We’re rockin’ the summit/Just like Eisenhower did…
[Video][Website]
[5.38]
Josh Langhoff: I’ll take the biographical heavy lifting for this one. Atoms for Peace is a side project of Rocket Juice & the Moon bassist Flea, who received a melodica when someone threw it at the stage one night, nearly killing him. With the equilibrium of a Zen master (which he is), Flea leveraged this scare into a creative endeavor. He called in his associate Mauro Refosco, who sets ‘em on fire every Wednesday night at Nublu, and a couple former sidemen to noted melodicaist Paul McCartney: drummer Joey Waronker and loopist Nigel Godrich. White hot ball of human rage Thom Yorke was living in Godrich’s guesthouse, so they let him sing. “Judge Jury and Executioner” is the one where they groove and it features zero melodica. It is no one’s best work.
[4]
Alfred Soto: I swear I had no idea these people existed, but from the familiar mewl to the pitter-pattering percussion to the angelic backing vocals to the oh-really title I should have guessed. But I can also swear there’s lateral movement: Thom Yorke remembers there’s an acoustic guitar he’s supposed to sing with, the bass hints at grooviness without giving a damn about finding one. In short, pleasant piddle.
[6]
Brad Shoup: I love Radiohead, I do. Or I love the songs real fans don’t care for: one of those. In Rainbows‘ “House of Cards” is an all-time slice of lovers’ rock; “Give Up the Ghost” off King of Limbs supplanted Judee Sill as my go-to nightwalker soundtrack when I needed to escape the roommates. AFP haven’t given me an album yet, but when it drops I’m sure I’ll flip for the one that has a Yorke/Flea duet. Speaking of, is he even present here? Is that vocal bass line him? Thom’s slinky stink is all over this one, from the acoustic guitar to the mourners. He dives down the modernist rabbithole, but one wonders why everyone had to join him on the trip.
[5]
Anthony Easton: Echoing snaps and a sung-spoken style that’s more hip than menacing suggest that they have been paying attention, and a copy of a copy of a trend suggests that the wheels might have fallen off the wagon.
[6]
Iain Mew: I count In Rainbows as my second favourite Radiohead album but didn’t get into Thom Yorke’s solo debut at all. The irritatingly comma-free “Judge Jury and Executioner” splits the difference between the two. The down-a-deep-well bass and clap beat fill up the space with anxiety like “Nude” from the former with a tiny bit more funk, but just was often the case with The Eraser Thom gives too much weight to his own obstructive words. His ghostly echoes end up doing more for the song than the main vocal.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: The King Of Limbs marked a very important moment in my music-listening life — it was the first Radiohead album I ever listened to three times, decided “eh, it’s OK” and moved onto something else. “Judge Jury and Executioner” could have appeared on Radiohead’s last album, and Thom Yorke’s continued Hyperdub phase leaves me feeling just as uninterested.
[5]
Ian Mathers: I mean, I like Radiohead well enough, and who knows (from the outside) what the difference is between the experience of being in one band versus another? But this sure doesn’t sound like Thom Yorke needed a whole new band to make this music.
[5]
Jer Fairall: Registers, at first, as the same fey, drearily atmospheric electronica that Radiohead has been stagnant with for over a decade now, but the acoustic guitar figures are a most welcome human touch; that something so warm and tactile appears on a Thom Yorke track as late as 2013 is every bit as much of a surprise as those uncharacteristically funky (yes, funky!) bass groans. Add to all of this a chorus hook that is his first in several albums to actually resemble what such things sound like out here in the real world, outside of his scrambled alien brain, and I am actually, however guardedly, curious about a new Thom Yorke project for the first time since forever.
[6]