The Eraser

Untitled

The Eraser is an album by Thom Yorke, released in July 2006 by XL Recordings.

On 11 May 2006, Yorke posted, without explanation, a link to the site theeraser.net on the Dead Air Space section of the official Radiohead website. Two days later, in an email sent to the owners of several Radiohead fan sites through w.a.s.t.e. (Radiohead's online shop), Yorke announced the album and revealed a few details: it was produced by Nigel Godrich, comprises songs written and played by Yorke alone, is "more beats & electronics", and has a cover by Stanley Donwood that depicts King Canute trying and failing to command the ocean.

The album was leaked onto the Internet in its entirety on 30 May 2006.

The Eraser debuted at #3 in the UK album chart on 16 July 2006, the highest-charting new entry of the week.

Track listing

The track listing is as follows:

1. "The Eraser" – 4:55
2. "Analyse" – 4:02
3. "The Clock" – 4:13
4. "Black Swan" – 4:49
5. "Skip Divided" – 3:35
6. "Atoms for Peace" – 5:13
7. "And It Rained All Night" – 4:15
8. "Harrowdown Hill" – 4:38
9. "Cymbal Rush" – 5:15

Track information

"The Eraser" is based on piano chords played by Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood: "the piano chords are Jonny's. I recorded them on a dictaphone around his house one day. A year and a half later, I had to own up that I had sampled them, cut them into a different order and made them into a song [laughs]. 'Is that alright? Sorry, Jonny.'"

"Analyse" was inspired by a blackout in Oxford. Yorke "used to live in central Oxford, on one of those historical streets, with all these houses built in the 1860s. I came home one night and for some reason, the street had a power cut. 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."

"Black Swan" dates back to the Kid A sessons. The song "has this tiny, shredded segment of something that was one of the library samples we had. It was Ed and Phil doing this thing, and I sliced it into bits. The sample was 2000, but the song was 2005." Director Richard Linklater stated in an interview with film magazine Premiere that his forthcoming film A Scanner Darkly will feature "Black Swan"—described by Linklater as "a great song off [Thom Yorke's] new album"—over the closing credits.

"Atoms for Peace" was the title of a speech given by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. It is also the motto of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Yorke explained that "'And It Rained All Night' has this enormously shredded-up element of "The Gloaming" [from Hail to the Thief] ... I remember doing that in New York. I couldn't sleep one night, and it was one of those New York things, where the rain just chucks down. The rain was so loud." Yorke finds the bassline for this song particularly interesting: "I'd ring up a friend, say 'Listen to this,' and play him the bass riff on 'And It Rained All Night.' It was things like that, little pockets of excitement that I'd missed for so long.

Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire is notable for being the place where the body of Dr David Kelly was found in 2003. His evidence had raised questions about Saddam Hussein's possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction—the official justification for the UK government's decision to invade Iraq. In the song, lyrics such as 'Did I fall or was I pushed?' appear to cast doubt on the verdict of the subsequent Hutton Inquiry, which concluded that Kelly had committed suicide. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Yorke said, "The government and the Ministry of Defence ... were directly responsible for outing him and that put him in a position of unbearable pressure that he couldn't deal with, and they knew they were doing it and what it would do to him. ... I've been feeling really uncomfortable about that song lately, because it was a personal tragedy, and Dr. Kelly has a family who are still grieving. But I also felt that not to write it would perhaps have been worse." In an interview, Yorke said that "Harrowdown Hill" is "the most angry song I've ever written in my life. I'm not gonna get into the background to it, the way I see it... And it's not for me or for any of us to dig any of this up. So it's a bit of an uncomfortable thing." Yorke also notes that: "'Harrowdown Hill' was kicking around during Hail to the Thief, but there was no way that was going to work with the band."

"Cymbal Rush" is derived from "Try to Save Your Prize", a musical track from The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time. Yorke also reported that "In the last song, "Cymbal Rush," the first bit you hear is something I had for three years: one little note. I could hear the melody in there straightaway. But if you played it to anyone else without me singing it, you'd think, 'What's he on about?'"

External links

• theeraser.net
• The Eraser page at the XL Recordings website.
• Thom Yorke page at the XL Recordings website.
• The Eraser at MusicBrainz
• "Radiohead's Thom Yorke on Going Solo" - interview with Rolling Stone.
• "All messed up" - interview with Observer Music Monthly.
• Thom playing acoustic version of The Clock from The Henry Rollins Show