Thom Yorke

ANIMA

On ANIMA ...he drifts like a spectre through a labyrinth, exploring his favourite themes of sleep, reality and the subconscious.

An evocative and fragmentary exploration of the dreaming unconscious.

Although Yorke sounds refreshed, the results here don’t vary wildly from the Radiohead frontman’s instantly recognisable musical signatures, evolved over 20 years.

ANIMA ... sheds the largely one-dimensional production of The Eraser and the monochromatic moods of Tomorrow's Modern Boxes to stand as Yorke's richest solo effort to date.

This is the sort of thing Anima offers generously: songs bold and confident in their austerity, but also assured and dense, haunting and haunted in equal measure. 

Finally, with ANIMA, it feels as if Yorke is realising his solo vision, from the music to the themes to the rollout – he’s done something radical enough to get out from under Radiohead’s shadow.

The album’s juxtaposition of lyrical techno-dread with austere, ghostly electronic music is satisfyingly unsettling.

ANIMA is also one of his consistently best albums and the one that perfectly captures the restless creative spirit that continues to push Yorke beyond his comfort zones at a time in his career where other artists would likely be happily settling into theirs.

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke's third solo album ANIMA offers relatively peppy music to accompany his unsurprisingly bleak lyrical worldview, but it all works rather wonderfully.

Anima is an album for those who live and breathe music. It lacks an easy approachability, but makes up for it with a soul searching that stays with you long after taking the effort to hear it.

Anima feels like a dive into an inner world, profoundly intimate and emotional even as it remains enigmatic and blurred at the edges.

On ANIMA the electronic sources feel like tools of expression rather than objects of curiosity, as they have sometimes seemed in the past.

With ANIMA, his revelatory beats create a full spectrum, as unnerving as they are welcome.

Though the tracks are impressive, they often lack the resonance of Yorke’s work with Radiohead. Yorke feels as though he is experimenting but never fully reaching his full potential.

Against all odds, Yorke's eerie electronic shimmer doesn't inspire fear so much as console; in this dark time, it's reassuring to hear a human heart beating the digital clutter.

ANIMA is Thom Yorke's strongest solo or side endeavor since The Eraser.

Fortunately, the experimental production and dark atmosphere are compelling in their own right, and ‘Anima’ is ultimately a trip down the rabbit hole worth taking.