by shannon palmer

A Week With Thom Yorke's "The Eraser": Day 5

30 July 2006
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Hannah Clemens//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
I feel compelled to confess at the last that yes, I had a leaked copy of “The Eraser.” Like any good bootlegger, I bought the album on its release date, but that does not excuse the fact that I had the album in advance and therefore had an unfair advantage when writing this review. But truth be told, it took me at least five listens to really like “The Eraser.” All the problems I described over the last four days annoyed me to no end at first, but when I finally let this album work its way under my skin I began to hear what was behind all that. It crept out, little by little, in the way the layered “ooh”s add an orchestral quality to the chorus of the title track, or the way several songs have delayed endings that stutter along, as if getting a second wind before they succumb to entropy. I am fully aware of what a gushing fangirl I sound like when I say that this is an album full of beauty, but that’s exactly what it is. Supposedly the process of recording “The Eraser” took an astonishingly short few weeks, but these are clearly concepts and emotions that have been stewing inside Yorke for much longer. Though on the surface the majority of these songs are utterly dismal and hopeless, there is always something uplifting beyond them. Right after Yorke tells us “there’s no spark/no light in the dark” in “Analyze,” he asserts “the candles in the city/they never looked so pretty.” He seems to be reassuring himself in
“Atoms for Peace” when he declares, “no more talk about the old
days/it’s time for something great.” Even “Harrowdown Hill” sends a green sapling through Orwellian concrete with the line “I’m coming home/to make it all right, so dry your eyes.” On an album dedicated to his daughter, which seems to give voice to most
of Yorke’s greatest fears and frustrations with the state of the world, the message seems to be that we are the problem and the solution. “Don’t turn away” begs the last intelligible line of “Cymbal Rush,” as cities crumble in a frantic, though still sedate, crescendo. Is it trite? A little. Is it anything Yorke couldn’t have said in a Radiohead song? Probably not. But there’s something about this album, where Yorke takes both credit and full responsibility for its admittedly overdone message, that demands that we listen in a different way. That’s all he asks of us.

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