trailing edge - episode 015 - july-september 2019 (VIDEO)

Way too late, but it happens. Happy to have it out, all the same.

Anyway, next up is BABYMETAL - stay tuned!

video review: 'tomorrow's modern boxes' by thom yorke

Well, Perfume Genius was supposed to be here, but let's just say it hadn't synced properly on my iPod, which meant I needed to take a look at one of the other albums I needed to cover anyways. Can only imagine how contentious this review will be...

Okay, not sure next, because there's a couple country records dropping that I want to space out. Stay tuned!

album review: 'tomorrow's modern boxes' by thom yorke

It's been a really long time since I've talked about Radiohead in any capacity, the critical darling of so many music critics, Starting off in alternative rock in the early 90s, they quickly dove into the off-beat land of chilly electronica on latter albums that would proceed to influence thousands of artists for the next several years... and I'll admit right now that they're one of many bands that I can definitely respect without really liking. 

And most of my frustrations with Radiohead circle back to Thom Yorke. It's been a slow process, but for the most part I've gotten over most of my issues with his vocal delivery, even though I'd never say he's one of my favourite singers. But I've always found him a more interesting singer in alternative rock instead of electronica, which has meant that many of his experiments in that direction have left me a little cold, either with Radiohead, with his side project Atoms For Piece who dropped their debut Amok last year, and on his solo projects. The odd thing is that Yorke is an expressive vocalist and much of his lyrics tend to fall into the same category, but when paired with such stiff, regimented electronics, the contrast can come across as jarring, and not in a good way. And yeah, I get why Thom Yorke does it - as a singer and performer, he's always seemed distinctly uncomfortable in the presence of other human beings and that angst informs a lot of his material - but it has never quite clicked for me.

That being said, I was curious to check out his surprise album Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, released via Bittorrent a few days ago. After all, despite my general antipathy towards Yorke, he is one of the more influential artists in the electronic sides of rock these days, so I downloaded the album and gave it several listens - what did I get?

album review: 'amok' by atoms for peace (RETRO REVIEW)

As a music critic, you always end up missing albums.

Yeah, even the guys who listen to a new album every single day are going to miss a few that are outside of their preferred genre or were dismissed out of hand as being crap. Now if you're familiar with any of my reviews, I like to give everything a reasonably fair shake, but as someone with a full-time job and an active social life, I still don't have time to get through everything.

And that means, like most music critics in the middle of the summer, I took a bit of time in this brief lull to start locating the albums in my backlog that I should cover before the end of the year. Sure, I'm not going to find everything, but it can't hurt to go through the seven or eight albums with positive critical press I inevitably missed (either coming out before I started my reviews, or were put aside in favour of albums I actually had an interest in or wanted to rant about).  

And completely unsurprisingly, most of these albums that I'll be talking about over the next while (with the exception of the new releases, obviously) are going to be the critically acclaimed material that Pitchfork and the majority of the entertainment press have slobbered all over. And those of you who have been following my work know that I tend to be significantly tougher on indie rock than most - something I also won't apologize for in any way. If these are going to be the acts that might dictate the paradigm in independent music, you bet I'm going to be scrutinizing them with a critical eye. After all, if you want to be on the cutting edge, you have to earn it.

So with that in mind, let's talk about the debut album of Atoms For Peace, a collaboration act featuring Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Joey Waronker (who worked with Beck and R.E.M.) and longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. From that line-up alone, one can have high expectations - that's the sort of superstar tag team you'd expect to be introduced by its own theme music! And while I'm most definitely not the biggest Radiohead fan (a conversation for later), it's hard not to look at the rest of this act with a fair amount of awe and wonder.

But then the part of my brain that leaps up whenever I get excited about new prospects made sure to say, 'Now hang on a minute, you remember what happened with Angels and Airwaves, and even though Audioslave was a relative success, it was nowhere near close to the sum of its parts.' And really, outside of Ayreon (which owes its success to the excellent coordination of Arjen Lucassen, and even he doesn't always get it right), there really hasn't been a collaboration effort that I can think of immediately that hasn't been either overshadowed by one member or significantly less than its potential. And given some of my distaste for Thom Yorke, I wasn't entirely sure I was going to enjoy the album, with the very un-Radiohead-esque name Amok. Did that opinion last?

Youtube review after the jump