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Thom Yorke's record: leaked and listened |
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Written by asap
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Saturday, 03 June 2006 |
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A small bar in Manhattan slowly fills up with young people. Everyone mingles as a soundtrack heavy on skittering electronic bleeps provides ambiance. This scene could most likely describe at least 50 other bars in New York City that night, but this one was special.
Sort of.
This was an officially-sanctioned listening party for Radiohead guru Thom Yorke’s hotly anticipated solo album “The Eraser,” a record that had been a well-kept secret up until Yorke announced it on the band’s Web site two weeks ago.
Listening parties are put on to promote a new record directly to writers, editors, and assorted cogs in the publicity machine. Some listening parties are highly choreographed, strangely ceremonial events, and others are more laid-back catered affairs with the artist in attendance. Mr. Yorke was not on hand for “The Eraser” party; he was busy performing with Radiohead at a sold-out show in Pennsylvania.
The night’s great irony: the event was built around the supposedly exclusive act of listening to the album, but it had leaked to the Internet only two days earlier.
What to make of a listening party where most of the people present have already listened? New records leak all of the time, but when anything having to do with Radiohead hits the web, the files spread with a startling quickness. Yorke and his band have earned one of the most net-savvy audience in popular music, a following who seem to have taken Radiohead’s album title “OK Computer” as an enthusiastic endorsement.
Within a day of the leak (it seems this leak wasn’t part of some viral promotion: it appears to be the old-fashioned kind where someone got a hold of the album and catapulted it online), the album had spread over every peer-to-peer network and all nine of its tracks were tied for the number one download slot on the music blog aggregator Elbo.ws. An overwhelming majority of the people who would have had interest in hearing the record already had, including most of the people at the listening party.
Adam Farrell, director of new media for XL’s corporate parent Beggars Group, told asap that the leak was an inevitability that the label had accepted early on. “Given the nature of Radiohead’s audience, and the history of their albums leaking, it has generally happened a lot earlier,” he said. “Any label at this point expects that an album is going to get leaked. It definitely happened earlier than we had anticipated.”
XL vice president of A&R Kris Chen was pleased with the event in spite of the leak. “We were aware that a lot of people wouldn’t get to the hear the album very far in advance,” he said, referencing the fact that the record itself was kept a secret from the industry until just three weeks ago. Chen explained that for XL, the party was a success if just because they were able to gather their choice of bloggers, writers, and record store owners to hear the fully mastered album, adding that the MP3s in circulation are poorly ripped and not indicative of the finished product’s sound quality.
Farrell agreed that the listening party was successful, but conceded, “I think it would have had a lot more punch if it was truly the first time that anyone had listened to it, but my assumption is most people in the room last night had already heard the record.”
As for the music itself, let’s just say that I am quite glad that I was familiar with “The Eraser” before the party, because if I had gone in hoping to pay attention to the record, I would have been very frustrated. Aside from straining to hear small talk over the din of the sound system, not much actual listening was happening at this listening party.
The gloomy mood of the tracks fit well with the downpour outside and the dim red lighting of the club, and there were moments when Yorke’s distinct, mellifluous drone hit upon a melody so gorgeous that one had no choice but to fall out of a conversation for a few seconds.
Still, it wasn’t until I was at home that I got to listen deeper. The title track begins the album with a rhythmic sampled keyboard motif that approximates Yorke’s strangely tentative way of playing piano chords, and sets a serene yet melancholy tone that continues throughout the rest of the piece. The middle tracks settle into a somewhat shapeless lull, but “Atoms For Peace” provides a compelling centerpiece with its gentle electronic bass notes anchoring Yorke’s angelic falsetto and an otherworldly keyboard hum. The penultimate track, “Harrowdown Hill,” is one of only two tracks to feature any kind of discernible guitar sound with its skulking bass groove underpinning one of the most immediately ingratiating choruses that he has penned since “Idioteque” from “Kid A.”
If “The Eraser” had been released as a Radiohead album, its low-key dynamics and utter lack of traditional rock guitars would have been a disappointment for most of their fans, but it works very well as a low-pressure recording by an artist in a very high-stakes band.
As it stands, “The Eraser” may be fine for background music in a bar, but it’s much better floating out of earphones.
Matthew Perpetua writes asap’s weekly Hit Refresh MP3 download column.
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