FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Thom Yorke - ANIMA
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WHILST is it accrued a lot of positive reviews…
I have not heard too many tracks from Thom Yorke’s ANIMA played on the radio lately. It is an album that, maybe, has a niche and particular sound that means it is not as accessible as others. Less frequently heard than a lot of Radiohead albums, ANIMA is one of the best from 2019. Produced by Nigel Godrich (longtime producer for Radiohead), ANIMA is a magnificent album where Yorke penned the lyrics; he worked with Godrich on the music. I am going to come to a couple of reviews for ANIMA soon. The album was accompanied by a fifteen-minute film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Yorke’s most-recent solo studio album, one wonders if we will hear one from him or Radiohead this year. He has a new group, The Smile, that features and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner (in collaboration with Nigel Godrich). ANIMA is an album that warrants some fresh spins and new attention. When speaking with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1, Yorke talked about the album:
“Speaking about ‘ANIMA’, Yorke revealed that the album was relatively quick to make thanks to the concept of “anti-music” behind the album. “We’ve had most of this stuff for ages, and the joke was, it was really quick to do. We set up as we do the live shows for most of it…and knocked it out.
“It was really fun. It was quick and easy and we knew where we were going because we lived with it for so long. The therapy of ‘I don’t want to write a bunch of songs. I want to just make noise’ was great and I found myself immersing myself in old musique concrète and all this anti-music and it was great. I loved it.”
Yorke also revealed more about the ideas behind the album’s title: “I think the reason it ended up being called ‘ANIMA’ was partly because I’m obsessed with this whole dream thing, and it comes from this concept that [Carl] Jung had. But, also, we have started to emulate what our devices say about us and emulate the way we behave from that.
“The reason we can watch Boris Johnson lie through his teeth, promise something that we know will never happen is: we don’t have to connect with it directly because it’s a little avatar. It’s this little guy with a stupid haircut waving a flag…..“That’s all right, that’s funny”. And the consequences are not real. The consequences of everything we do are not real. We can remain anonymous. We send our avatar out to hur abuse and poison and then trot back anonymous.”
On the back of this, Yorke addressed the current state of politics, saying that “fundamental structural change was needed.”
Yorke continued: “People have come to terms with the idea, [that] the only way that things change is fundamental structural change. And the only way that can happen when you have a bunch of clowns, is to be angry”.
I think that Anima is one of the best albums from 2019. It is one that deserves to be played and talked more about now. The anger Yorke expressed towards Boris Johnson seems especially relevant now. One wonders what Yorke will come up with on a new album considering the corruption and lies from the P.M. In their review, this is what AllMusic said about the wonderful ANIMA:
“It sounds counterintuitive to say Thom Yorke delivers uneasy music with a sense of ease, yet ANIMA unfurls with a slow, steady confidence that can be called comfortable. Perhaps this relaxed gait is due to how ANIMA finds Yorke treading familiar territory, revisiting the kind of jittery, chilly electronica that has been his solo specialty ever since he snuck out The Eraser in 2006. During the 13 years that separate The Eraser and ANIMA, indie and electronic music underwent several changes, but Yorke and his longtime producer Nigel Godrich aren't especially interested in chasing trends. They're working with a similar tool box that they did in a previous decade, running loops, distorting acoustic instruments, operating faders, and leaning into glitches and skittish rhythms. All these sounds mean ANIMA sounds superficially similar to its predecessors (The Eraser, plus 2014's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes), but Yorke and Godrich are craftsman, offering a different perspective on a familiar subject. That subject is, naturally, a distrust of the modern world and a fear of a creeping dystopia, a paranoia that suits the troubled times of 2019. Perhaps the world has turned to meet Yorke on his old stomping ground, but that's where his light touch comes into play. Where he once seemed consumed with dread, Yorke gently argues for the importance of humanity within a cold, alienated world. When he attempts to articulate this stance in his lyrics, he can be a shade direct -- witness how he rails against "goddamned machinery" on "The Axe" -- but his bluntness is softened by the slow, shifting soundscapes that populate ANIMA. Against all odds, Yorke's eerie electronic shimmer doesn't inspire fear so much as console; in this dark time, it's reassuring to hear a human heart beating the digital clutter”.
To round off, I want to quote NME’s take on one of Thom Yorke’s best releases. They note that, whilst there is very little in the way of happiness to be found on ANIMA, it is a remarkable album that is fascinating, stunning and hugely emotive:
“There’s little hope in ‘ANIMA’. Little in the way of joy. It sounds exactly like a record trying to say something about 2019 should sound. Often the record approaches the realm of the atonal. The song ‘The Axe’ owes much to Yorke’s challenging work on last year’s Suspiria soundtrack. ‘Impossible Knots’ recalls the caustic experiments that Portishead have conducted in recent times. And yet – thanks to the extraordinary voice that’s long defined Yorke’s career – there’s grace here too. ‘Twist’ could be an ‘In Rainbows’-era Radiohead song, while midway through the record there’s a song called ‘Dawn Chorus’. In many ways it’s ‘ANIMA’’s signature song. It, at once, sounds completely resigned, absolutely world weary, while also unparalleled in its beauty. It evokes visions of flowers growing on a rubbish dump.
And yet there’s no question that ‘ANIMA’ is a record that looks at the world it’s been born into with disgust. It’s filled with songs that sound like they were written just after breaking point. Closer ‘Runwayaway’, as well as being notable for featuring some blues guitar that is uncharacteristically pretty for a record baring just Yorke’s name, is best described as an audio interpretation of what insanity sounds like. It’s like a lullaby written during a fever dream, with snippets of strange sci-fi tinged samples creeping in and out of the composition. Yorke’s enduring fascination with dreams again works itself into the DNA of the record. ‘ANIMA’ was launched with an innovative viral marketing campaign that has seen strange adverts surface across the globe, purportedly placed by a company called ‘Anima Technologies’, that promote a ‘dream recovery service’.
Fittingly, there’s shades of the 2007 videogame Portal here. A bit of Blade Runner. It’s hard to hear these songs without thinking of the bleached white film sets so often seen in Kubrick movies. Anything that depicts a broken future, where humanity has been traded in for progress, and still we lost. You know what? It might be worth listening – really listening – to what Thom Yorke has to say”.
I am going to leave it here. Go and listen to ANIMA if you have not done already. A wonderful album that will definitely make an impression, it is one that still sounds relevant. The songs are as powerful and potent now than they were almost three years ago. One of the great albums from 2019, ANIMA should be played widely and reinvestigated. The third solo album from Yorke is so strong. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, as he is a very…
SPECIAL artist indeed.