The album released digitally through the torrent software/website BitTorrent, in a neat little 'bundle', which is their proprietary term for a package of media released by an artist. Yorke and Nigel Godrich posted an announcement today about their reasoning behind this strategy. They say it's a test. Perhaps they want to use such BitTorrent for future Radiohead releases, or really ANYTHING at all. We will have to wait and see.
Downloading the album proved easy enough, although I had to find an older version of the BitTorrent software (available on their website) to match my outdated MacBook. This caused a delay in my listening of the album until late this evening, after getting through with a long day at the office. OK, it's a grocery store, but that's not the point.
Tomorrow's Modern Boxes is brilliant. I'll get right out and say it, so that you know that I'm a biased little fan-boy for Thom, and so that we can be clear about how giddy I get when he does his surprise releases. I almost spit out my coffee this morning. I felt faint. I was late to work.
NOW that that is through, I shall be harsh and objective about this Album. I'll start by saying that the video released within the bundle is disappointing. It's a glitched out edit of Thom jibbering about with boxing gloves on. I was hoping for something more, but it was technically part of the 'free' bits that came with the bundle, so no harm no foul.
If we are going to think of Tomorrow's Modern Boxes as a follow-up to 2006's The Eraser, then TMB is a statement that Yorke's has a full grasp upon his craft as a solo artist/producer/singer/songwriter-guy. TMB is sleek and sexy, with immaculate production and competent flow. Yorke's experience as a DJ has saturated into this work, evident in the stylistic coherence between tracks and the instumental orchestration within each track. My impressions of The Eraser lead me to describe it as a grainy lo-fi bedroom pop album, with dense and scattered arrangements, facile percussion loops of bandwidth-ed noise driving typical keyboard/guitar parts. That is not to say that it was a bad piece of work by any means, it is just a statement that that album was a sketchy realization of ideas that Yorke would later go on to evolve through the continuous stylistic progressions of the last two Radiohead albums, and the vivid work of Yorke's other band, Atoms For Peace.
Yorke has had much experience in the 8 years between The Eraser and Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, so to try and compare them is not entirely useful. It would be more appropriate to compare it to his work with Atoms For Peace: the Afro Beat inspired cyber funk dance band he started with his friends. Compared to Atoms for Peace's recent release AMOK, Yorke's new album is charmingly sparse. Its rhythms are more bouncy, and its melodies are intimately soulful.
Yorke has described himself as an optimist, and although that may seem ironic when compared to Radiohead's body-of-work, it doesn't seem odd when listening to his solo work. A boyish hope comes through in songs like "The Mother Lode", hinting at the same feel from the track "Atoms for Peace" from The Eraser. The aspiring melody soars and flutters above a jerky, body rocking beat that flaunts Yorke's prowess with a drum machine (although it might have sneakily been Johnny Greenwood making an appearance, but that's just a speculation). Either way, "Mother Lode" is a bright highlight within the album, and I wonder if it is the last track on the A-side of the vinyl format.
Like I mentioned before, Yorke has channeled some hip-hop spirits in this album. This comes through most clearly in the track "truth ray": a side-chained-synth swelling and squeezing by a nice down-tempo kick-beat. The melody is achingly soulful, and feels inspired by the spirit that crept through James Blake's heart not too long ago. It's a style that hasn't gotten much attention in Yorke's music, and so it brings a fresh air to this album.
After "truth-ray", Yorke puts on his DJ headphones and mixes in a bouncing jitter beat that opens up atmospherically and diverts gracefully away from a 'song' type format into a expansive progression while staying centered on a driving back-beat. On a personal note, it makes me happy that Yorke could put his passion for EDM and IDM into a nice compact version like the track "there is no ice (for my drink)". He's been mixing dance-music elements into Radiohead's albums for a long time, but this one feels like it comes from his own heart. The transitions are executed masterfully, as Yorke moves into a shimmery warble of ambient piano/instrumentals in "Pink Section". The transition leaves one relaxed after the previous driving beat, and drifts softly into the next intro of the final track, "Nose Grows Some".
The final track's title might be an homage to growing older. The warm synths resemble a reedy organ, and their brightness drifts through the stereo-field as Yorke lays on the boyish-charm, with a heart-aching melody, sounding like an intimate cooing to a loved-one. The song repeats a chorus and bridge gently and finishes before growing dull. And thus the album is complete.
Tomorrow's Modern Boxes has only been out for a day (and did not include a lyrics-sheet), so there are many little secrets left for discovery. I hope that you've gotten a chance to listen to the free-track, "A Brain In a Bottle", which is available to everyone. I would highly suggest purchasing the whole album if you are interested in anything Mr. Yorke has done, because Tomorrow's Modern Boxes is a 38 minute masterpiece. I look forward to listening the crap out of it. I thank you for reading.
-NZG
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