Brit Music Scene

Thom Yorke: No More Radiohead Albums… Maybe

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 01:00 PM PDT

A new Radiohead album is always an event in the same way that a new Muse album is. They aren’t just a collection of songs thrown together at random, they are instead a carefully-constructed set of songs intended to give aural pleasure. A new Muse album is on the way, but it looks like we could have a long wait until the same can be said for a new Radiohead album. In fact, it could never arrive.

NETHERLANDS-CONCERT-RADIOHEAD-THOM-YORKE

Radiohead took the world by storm when they released their last album, In Rainbows. Foregoing a traditional record company-backed release, the British band instead released the album on the Internet, offering fans the chance to download the album for free if that’s what they chose. Each individual was asked to pay the amount of money they considered the album to be worth.

That was in 2007 and there’s been little action in the Radiohead camp since then. They recently released a download as a tribute to Harry Patch, but apart from that news has been light on the ground. In September of last year, Ed O’Brien claimed most songs for the next album were completed, while this May brought news that the band were in the studio recording new material. But something has clearly changed in The Matrix, with Thom Yorke now putting a spoke in the new album wheel.

Talking to The Believer magazine, Yorke said:

“None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off. I mean, it’s just become a real drag. It worked with [2007 album] ‘In Rainbows’ because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us.”

“‘In Rainbows’ worked on two or three different levels. The first level is just sort of getting a point across that we wanted to get across about music being valuable. It also worked as a way of using the Internet to promote your record, without having to use iTunes or Google or whatever…and it also worked financially.”

It may be a push to claim that Yorke is saying there’ll never be another Radiohead album ever again. But he comes as close as is possible to without actually stating that to be the case. It is at least very clear that Yorke and the rest of the band aren’t in any rush to release a new album, even though it looks as though it’s already in the bag. And if and when they do release it, it’ll likely be download-only or in a form that isn’t the usual form for a record release.

Radiohead are innovators in music and not just with their sound. Instead, they are heading a revolution which needs to take place in the music industry to counter falling record sales and competition from the the Internet in the form of illegal file-sharing and streaming services such as Spotify.

[Photo Source: Newscom]

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