Product Description

The debut solo effort from the Radiohead frontman, 'The Eraser' delivers elements of 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' as well as drawing from contemporaries such as Aphex Twin. Produced andarranged by long-time Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, 'The Eraser' gives Yorke the freedom to move further into the realms of electronica whilst retaining the melody-driven style of Radiohead.

Track Listing

1. Eraser
2. Analyse
3. Clock
4. Black Swan
5. Skip Divided
6. Atoms For Peace
7. And It Rained All Night
8. Harrowdown Hill
9. Cymbal Rush

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1249 in Music
• Released on: 2006-07-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Don't call it solo," says Thom Yorke of The Eraser, "It doesn't sound right". Here, then, is the first - hmm, let's say one-man record from the vocalist of Radiohead, an excursion in electronic beats and synthetic textures hailed by many critics as a return to Radiohead's 2000 album, Kid A. Strictly speaking, though, he's right - it's not solo: produced and "arranged" by long-time `Head producer Nigel Godrich, featuring processed sounds taken from full-band sessions, and featuring at least one song originally mooted for appearance on Hail To The Thief, it appears as much an opportunity for Thom to build on the ideas not fully realised on full-band releases. Rock fans may lament Radiohead's shifts away from guitar, bass and drums, but it's hard to deny just how well Thom's voice fits amid the hissy cymbals and spectral synthesiser of `The Eraser' and `Black Swan'. Guitar surfaces on the haunting `The Clock', Thom singing "You throw coins in the wishing well" over warped, droning folk, while album highlight `Harrowdown Hill' strikes a rare explicitly political note for Thom, a track themed around the death of UN Weapons Inspector David Kelly. --Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

Analyse...
If there was 1 album I could safely say I discovered in 2007 that I know I will still be listening to when i'm old and grey its The Eraser.. Every track is typical Thom Yorke magic but much more personal feeling then we've heard before. A must have for anyone remotely interested in thom yorke / radiohead.

The Eraser-Thom Yorke
This is the best album of 2006(Yes,maybe not a stellar year,but anyway.).Its a bleak reminder of Thom Yorke's genius.Strong beats,distorted melodies and lyrics about an oncoming apocolypse.Not only that but a tirade against the Iraq war,but not in you're usual anti-Bush way.This isn't exactly Kid B,but its pretty close.This a low-key eletronica record of staggering beauty.The Eraser,Analyze,The Clock and Black Swan form are strong backbone to the album.However the real stuff arrives in the form of It Rained All Night,Harrowdown Hill and Cymbal Rush.Harrowdown Hill sees Thom fufill his political vengeanace with a bitter song about biological warfare expert David Kelly,who commited suicide in 2003.I can truthfully say it is one of the greatest songs of all time.Hauntingly brillant.It was meant to be on Hail To The Thief,but they couldn't fit it around the band.

If you love Radiohead,you'll love this.Its not overly different from Radiohead,but is most defintely a key work.

If you love Radiohead, you'll like this.
Not even the first member of Radiohead to make a solo record, Thom Yorke's "Eraser" - a secret he has managed to keep brilliantly quiet until it was due to be released - is most definitely a Radiohead record in everything but personnel. If anything, you could call it "Kid B" : the mixture of Yorke's detached, oblique vocals and the dark ambient musical stylings (which sound like a the spiritual successor to half of the Aphex Twin's `Drukqs') create a oppressed, suburban atmosphere of the big city. And more.

This is Urban Music. Music for exhausted, scared commuters and bad tempered supermarket queues. Not Oxide & Neutrino, or 50 Cent, or whatever other rubbish that pumps out vaccously of loud stereos in white vans and boy racer cars and mobilephoneghettoblasters. But it's more than just that : it's paranoid. It's the sound of people trapped in bunkers, not sure if the world has turned to a permanent nuclear winter, living on baked beans, staring through telescopes at wastelands. Distended piano melodies that are reminiscent of `Life In A Glasshouse' and lyrics that invoke the end times ("Atoms For Peace", "The Clock") , give us a clear image that Time Is Running Out.

Musically, it sounds as if it might be almost completely without human input : aside from Thom's ghostly vocals, every sound could have come froma computer. Drums rolls in the stuttering punctation of preprogrammed beats. Bass squelches as buttons are manipulated. And through it all, the vocal drifts uneasily : "this is f***ed up." "you're only being nice to me because you want something", and other tokens of paranoia sit in the air.

"The Eraser" also never overstays it's welcome. In these CD/MP3-times, albums become 80, 100, 150 minutes long. Brevity is never a trait of the modern age. Too much information. Too much data. Flying from all sides. And in this, "The Eraser" is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. A curt 40 minute missive from a different world that looks just the same but is much more frightening. The eyes of fear and the ears of terror.

And it sounds just like a Radiohead record : a weird, perverse record made of the type of Radiohead songs that people who liked "The Bends" skip on their iPod : the ambient soundscrape of stuttering amchines, whirring noises, vague guitar and exhaustion. Maybe the adage is true : you can take the man from Radiohead, but not the Radiohead from the man. No matter what Thom does, it'll still sound like Thom. That's the curse of the voice and the benefit of personality. Wherever you go, you can never escape from yourself.