Thom Yorke
Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

Downloaded from Torrent the latest album of the leader of Radiohead (legally, eh?). At first listen, it doesn't seem anything so innovative. The usual electronic and aseptic rhythms, digitized to the extreme, syncopated and at times disjointed, seasoned by Thom's thin and stoned voice infiltrating the folds of a sound fabric that is ultimately boring and paranoid.

"Paranoia" has always been the distinctive mark of his band, and so far so good, but what's missing here is the "why".

Why make an album that, if we want, is a poor copy of the previous The Eraser, much more original and motivated?

Why bother us with tunes "similar" to the expressive model used in Radiohead without proposing something alternative, that gives a sense of aiming to be "solo" anyway? Why insist with these soundtracks that seem like the result of some remix of pieces taken from some "sound library" from the internet?

In short... in my opinion, the "growth" is missing.

The sense of an evolution is missing, of an expressive urgency different from the proposal of the group. This is a weak photocopy where the musical part, at the third listen, bores and does not excite us. A photocopy, moreover "short": just barely 35 minutes... which in an era like this, with CDs reaching the price of 20 plus Euros each, seems almost an affront to one's "fans" and a slap to poverty. And it provides the measure to understand that the project seems almost "forced" and not genuinely felt. On the lyrics, even here, there doesn't seem to be anything new even if the vocal skills sometimes give chills. But it's little. Way too little.

Oh Thom, Thom... is it time for you to take a break from rockstar and redefine WHAT you want to do when you grow up? And in your free time, between one RH album and another, would you consider doing something else? Painting, writing, following the kids to school, cultivating a garden... in short, there's certainly no lack of things to do!