Vast and bold in scope, Anima finds clarity amid confusion: it’s Thom Yorke’s best solo offering.
Anima blends the open-nerved angst of Kid A and Amnesiac with the slow crush of mid-life despair (Yorke’s at the age where every silver living comes with thunder clouds) and palpable woe over where mankind is headed.
The process seemingly thrived on capturing ideas when they were half-finished, and this ruptured, fragmented approach gives ‘ANIMA’ its character – tearing down productions, reigniting processes, this is a wild, careering feast of sound.
The end of the world is coming, and Thom Yorke is the one who scored the masterpiece of the world’s inevitable demise.
While Anima’s endless aesthetics may be lost on those hung up on Pablo Honey, Yorke’s unwavering ability to push boundaries to their very limit is on full display here.
Immanuel Kant said that for something to be beautiful, it had to be understood to be purposive, but without any definite purpose. ANIMA is, in this sense, truly beautiful – probably Thom Yorke’s most beautiful work to date.
ANIMA as a whole feels like the album Yorke wanted to make on AMOK, his first and only release with Atoms for Peace, but he had too many talented musicians in the studio back in 2013.
With ANIMA, Yorke takes his already well-built solo repertoire and adds a dash of colour, detail and mystery.
For those of us who have endured more than we have enjoyed Yorke's previous solo works on The Eraser, AMOK, and Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, ANIMA finally feels like a moment of breakthrough—the first effort of his outside of the Radiohead juggernaut to truly feel as though it came from the same brilliant mind that conceived of OK Computer, Kid A, and In Rainbows.
ANIMA is fuller-blooded and bolder than either previous solo effort or A Moon Shaped Pool, shaking off their gloom and grimness for something approaching energy.
It’s easily Yorke’s best solo outing and rates among his finest albums from any project this century.
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.
Yorke has said this album had a difficult gestation, undermined by his penchant for self-excoriating angst, but this time he’s filtered such emotions into an impressionist work, allowing them room to expel themselves against convincing electronica. Alongside the Suspiria soundtrack, it’s some of his best work.
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.
Although Yorke sounds refreshed, the results here don’t vary wildly from the Radiohead frontman’s instantly recognisable musical signatures, evolved over 20 years.
On ANIMA ...he drifts like a spectre through a labyrinth, exploring his favourite themes of sleep, reality and the subconscious.
It’s shaped into discrete songs that stand on their own, yet the scenery is always in flux.
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.
This is an artfully produced fever dream of an album that, in it doominess, suggests we should continue to pay credence to the prophet Thom Yorke.
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.
ANIMA feels like the first solo Thom Yorke album that would make something of a splash no matter who it came from. We've heard Yorke's urban terror before, yes, but never so focused and nuanced outside of a Radiohead LP. Its world is immediate, its ideas and emotions impactful.
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.
An evocative and fragmentary exploration of the dreaming unconscious.
The album’s juxtaposition of lyrical techno-dread with austere, ghostly electronic music is satisfyingly unsettling.
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.
Anima is his third solo album, outside of soundtracks, and it's his richest.
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.
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.
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.
So. This is Thom Yorkes masterpiece. I should probably talk a little about why, shouldn't I? Well, here you go.
For the past couple of years, I haven't really felt like myself. Depression, anxiety and mental wellness (due to events I wont bore you with) have really left me in a place of uncertainty in this world.
The fear of everything leaving me and me being replaced by something better in this world, as if I was doll, has undone and redone my personality and life in more ways then I can ... read more
Even as a loyal fan of Radiohead, one of the musical acts that got me into the medium in the first place, I never thought that Thom Yorke's solo career would live up to Radiohead's legendary status. But "ANIMA" might just be that leap forward. This album's aesthetics are very similar to "Kid A" and "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes". However, I feel like the sound he was aiming for on the latter is perfected here and, with the help of long-time producer Nigel Godrich, it ... read more
Thommy takes the momentum built up from the great receptions to both the understated majesty of ‘Moon Shaped Pool’ and the moodily magnificent creep fest that was the Suspiria soundtrack and runs with it - just adding more electronics, as you’d expect from a Yorke solo effort.
With ‘Suspiria’ and now this, it’s becoming obvious that for the first time Yorke’s own work packs the same sort of compositional heft you’d expect from Radiohead material.
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the title track off of Kid A but made into an entire album. i don't really care for it. a lot of it didn't stick with me. i can appreciate the control and usage of the electronic textures here, but i'd be lying if i ... read more
If there's one Radiohead/Thom Yorke project that deserves a sequel its this album right here, absolutely incredible album that explores dystopian themes in a very ambient form only bad thing about this album is the last track on this album it could've probably been alright if it wasn't 6 whole minutes long neither way a great peice of art by Thom and i hope he explores similar themes like Anima in the future!
1 | Traffic 5:17 | 87 |
2 | Last I Heard (...He Was Circling the Drain) 5:06 | 85 |
3 | Twist 7:03 | 88 |
4 | Dawn Chorus 5:23 | 96 |
5 | I Am a Very Rude Person 3:44 | 82 |
6 | Not the News 3:57 | 85 |
7 | The Axe 6:59 | 86 |
8 | Impossible Knots 4:19 | 82 |
9 | Runwayaway 5:56 | 81 |
#3 | / | Gaffa (Denmark) |
#3 | / | KCRW |
#4 | / | Slant Magazine |
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#8 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#10 | / | USA Today |
#12 | / | Far Out Magazine |
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