Flea

I am not all that big on the Red Hot Chili Peppers (maybe a song or two here and there), but i have always recognized that Flea is one hell of an accomplished musician, be it the bass or the trumpet.  And he's finally giving us a solo jazz outing with the release of "Honora" tomorrow.  Check out the Thom Yorke assisted "Traffic Lights" below and order the LP here from Nonesuch Records.

Ed O'Brien

Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien is set to release his new solo album "Blue Morpho" in May.  I'm beginning to think that he's quietly been the coolest member of that band all along now.  Check out the lush and beautiful, string-laden title track below and pre-order the LP here from Transgressive.

Daily Jam - Exit Music (For a Film)

It's been unfortunate to discover over the last couple of years that Jonny Greenwood is a bit of a cunt.  His pro-genocide views make it really, really hard to enjoy his music.  Let's go back 29 years ago when he was just another member of Radiohead.  Listen to "Exit Music (For a Film)" below, our Daily Jam.  "We hope that you choke.  That you choke."

Daily Jam - (Nice Dream)

There were quite a few albums i found in high school that rewired my brain in some kind of way.  Radiohead's "The Bends" was one of them.  Here's a track from it.  Listen to "(Nice Dream)" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - I Will (Los Angeles Version)

Here's an alternate version of a track from Radiohead's "Hail to Thief."  Listen to "I Will (Los Angeles Version)" below, our Daily Jam.

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke

Fresh off their collaborative single "Back in the Game" last month, Australian electronic artist Mark Pritchard and Radiohead front man Thom Yorke are back with the announcement of new full-length album "Tall Tales" due in May.  Pre-order it here from Warp and listen to new single "This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice" below.

Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard

Thom Yorke just released a new track with regular collaborator Mark Pritchard with the icy, creeping synth-laden "Back in the Game."  It kind of reminds me of "Decades" by Joy Division, but maybe that's just me.  Anyway, check out the video for the song below.

The Smile

The Smile surprise released a couple of new songs the other day that are, for the moment, only available on a 12" at select record stores.  Word on the street is though, that we'll be able to order the record online here in a couple of days.  Check out the vinyl rip of the A-side, "Don't Get Me Started," below in the meantime.

Daily Jam - How to Disappear Completely

Maybe all of the old dystopian fears and nightmares came true. Maybe there was something far more prophetic in those old tomes we read and studied in 9th and 10th grade than we ever believed, Huxley and Orwell tapping into some future feedback, foreshadowing everything. Or maybe it’s all just some kind of Philip K. Dick fever dream gone completely off the rails. Maybe I’m full of shit. It doesn’t matter. Things have gone askew.

This life is a hallucination, “strobe lights and blown speakers.”

And we are the tiny beings scurrying about and hiding within it.

And I keep coming back to Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely,” the beautiful , show stopping ballad from the band’s seminal 2000 album Kid A. The light acoustic strum and the growing string and orchestral arrangements of Jonny Greenwood bring things to place of nervous placidity following the abrupt and chaotic end of the song preceding it, the throbbing and oozing “The National Anthem.” But the calm is false, overcome by desperation and denial. And then it all dissolves into ghosts.

Is that where we’re at these days? Fear and chaos followed by a kind of dreadful, eerie stillness? Technology and fatty foodstuffs keeping our wits dull and our bodies and minds sated, while the pigs steal away with everything?

I just don’t know, but about once a week I consider deleting all of my accounts and vanishing in the woods. Is there still a way out? Still a way back? Or has “the moment already passed?”

“I’m not here. This isn’t happening. I’m not here…I’m not here.”

Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Thom Yorke

Radiohead's Thom Yorke is back at the film score game (guess he caught the bug from bandmate Jonny Greenwood), this time around with soundtrack to Italian filmmaker Daniele Luchetti's upcoming "Confidenza."  Assisted The Smile bandmate Tom Skinner and jazz musician Robert Stillman, the first taste of the score is an ominous, jazzy affair, but still something that sticks to the ribs.  Check out "Prize Giving" below and pre-order the LP here from XL Recordings.

Daily Jam - Prospectors Arrive

This column was originally published at the end of 2016.

2016 was sure something of a year wasn't it? (And pretty much every single one since then.) There were some definite highs, for me at least, with the birth of my second son and the marriage of my sister-in-law to her partner. But, oh how the lows kept on coming at a manic pace, the never ending carousel of artist deaths laying down a thudding, marching beat to the impending apocalypse scheduled for sometime in the near future. Some of those deaths, David Bowie's in particular, got me thinking hypothetical desert island thoughts as to what artist's entire body of work I would want to take with me were I to be stranded alone at sea. Bowie is the obvious answer for me, but I certainly had to give consideration to some of the other artists I also hold dear, like Joy Division, or Nirvana, or Radiohead.

Upon writing that last word, I can immediately hear the scoffs and sense the eyerolls of many a reader whom have deemed Radiohead to be overrated or just simply "meh." I've been a fan of the band for many years and have heard every contrarian thing one could hear muttered about the five-piece...and I get it. Anything that gets the kind of universal critical and popular praise that Radiohead does should be immediately suspect. If I wasn't a fan already, it would probably annoy me too. But with as many dissenters and objections as this band seems to generate and amass, everyone can still agree on one thing...that Jonny Greenwood is a genius. All of the ire the band (or Thom Yorke in particular) inspires drops away in regards to its lead guitarist. He still gets nods of approval and respect. One has to assume that his amazing film score work is at least partly responsible for that.

If Radiohead ever decide to officially call it quits, Greenwood already has his calling lined up. For his first mainstream movie score, the guitarist composed and/or arranged the haunting and achingly beautiful soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. The score compliments the film so wonderfully that it's difficult to imagine one without the other. The record is enormous in mood and scope, but highlight "Prospectors Arrive" has always hit me the hardest. There is a sense of foreboding and dread to the song that is inescapable. The gentle piano sounds like the skies darkening. The eerie strings slinking in and out signal the last shred of humanity draining from one's soul. Ominous future. Haunting stillness.

It sounds like the end.

Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Paranoid Android

I’m nineteen years old. I’m at a now defunct music venue in Houston, Texas that I can never remember the name of, singing and screaming with thousands of other people, watching my favorite band perform as I float above the crowd. I’m not sure how long I have been laying across the hands and shoulders of other fans, pushing and passing me around like a rag doll, but I do know that the spacey and floating bridge to “Paranoid Android” has just begun, and in my levitated physical state, my mind soon catches up, and I feel complete and utter bliss.

Almost seventeen years later*, that Radiohead performance is still the best concert I have ever attended. We can chalk it up to how much I loved the band at that time (and still do), or how awesome it was to see them in a smallish, almost intimate venue before they become mega-stars, or how by some weird coincidence and some mutual friends, I met my wife the night before (though neither one of us would actually remember it until a couple of years later when we met again), but really, it was that bridge. Crowd surfing while Thom Yorke sings, “Come on rain down on me from a great height,” may just be the coolest experience I’ve ever had at a rock concert.

When OK Computer came out in 1997, it almost felt like an abrupt shift in sound and tone from a band coming off of their just-left-of-Britpop 1995 effort, The Bends. The songs felt wider in scope…spacier…like the group were tapping into some kind of sci-fi existentialist forethought to warn us about our technology-filled future. Drawing inspiration from The Beatles, Miles Davis, and Ennio Morricone, the band ultimately created a grand opus, an art-rock album for the ages, and one that I listened to incessantly for years. My constant standout has always been that first single (though “Airbag” comes really, really close).

“Paranoid Android” gets its name from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and was reportedly originally meant to be three separate songs, hence the tune’s three distinct sections. Playing on themes of tech-paranoia, control, and disgust for modern complacency, Radiohead use an array of cosmic guitar and synthesizer tones and textures to craft six minutes of proggy space rock that perfectly capture that fear and disdain, all the while adding an undercurrent of sadness. It’s beautiful.

If there’s a better song to transcendently crowd surf to, I haven’t found it. Listen below, our Daily Jam.

*This was originally published in 2015.

Cigarettes After Sex Cover Radiohead

Brooklyn by way of El Paso band Cigarettes After Sex just dropped a lovely cover of one of my favorite Radiohead songs.  Their take on "Motion Picture Soundtrack" sounds like a hazy, dusty daydream playing in a roadhouse at the end of the world.  Check it out below and download it here from Partisan Records.

The Smile

When they dropped new single "Bending Hectic" a few months back, it seemed evident that a new album from The Smile would find its way to us sooner than later, and now we've got a date.  "Wall of Eyes" hits in January.  Pre-order it here from XL Recordings and listen to the eerie and melancholy title track below.

Daily Jam - Climbing Up the Walls

Radiohead's "OK Computer" is one of those albums whose tracks are in a constant rotation for what is my favorite at any given time.  This morning it's "Climbing Up the Walls."  Check it out below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Cymbal Rush

Gonna go swim in a river for a little bit.  Here's Thom Yorke with "Cymbal Rush," our Daily Jam.

The Smile

Hey, we got a new track from The Smile today.  And it's pretty damn good too.  Check out "Bending Hectic" below and download it here from XL Recordings.

Daily Jam - Sail to the Moon (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky)

And now for a little Radiohead.  Here's "Sail to the Moon (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky)," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Moon Trills

I am absolutely exhausted today.  Can barely get myself to get up and do anything.  And i have plenty to do.  But that bed sure does look inviting.  Here's Jonny Greenwood's "Moon Trills" from his "Bodysong" score, our Daily Jam.

The Smile

We all knew it was coming, it was just a question of when.  And now that question is answered with the announcement of the debut full-length album from Radiohead and Sons of Kemet side project The Smile.  We've heard a few singles so far, and the latest is the pretty and melancholy "Free in the Knowledge."  Check the video for that out below and pre-order the upcoming "A Light for Attracting Attention" LP here from XL Recordings.  The digital album comes out in three weeks with the vinyl following in June.