Eraser, The [Digipak] - Thom Yorke

Advantages: Moments of brilliance, original inventive sound.
Disadvantages: Extremely unaccessible for a casual listener

...Somewhere in the distant shire of Oxford, Thom Yorke sits with a laptop under his nose and a broad smile on his face. Very few would take pleasure from an album as politically draining as The Eraser, but if anybody is to smile about it, you can count on it being the Radiohead star himself. Here is a man who should never have been a rock star. An agitated grumbler with the audacity to tell his own fans to "calm down and shut the f- up" should a gig threaten to spiral out of control. When Yorke decided to venture out of his usual five-piece rock band domain, there was very little in the way of a mainstream reaction. Probably because he refused to go public about it until a month prior to the album's release. "This is not a solo album." says the Radiohead frontman. Then what is it? Well, we're allowed to call it a side project, as Yorke... Read review

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Advantages: The 41 minutes of music!
Disadvantages: Not for everybody to enjoy...

..."The Eraser" is Thom Yorke's, Radiohead's frontman, first solo album. Though the album was produced along with Radiohead's producer Nigel Godrich and has the participation of his band partner Jonny Greenwood in some piano chords, this is much more than a Radiohead thing. I must start to present it as a electronic record. Of course that's the path Radiohead started do explore since "Kid A", but in this album that's not a peculiarity, not just a thing you should notice, that's the whole thing! So the tendency is to compare this record to "Kid A", that was mostly an electronic experience that crushed all "Ok Computer" successor expectations. In my very personal opinion, if I would compare it to any Radiohead album, I would compare it to "Amnesiac", not "kid A". But that's not the relevant thing. What you need to know is that this... Read review

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Advantages: Great Lyrics, Original Sound.
Disadvantages: Possibly a bit samey at some points.

...Track Listing: The Eraser, Analyse, The Clock, Black Swan, Skip Divided, Atoms For Peace, And It Rained All Night, Harrowdown Hill, Cymbal Rush. Many people, myself included, were waiting with bated breath for the release of The Eraser. Having been a Radiohead fan for as long as i can remember being into music, i have enjoyed watching Radiohead change and grow from depressing and sad, to expressive and mad - with Thom Yorke's darker and more personal influences moulding a new type of sound for the band. Kid A saw the cross-roads emerge for Radiohead, and won them as many fans as they lost with the change in direction. It's those experimental melodies intertwined with dark forcing trip-hop beats, nicely sliced with jazz and Thom's trademark delicate voice, that paved the way for The Eraser. The title track is first up, and it... Read review

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