The Eraser


The Eraser is the debut solo album by English musician Thom Yorke, released on 10 July 2006 through XL Recordings. It was produced by Nigel Godrich, the longtime producer for Yorke's main band Radiohead.
The album comprises electronic music Yorke recorded during Radiohead's 2004 hiatus and between their 2005 rehearsals. The lyrics express Yorke's political concerns; he wrote the lead single, "Harrowdown Hill", about the death of David Kelly, a British weapons inspector who died of presumed suicide after telling a reporter that the British government had falsely identified weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The cover art, by longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood, was inspired by the legend of King Canute failing to command the ocean, which Yorke likened to government attitudes towards climate change.
The Eraser debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart and number two on the American Billboard 200. It was named one of the best albums of 2006 by the NME, Rolling Stone and the Observer, and was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize and the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
Two singles were released from the album: "Analyse" and "Harrowdown Hill". It was followed in the same year by a B-sides EP, Spitting Feathers, and in 2009 a remix album, The Eraser Rmxs. In 2010, to perform the album live, Yorke formed Atoms for Peace with musicians including Godrich and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea.

Recording

In 2004, after finishing the tour for their sixth album, Hail to the Thief , Radiohead went on hiatus. Songwriter Thom Yorke began recording The Eraser, his first solo release, with longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich in late 2004, and continued work throughout 2005 between Radiohead sessions. He told Pitchfork: "I've been in the band since we left school and never dared do anything on my own... It was like, 'Man, I've got to find out what it feels like,' you know?" Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood said: "He had to get this stuff out, and everyone was happy ... He'd go mad if every time he wrote a song it had to go through the Radiohead consensus."
Yorke recorded in Radiohead's Oxford studio, Godrich's studio in Covent Garden, and his home. He wanted to "approach and engage with computers and not a lot else, and yet still have lots of life and energy in the music". To generate ideas, he cut and pasted clips at random from Radiohead's library of original samples, many of which were created on laptops in hotel rooms as the band toured. He would send fragments to Godrich, who identified passages that could become songs, edited them, and returned them to Yorke. Describing the collaboration, Yorke said: "'Black Swan', back in the day, was a... nine-minute load of bollocks. Except for this one juicy bit, and goes past and goes, 'That bit. Fuck the rest.' Usually it's something like that." Godrich is also credited for extra instrumentation.
To create the title track, Yorke sampled piano chords played by Greenwood and cut them into a new order. "And it Rained All Night" contains an "enormously shredded-up" sample from the Hail to the Thief track "The Gloaming", and "Black Swan" samples a rhythm recorded by Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Philip Selway in 2000. Yorke said "Harrowdown Hill" had been "kicking around" during the Hail to the Thief sessions, but felt it could not have worked as a Radiohead song.
Yorke initially intended to create instrumental tracks, but added vocals at the encouragement of Godrich. On Radiohead albums, Yorke had altered his voice with layers of reverb and other effects; for The Eraser, Godrich wanted Yorke's voice to be "dry and loud". As Yorke found it difficult to write lyrics to loops of music, saying he could not "react spontaneously and differently every time", he translated the music to guitar and piano and generated new musical components in the process.
Yorke saved one song recorded in the Eraser sessions, "Last Flowers", for the bonus disc of Radiohead's seventh album, In Rainbows. Another song, "The Hollow Earth", was finished later and released as a single in 2009.

Music and lyrics

The Eraser features "skittery beats and pattery rhythms" and "minimal post-rockisms". The LA Times wrote that it combined Yorke's laptop electronica with "soulful" political songs. Pitchfork described it as "glitchy, sour, feminine, brooding". Citing inspiration from the 1997 Björk album Homogenic and the electronic music of Boards of Canada and Autechre, Yorke said The Eraser was designed to be heard in an "isolated space – on headphones, or stuck in traffic". In 2019, Uproxx said it was Yorke's "most straightforward" solo album, "the frontman of a famous rock band essentially presenting his latest tunes in the guise of a singer-songwriter record".
David Fricke of Rolling Stone felt the lyrics had an "emotional and pictorial directness, rare for Yorke". The lines "No more going to the dark side with your flying saucer eyes / No more falling down a wormhole that I have to pull you out", from the track "Atoms for Peace", were inspired by an "admonition" from Yorke's partner Rachel Owen. The song title references a 1953 speech by American President Dwight D. Eisenhower. According to the Globe and Mail, "The Clock", influenced by Arabic music, is a "gliding, droning song about losing control while pretending 'that you are still in charge'." "Analyse" was inspired by a blackout Yorke experienced in his hometown Oxford: "The houses were all dark, with candlelight in the windows, which is obviously how it would have been when they were built. It was beautiful." The album title addresses the "elephants in the room" that "people are desperately trying to erase... from public consciousness".
Yorke wrote "Harrowdown Hill" about David Kelly, a whistleblower who is presumed to have committed suicide after telling a reporter that the British government had falsely identified weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Kelly's body was found in the Harrowdown Hill woods near Yorke's former school in Oxfordshire. According to the Globe and Mail, the song resembles a love song with a sense of "menace" and "grim political showdown". Yorke was uncomfortable about the subject matter and conscious of Kelly's grieving family, but felt that "not to write it would perhaps have been worse". In an interview with the Observer, he said it was "the most angry song" he had ever written.

Artwork

The Eraser cover art was created by longtime Radiohead artist Stanley Donwood. The artwork, a linocut titled London Views, depicts a figure standing before London destroyed by flood in imitation of King Canute failing to command the ocean. It was inspired by the 2004 Boscastle flood and an article by environmentalist Jonathan Porritt comparing the British government's attitude to climate change to the Canute legend. The album is packaged as a large foldout containing the CD; Donwood and Yorke wanted to avoid using plastic.

Release

On 11 May 2006, Yorke posted a link to theeraser.net on the Radiohead website. Two days later, he wrote in a press release announcing The Eraser: "I have been itching to do something like this for ages. It was fun and quick to do... Yes, it's a record! No, it's not a Radiohead record." He emphasised that Radiohead were not splitting up and that the album was made "with their blessing". Before the album's release, "Black Swan" was used in the closing credits of the film A Scanner Darkly.
The Eraser was released on 11 July 2006 by the independent label XL Recordings on CD and vinyl. Yorke said he chose XL because "it's very mellow. There's no corporate ethic. stupid little boys' games – especially really high up." The album was also released on iTunes. It debuted at number three in the UK album chart and stayed in the top 100 for ten weeks. In the United States, it debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling over 90,000 copies in its first week. The album leaked online a month before release; Yorke said he regretted not releasing it as a download beforehand.
"Harrowdown Hill" was released as a single on 21 August and "Analyse" on 6 November. The Eraser was followed by a compilation of B-sides, Spitting Feathers, and an album of remixes by various artists, The Eraser Rmxs. In 2009, to perform The Eraser live, Yorke formed Atoms for Peace with musicians including Godrich and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. The band performed eight North American shows in 2010, and released an album, Amok, in 2013.

Reception

On the review aggregator site Metacritic, The Eraser has a score of 76/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Reviewing The Eraser for the NME, Louis Patterson praised Yorke's vocals and wrote: "Some will mourn its lack of viscera; its coldness; its reluctance to rock. But it's yet another revealing glimpse into Yorke's cryptic inner-world, and one that has the courage not to hide its political message in code." Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone said: "These aren't Radiohead songs, or demos for Radiohead songs. They're something different, something we haven't heard before... it's intensely beautiful, yet it explores the kind of emotional turmoil that makes the angst of OK Computer or The Bends sound like kid stuff." PopMatters wrote: "The Eraser isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s much more than solo-project divergence. Yorke has stayed focused and created a tight album that draws on its predecessors without being held to or afraid of them."
In The Guardian, Alexis Petridis wrote that The Eraser "offers a plethora of low-key delights", but "you can't help imagining what it might have sounded like if Yorke had turned it over to Radiohead." The Village Voice praised Yorke's vocals, but found that "without the hooks of his inspirations or density, the results offer pleasantries where they could provoke profound unpleasantries." Pitchfork wrote that The Eraser is "strikingly beautiful and thuddingly boring in maddeningly equal measure". Writing in MSN Music, Robert Christgau found the themes "overstated" and the music "tastefully decorated click-and-loop". In 2019, Uproxx named it Yorke's best solo album, saying it "comes closest to having the heft of an actual Radiohead album... Many of these tracks are as memorable as anything that Radiohead put out at around the same time."
The Eraser was named the 15th best album of 2006 by the NME, the 30th by the Observer, and the 34th by Rolling Stone. It was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Prize and the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

Track listing

Personnel

Adapted from the album liner notes.

Certifications and sales