Thom Yorke In Concert
Thom Yorke has never just been Radiohead's frontman. The English maestro of melancholy, gifted with an indelible, otherworldly falsetto, has always had much more up his sleeve. Since his career launched in the early 1990s, he's survived grunge, helped reinvent alternative rock, and brought experimental electronic and IDM music to the mainstream. He has been an innovator and influencer for decades, with and without his bandmates. And he's one of the most electric live artists to come out of the '90s alternative scene—his dancing is as unforgettable as his singing.
Yorke first stepped away from Radiohead to cover Roxy Music songs for the soundtrack to the 1998 film ‘Velvet Goldmine,' and he lent his vocals to tracks with artists like Unkle, Sparklehorse, PJ Harvey, and Björk. By the turn of the century, he started diving more into electronic music, which was nothing entirely new for Yorke—he had actually dabbled with techno as a student at the University of Exeter. But this time around, he looked to IDM innovators like Aphex Twin and Autechre for inspiration, which showed plenty on Radiohead's acclaimed albums ‘Kid A' and ‘Amnesiac.' These influences would continue to sit with Yorke, who finally put out his own collection of dark, poignant electronic music with his 2006 debut solo album, ‘The Eraser.' The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart and topped several other charts, including the Billboard Top Rock Albums and Tastemaker Albums, with help from stark, skittery singles "Analyse" and "Black Swan." It was also nominated for the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
A few years later, Yorke took a song from that very album—"Atoms for Peace"—as inspiration for the name of his new band, which included longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist Flea, drummer Joey Waronker, and percussionist Mauro Refosco. The group first took to the stage in Los Angeles in 2009 and performed select shows, including an appearance at Coachella in 2010, before releasing ‘Amok' in 2013.
Another few years and another Radiohead album down, Yorke would finally release his second solo electronic album in 2014, ‘Tomorrow's Modern Boxes,' this time via BitTorrent, where it was downloaded over a million times in under a week. Soon after, he began dipping into soundtrack work and composed his first feature film soundtrack for the 2018 horror film ‘Suspiria.' In between all this work, Yorke has been known to do surprise DJ sets, but there's still nothing quite like seeing him perform his own songs.
