Much lofty ink has rightly been spilled about Radiohead\u2019s evolution on 2000\u2019s Kid A, the album where they (temporarily, at least) pivoted away from the guitar-rock theatrics and instant-grat choruses that made them stars. For many fans, the soundscapes within felt jarring: the stark and relentlessly looped drums of \u201cMorning Bell,\u201d the textural synthesizers of \u201cEverything in Its Right Place,\u201d the eerily processed vocals on the title track. And they were also disorienting for guitarist Ed O\u2019Brien, who found himself with the unexpected pressure to shape-shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Urged by Thom Yorke\u2019s quest to unlearn their habits, O\u2019Brien found fascinating new ways to yield his trusted instrument. At this point, he\u2019d already become Radiohead\u2019s de-facto texture man, elevating songs like \u201cKarma Police\u201d and \u201cLucky\u201d with subtle but irreplaceable effects and counter-melodies. But on Kid A, he went deeper: slapping a sustainer pickup to his Fender Strat, tinkering with new pedals, often treating his guitar to sound like anything but one. Expressed in the parlance of It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, O\u2019Brien has always been Radiohead\u2019s \u201cwild card\u201d member\u2014it\u2019s hard to imagine this band without him, even when you have to dust for his fingerprints on the final product.<\/p>\n
For that reason, not to mention the earnestness of his interviews and the sweetness of his stage presence<\/a>, it was impossible not to root for his 2020 solo debut, Earth\u2014a sonically rich album that still stumbles to spread its wings naturally. In its aftermath, during pandemic lockdown, with his first-ever tour derailed, he found himself in a \u201cdark night of the soul.\u201d<\/a> But he eventually emerged from this depression: connecting with nature, embracing new habits (like the cold-exposure methods of Wim Hof), and immersing himself in music. He wound up with Blue Morpho, a gorgeous and imaginative work that feels like a do-over\u2014ditching everything that didn\u2019t work about Earth (like the occasional, dated nods to Nineties U2) and gently refining everything that did.\u00a0<\/p>\n A critical part of this creative leap was expanding his cast of collaborators\u2014including, pivotally, producer\/co-writer Paul Epworth (Adele, Rihanna), whose path he crossed through chance, as their respective kids attended the same school. Together, they recruited backing vocalists (ESKA, Awsa Bergstrom), string players (The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, with arranger T\u00f5nu K\u00f5rvits), musicians both familiar (Radiohead drummer Phil Selway, returning guitarist-bassist Dave Okumu) and new (woodwind player Shabaka Hutchings). That scope\u2014expanding the world for the benefit of the song\u2014feels somewhat ironic, given that he\u2019s now recording under his own name rather than his earlier moniker, EOB. But it\u2019s also a testament to the album\u2019s confidence. On Blue Morpho, O\u2019Brien almost feels more like a band member than a bandleader: relying less on lyrics, leaning more into psychedelic atmospheres, quilting together the kind of percolating arrangements that define many of the best Radiohead songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many of these thirty-eight minutes build on the quieter, gentler feel of Earth\u2019s deep cuts\u2014but here, the results feel more like full-fledged worlds than promising teases. The first three songs all open with twinkly acoustic fingerpicking, but they rarely end in that same place. On \u201cIncantations,\u201d where O\u2019Brien sings about outrunning \u201cghosts of long ago,\u201d the piece slow-builds with ESKA\u2019s soaring vocal harmonies and the tasteful percussion of Crispin \u201cSpry\u201d Robinson. You think it\u2019s all going to drift away peacefully, but then O\u2019Brien introduces his first U-turn: A firecracker snare ushers in a trance-like kraut-rock\/post-rock groove, and a convulsing electric guitar electrifies the black-sky vibe with lightning. Equally cinematic is the title track, which drifts by on the autumnal breeze of K\u00f5rvits\u2019 strings\u2014it could have slotted perfectly on A Moon Shaped Pool, with zero dip in quality.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the record never settles rigidly into this magic-hour ambiance. \u201cTeachers\u201d feels like a funkier, proggier extension of Earth centerpiece \u201cBrasil,\u201d pulling from trip-hop and alt-dance as our maestro exercises some more demons (\u201cMidway through life, I just lost my way\u201d). In that signature O\u2019Brien way, it\u2019s hard to even describe what\u2019s happening sonically in the back half, as some kind of instrumental solo (A talk box smothered in phaser? Bergstrom\u2019s vocals run through effects pedals?) launch the groove into deep orbit. \u201cObridgado,\u201d meanwhile, ends the record in a nearly 10-minute odyssey of cosmic prayer\u2014a tumbling, genuinely affecting head trip laced with jazzy keyboards and climaxing with a brain-scrambling backward guitar solo that conjures Hendrix tackling \u201cThe Great Gig in the Sky.\u201d Blue Morpho is the exact album Radiohead fans hoped O\u2019Brien had in him: as adventurous, curious, and open-armed as the man himself.\u00a0[Transgressive]<\/p>\n Ryan Reed is a writer and editor from Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to Paste, his work has appeared over the years in Rolling Stone, Revolver, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and many other publications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much lofty ink has rightly been spilled about Radiohead\u2019s evolution on 2000\u2019s Kid A, the album where they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-457775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}