The Null Device

The Eraser

The Graun on Thom Yorke's solo album:
But The Eraser is no more experimental than the average Radiohead album. In fact, it sounds exactly like you would expect a Thom Yorke solo album to sound: twitchy electronic beats, doomy washes of synthesizer, backing vocals that are invariably high, wordless and ghostly, except on Skip Divided, where they literally involve whimpering. The lyrics are one long defeated sigh, interrupted by the occasional tut and roll of the eyes. We are variously informed that there's no light in the dark, time's running out for us, things are fucked up, it gets you down and people get crushed like biscuit crumbs. Even the guitar on The Clock sounds like it's grumbling. At its worst, The Eraser brings to mind the unlikely image of Autechre fronted by Private Frazer off Dad's Army: thump, bleep, splonk, we're all doomed, I tell you.

There are 3 comments on "The Eraser":

Posted by: Jim Sat Jul 8 13:52:25 2006

That last line is genius, and makes me want to sample Dad's Army.

Posted by: Peter www.frogworth.com/blog/ Mon Jul 10 00:43:20 2006

Your URL field seems extremely truncated. I hate to take the http:// off to make my blog fit.

Anyway, the Grauniad are full o' shit. Well, of course it DOES sound like Radiohead, but basically if you don't like Thom's usual emotional attitude, don't listen, geezer. Of course it's his usual moaning. But the beats and sounds are good... And will ignorant dick'eads please shut up about Autechre. It doesn't sound anything like Autechre, really, and nor have Radiohead ever. Geez.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org/ Tue Jul 11 15:52:26 2006

Sorry about that; the URL should be fixed now.

And I suspect that "sounds like Autechre" is lazy-journalistese for "is electronic, choppy and somewhat difficult".