes now feels surprisingly ordinary. Yorke’s third album outside of Radiohead, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, is at times alarmingly dull. I don’t know what’s going on with Yorke himself, but the music on this record and the last Atoms for Peace album seems stagnant and complacent to me, as if he’s found this niche where he can concentrate on a cool vibe and not have to put a lot of work into songwriting. I can appreciate where he’s coming from in terms of instrumentation, and there are often cool ideas there, but his singing is on autopilot – there’s melodies, sure, but they feel very unformed and aimless. It’s often just a loose structure for him to make pretty or menacing Thom Yorke noises. “Guess Again!” deviates slightly from this. The melody isn’t quite up to the high standards of the majority of his body of work, but it is definitely there, and serves as a thread holding together elements in a track that might otherwise drift apart. I wouldn’t characterize a lot of the cuts on Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes as failures so much as experiments that don’t quite work because the songwriting isn’t there. No matter what Yorke does, he can’t stop being a guy who thrives on melody, harmony, and structure. When he tries to get too far away from those things, he only reveals his weaknesses. It’s very brave for him to constantly push himself out of his comfort zone, but it’s not always enjoyable to hear it.

Buy it from Thom Yorke.