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Thom Yorke, Anima review: a bleak dystopian rhapsody you can actually dance to
If you’ve had a rough commute this morning take consolation from the fact that at least you aren’t in Thom Yorke’s sad shoes. In the Paul Thomas Anderson “one reeler” – what would in the old days be known as a very pretentious music video – accompanying the Radiohead frontman’s third solo album he gets caught in a subway barrier, is menaced by synchronised dancers in minimalist formal wear and has a bucketful of existential woe splashed over his head.
But there’s a happy ending as after 15 minutes of spooky boogying and glitchy rhythms Yorke ends up coasting through Prague on a tram with a new girlfriend. The object of his affection is portrayed by the musician's real life partner, Italian actress Dajana Roncione. Her slightly self aware presence – at one point, amid the woe and the wonky choreography, she seems on the verge of cracking up – gives the 15 minute featurette a gloss of tenderness.
The gloom is further alleviated by Anderson. Halfway through his film – released on Netflix, though the director would rather you caught it on IMAX – he essentially plonks Yorke into an avant-garde Buster Keaton tribute. Here the singer and a dozen dancers climb a slope only to tumble downwards over and over (Anderson, who clearly has extensive knowledge of tortured nerd-pop, appears to be referencing the videos to Talking Heads’s Once in a Lifetime and New Order’s True Faith).
This gentle wit is entirely missing from the record itself. Yorke (50) instead embarks on a compellingly fraught trip back to his angsty youth. His destination is the headspace he was in circa Radiohead’s masterpiece of alienation, Kid A. As fans would expect of a Thom Yorke LP, Anima was similarly the product of an intense period of frustration, self-flagellation and general woe about the state of humanity.
One “inspiration” was the jet lag-induced insomnia Yorke experienced travelling to Japan with Radiohead. He has described waking in his hotel after two hours of fitful sleep and having visions of people with rats’s heads and of walking skyscrapers (also the starting point for Ed Sheehan’s Shape Of You, as coincidence would have it).
That’s bleak, even by the standards of an artist whose introduction to pop stardom was being pushed around a dystopian supermarket in the Fake Plastic Trees video. Adding to the sense of musical dysmorphia – this record is the opposite of comfortable in its skin – is the experimental fashion in which it was composed.
Hoping to overcome a bout of writer’s block, Yorke would send “sprawling” improvised loops to long-time Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. He in turn trimmed the material, so that Yorke could apply vocals on top. There are also percussive cameos from Radiohead drummer Philip Selway and Joe Waronker from Yorke’s jazzy-infused Atoms for Peace side project.
What emerges from the other side of the long, dark tunnel is frightening and completely compelling. Anima blends the open-nerved angst of Kid A and Amnesiac with the slow crush of mid-life despair (Yorke’s at the age where every silver living comes with thunder clouds) and palpable woe over where mankind is headed.
It’s the final component that gives Anima a contemporary spark. Yorke has been a vocal supporter of Extinction Rebellion, donating the proceeds from the recent collection of Radiohead Kid A demos (put out after hackers stole the recordings from Yorke’s digital archives) to the movement. He doesn’t urge us in so many words to reduce our carbon footprint or sort out our single plastics habit. Yet the combination of anguish and urgency feels incredibly contemporary, with Yorke catching the state of mind of a world slowly whipping itself into a panic.
All that and you can dance to it. Opening song Traffic is a squidgy tour-de-force that layers Yorke’s "we’re all doomed" yelp over a rush of gothic grooves that will sweep you away even as it makes you feel very bothered about climate change. He’s in full prog mode, meanwhile, on Twist, seven minutes of processed despondency that builds into a swell of spiritual torment. That may sound like a slog – but Yorke’s melodic instincts glimmer through, even as the claustrophobia rises.
He bungs in the album’s wispiest, most optimistic tune, Dawn Chorus – the one with which Anderson closes the video – halfway through, as if to make it explicit the respite will be only temporary. There aren’t many surprises, it’s true. And those tempted to write Thom Yorke off as pop’s misery-guts-in-chief will find plenty of ammunition. The closest to a curve ball is right at the end on Runwayaway, as Yorke is shoved aside by a tumult of blues guitars.
“This is when you know,” he chants ,“who you your real friends are.” It’s bleakness on a stick. But Anima is also a dystopian rhapsody that will stay with you long after the moment and rates as one of the purest expressions yet of Yorke’s devastated world view.