Philip Selway: Unusual Dance

In Radiohead’s greatest music, songs and preparations have a holistic and almost inextricable bond. The free-jazz freakout in the course of “The National Anthem” is simply as essential because the lyrics or vocal melody; “Pyramid Song” wouldn’t be “Pyramid Song” with out its drunkenly stumbling percussion. The third solo album from Philip Selway, the person behind that indelible drum half, generally comes impressively near the work of his foremost band when it comes to the ambition and inventiveness of its musical settings. They have an inclination to attract from the same properly of affect: the dissonance and rhythmic pulsation of latest classical music, or the ahead thrust of krautrock, with numerous electronics beeping and buzzing on the edges.

However these preparations don’t keep on with the bones of the songs with the identical drive that they do in Selway’s foremost band. Swap one music’s power-ballad orchestration with one other’s mellow mallet percussion they usually would possibly sound simply as pure as they did of their unique types. The songs themselves are a part of the issue: Gradual and somber, with little lyrical specificity or melodic shock, they offer the sense of Unusual Dance as a set of gorgeous musical accouterments searching for worthy compositions to adorn.

As one would possibly anticipate from a drummer, Selway fares greatest as a songwriter when the music is rhythmically lively. Unusual Dance’s greatest monitor by a big margin can also be its most upbeat: “Picking Up Pieces,” which costs forward in a sequence of interlocking syncopations, with guitars and bowed strings all appearing like percussion devices, making their temporary contributions to the exactly organized tapestry after which backing away till it’s time to strike once more. The title monitor additionally foregrounds Selway’s idiosyncratic strategy to rhythm, setting his voice in opposition to drums that clatter and echo like a digital-age replace to Tom Waits’ junkyard blues, with little different accompaniment. (Curiously, Selway selected to not play his major instrument on Unusual Dance, handing drum duties over to Valentina Magaletti of Vanishing Twin.) In these moments and others—like “What Keeps You Awake at Night,” which begins with percolating vibraphones and dissolves in a flurry of pizzicato strings—it’s potential to glimpse an alternate imaginative and prescient of Selway’s music, which focuses on his and his collaborators’ ears for uncommon grooves and hanging mixtures of sounds, treating these as the principle occasion reasonably than set dressing.

Unusual Dance extra typically presents itself as a conventional singer-songwriter album, albeit one with some killer sound design. A lot of the lyrics appear to explain a breakup of some kind, although the main points are fuzzy. As a author, Selways works in broad, bland strokes: “I couldn’t be alone tonight/I need you here by my side/I’m lost without you now,” goes one consultant passage from “Check for Signs of Life.” There are many nice pop songs constructed on platitudes, however Selway has neither the tunefulness as a composer nor the expressiveness as a singer to promote these items. “The Other Side” strikes a very bitter word, addressing a associate on the brink of a relationship’s finish. “I’ve seen you in all your faults and doubts/I can’t unsee it now,” Selway sings, his virtually cartoonishly mannered supply and a prim orchestral association reinforcing the notion that the narrator couldn’t probably bear any blame himself. A breakup music as bitter as “The Other Side” ought to include a bit of piss and vinegar. This one simply sounds smug.

Familial, Selway’s 2010 solo debut, was self-consciously low-key, constructed totally on voice, acoustic guitar, and occasional electronics. Given Selway’s membership within the greatest and greatest art-rock band of our period, it’s no shock that he would possibly finally goal larger. However as interesting because the preparations and manufacturing of Unusual Dance are on a sonic stage, they find yourself harming the songs as typically as they assist. The dramatic crescendos and ostensibly cathartic payoffs of “Little Things” and “The Heart of It All” counsel profundity however largely draw consideration to its absence. Strip away the bombast and these are humble little songs. Humble remedy would possibly go well with them.