Thom Yorke's Nine-Track Album The Eraser

While Radiohead was rumored to be preparing for Bends-era guitar spotlighting on an appropriately rare tour of the U.S., Thom Yorke was recording a nine-track album entitled The Eraser, fit for synth lovers and vintage fans alike in its lyrical candidness and stolid reverence to Radiohead's lately explored dynamic between piano and soft peddling drum machine (and don't forget the feathery guitar tossed in for nostalgia's sake.)

Yorke's Beethovenized chords and seer's maudlin honesty are features we're now used to; producer Nigel Godrich is, after all, Radiohead's sometime producer, too. But what's different is Yorke's method of turning introspection on its head. The very idea of a solo project seemed to have flabbergasted most of the public, and questions were raised as to what direction the album would go in. "It's going to be very personal," we all obtusely said. Point taken, but not for one second is The Eraser diaristic. It just happens to be about love.

You mean the father of sophisticated, ornate, end-is-nigh Brit rock is in love? Who knew demigods were capable of such lowly, debilitating emotions? He's expertly capable of evoking them in us, of course, but the sensitive depictions of longing on The Eraser are coming directly from the heart of a man who once appropriated the mundane observation, "Yesterday I woke up sucking on lemon" like it was the new mantra for Generations X and Y. Yorke's lyrics have always been private, vague, and, like most things we don't understand, fascinating--we envied his wordly, selfless comments about a woman living with a "cracked polystyrene man" and OK Computer's perverted, relatable musings (remember what "Climbing Up The Walls" was about? Who could forget?) On this marginally self-involved project, we are trespassing on the most private ground yet.

Wedged between Yorke's nine twittering masterpieces is "Skip Divided," a quietly hopping, heartrending track about unrequited desire. Growling deeply in a lower register than normal, Yorke sings, "When you walk in a room everything disappears / When you walk in a room it's a terrible mess / When you walk in a room I start to melt / When you walk in a room I follow you 'round / Like a dog I'm a dog, I'm a dog, I'm a dog, I'm a lapdog / I'm your lapdog, yeah." Solitude, it appears, has acted as a confessional to Yorke's longtime preterition of the self; as Radiohead's frontman, all was seen through his peculiar, insightful lens, but it was never about him the way Chan Marshall's enigmatic rhetoric is very much a frustrating solipsism we rarely get glimpses of (wrapped in a blanket being carried off stage.) Yorke's loyal lapdogs will admit that his newfound impetus has the effect, like the best music, of rewriting the most cliche emotional experiences, creating a palimpsest of all the petty adages about love we've heard a thousand times before.

Radiohead's mysterious indisposition had a Chan Marshall effect on their obedient fanbase, but Yorke, perhaps unknowingly, does his fans a bigger favor than touring with his band by releasing The Eraser. Along with the 'me, myself, and I' addition is ballsy confrontation after candid confession--nine songs that are refreshing in their pared down production and metered, simple, sweet lyrics: "I'm coming home / I'm coming home / To make it all right / So dry your eyes / We think the same things at the same time / We just can't do anything about it." And take a gander at a few more cross-album snippets: "Take me in your arms" ("Atoms For Peace,") "I can see you / but I can never reach you" ("And It Rained All Night,") and, "I don't care what the future holds / Cause I'm right here and I'm today / With your fingers you can touch me / I'm your black swan, black swan" ("Black Swan.")

Importantly, if anyone ranging from Casablancas to Martin to Costello was purporting to feel the same emotions and deliver them in the same manner, the listener would hopefully recognize they were leaning over a proverbial bucket in the midst of the worst hangover of their life. But Yorke brandishes the same sentimentality with ease and confidence; his repertoire simply makes him immune to the majority of naysayers, and it doesn't hurt that The Eraser is musically on par with Kid A and its two sequels. Those albums' synthetic, fuzzy sound and Radiohead's ever-present second-person narrative remains, and while we may not be the addressee of Yorke's highly personal commentary, listening to it is as close as we'll ever get to being hugged by one of the greatest living musicians.