Q Magazine: Thom Yorke loves to skank

Posted on August 12th, 2002.

New songs are ‘music you can imagine shagging to’ says Thom Yorke. Radiohead recently spent two weeks in Spain and Portugal unveiling a batch of powerful new songs intended for their 6th studio album.
Following their recent electronic experiments there have been whispers of Radiohead’s ‘return to rock’. But how does a group famed for never repeating themselves ‘return’ to anything? The new material’s unstrained dynamism goes a long way in answering this question.
Kicking off the tour in Lisbon’s beautiful Coliseu dos Recreios on 22 July, the group opened a two and a half hour set with a first section consisting solely of 8 unreleased numbers, all based around guitars and/or piano. To open the show, guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien each walked on carrying a large pair of beaters and pounded out the driving tribal rhythm of ThereThere from tom-toms at either side of the stage. Meanwhile, Thom Yorke scratched out a psych - rock riff on a semi-acoustic guitar.
The songs that followed took in surreal soul ballads, Bob Dylanish ranting, funky rock riffing and what Thom Yorke describes as ‘music you can imagine shagging to’: a claim rarely made for Kid A.
Far from reviving the monumental anthems of OK Comuter, this nimble brazenly emotional music suggests a more sensual, groove based progression from recent guitar based tracks such as Optimistic and Knives Out. Yorke’s vocals are full-blooded and often unashamedly lovely.
After a short intermission, the audience were treated to a marathon selection of older material until well after midnight. The following night, after deciding that this first set was too long, the band repeated the block of new material but dispensed with the intermission. Returning for a second encore,the volume of the audience’s roar forced Yorke to clasp his hands to his ears.
When a faulty sample halted proceedings, he advised the audience: ‘Just go and cop off with somebody.’ After a volley of screams, he replied ‘I’m afraid I’m busy’.
Returning to their hotel bar, Yorke absent-mindedly picked out chords on a white grand piano while unwinding from the show. ‘Thats two and a half hours plus two hours soundcheck. Four hours onstage !’ he mused ‘ My throat’s going to be shot tomorrow.’
The new tracks, he explained, were picked from 16 songs worked up over 9 weeks of rehearsals. In marked contrast to the improvisational techniques employed for Kid A and Amnesiac, Yorke sent some bare ideas he’d prepared earlier to each band member. There were no ground rules for the sessions, but he said, ‘ We’ve got this idea that we dont want to use computers’.
Last year’s live mini-album, I Might Be Wrong, presented recent Radiohead material in a different light, and in the same experimental spirit these 14 Iberian shows were partly planned to expose the nascent songs to public scrutiny. However, given that the band have still to enter a studio, the songs appeared well developed.
‘They still might be half formed, we dont know yet’, said Ed O’Brien. ‘That’s why its so important playing them to an audience. Apart from Kid A, its the way we’ve always done it. You find out Paranoid Android’s not good at 14 minutes. That 4 minute organ solo at the end doesnt work.’
Given their apparently relaxed state, is this ‘Radiohead in laidback album sessions shocker ‘? ‘those 9 weeks in rehearsal weren’t easy at all,’ countered Yorke.
Recording begins in September with a fortnight booked in Los Angeles. According to Parlophone boss Keith Wozencroft, producer Nigel Godrich hopes to complete the recording in that time. Yorke remained more cautious; much could still change in the studio, particularly as his current listening tastes switch between glitch techno and Bob Marley. He even expressed a longing to attempt Jamaican dancehall. ‘I’d love to be able to do that, I’d love to skank’,he exclaims, before approximating some ragga toasting.
Indication, perhaps, of both singer and band in rude good health.
[thanks Jack]

Check out this article on Radiohead’s videos from the newest edition of Postmodern Culture: Radiohead’s Antivideos: Works of Art in the Age of Electronic Reproduction [thanks Jim]