This all seems a bit strange. What’s Thom doing out without Jonny and the rest of the boys? At least he has Nigel to play with, but he still seems very alone, naked without that trusty crew of hard-rocking 30-somethings (not quite 40-somethings yet, though getting awfully close), playing with his toys (guess who got a drum machine for Christmas?). Good news is, for those of us willing to put up with Thom’s varied interests and tangents (hey, at least he hasn’t gotten into world music yet), there’s more than enough material on the album to keep us salivating for the next Radiohead LP. The most interesting moments are those when Thom manages to outshine the beats that he’s created. Eschewing most of his standard lyrical themes (unhappiness, paranoia, etc), Thom makes his job a bit harder by serving up a generally dreadful set of lyrics. Perhaps the worst comes on “Skip Divided,” with its talk of lap dogs and stalkerish behavior.

What’s impressive, then, is that Thom makes it one of the best tracks on the record. Weaving those deep breaths and sighs into the beat, he manages to achieve a dense sense of atmosphere. The real sell is on the delivery, though, as he slows and speeds up all over the place, slurring out that chorus with a dispassionate melancholy that wonderfully contradicts the vehemence and violence of the verses. With the rest of the band this could be grating; all out on his own he manages to more than make it work.

permanent link ::