How to deal with success is a perennial topic in rock music. Some artists believe in giving the audience more of what they want, others suspect that by following their creative instincts wherever they lead, they may end up giving their fans something that hadn’t known they wanted.
Thom Yorke, much like David Bowie, definitively belongs in the latter category. The release of Ok Computer (soberingly, almost 20 years ago) secured Yorke and Radiohead a huge international following, but whilst lesser groups seized on the more rudimentary aspects of the group’s output (anthemic rockers and melancholy ballads), Yorke, both with his band and in various solo guises, has restlessly sought new creative terrain.
In recent times, this has involved the singer venturing into the outer fringes of electronica, and conjuring up some very strange soundscapes indeed. Hearteningly, Yorke’s audience has followed him the whole way, and together with Arcade Fire – whose James Murphy-produced, disco-punk opus Reflektor was an international No.1 – he continues to demonstrate that large-scale success does not always have to be based on a lowest common denominator approach.
 With the fine Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, Yorke has again delved successfully into the electronic underground, marrying his gift for melody and song-craft with some wonderfully offbeat sonic experimentation. The album kicks off with ‘A Brain in a Bottle’, a brilliantly eerie tune with echoes of Yorke’s sometime collaborators, Burial and Massive Attack, built around haunting synths and glitchy rhythms.
‘Guess Again!’ is in a similar vein, Yorke’s sleepy vocal floating over lonely piano notes and skittering beats, and the singer conjuring some dread-filled imagery in the vein of Scott Walker (a Yorke favourite), such as, “All my nightmares are in the Garden.” After the Aphex Twin-style ambience of ‘Interference’, Yorke ventures into danceable glitchtronica with ‘The Motherlode’, which makes excellent use of fast-paced rhythms and J Dilla-style compression.
Undoubtedly the most unique track on Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is ‘There Is No Ice (For My Drink)’: a strange mix of chopped vocal samples, woozy synths, atmospheric sound effects and banging beats, it is perhaps best described as a surrealist rave-up, and ranks among the most innovative songs Yorke has yet composed.
The penultimate tune, ‘Pink Section’, is a sepia-tinted ambient number direct from the Boards of Canada playbook, though none the worse for it. However, Yorke saves the best till last. A majestic slice of dreamy electronica, ‘Nose Grows Some’ is the perfect blend of melody and experimentation, bringing the album to an exceptionally strong conclusion.
A review of Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, of course, wouldn’t be complete without word on its distribution. Yorke’s decision to release the album via bittorrent is another imaginative and commendable effort on his behalf to establish a more direct model for issuing music, and a massively successful one, judging by its three million downloads to date.
It is also an encouraging reminder of the anti-corporate ethic that Radiohead hold dear.
Out Now.