EOB- Earth

I wish I had more to say about this record. Ed has been teasing it with a bunch of singles for the last couple of months but sadly it turns out Earth doesn’t have much to offer beyond what we already heard. Also none of the tracks feel like anything more than a Radiohead song with a few elements missing which is something inevitable in a lot of cases. Even when it comes to Thom York solo endeavors, only The Eraser  is a project that feels like its own thing. Not to say I don’t enjoy all his other records or the newest one from EOB but I realize how biased I am. Radiohead was the band that got me interested in music, since the moment I first picked up OK Computer on CD back in middle school. I’m not the best person to fairly discuss a project that probably won’t entertain anyone beyond devoted Radiohead fans.  Earth has  a lot of trademarks of Radioheads style from late 90s but without all the OK Computer weirdness that made it distinct. Another problem is that  Ed really deflates a lot of the excitement going into the record by releasing all the multi-phase and overall more entertaining songs beforehand. He even dropped the closing number as a promotional cut, which is a whole other thing I have a gripe with. Why would you want to spoil the last minutes of your album? I get it if it was something amazing but it’s really not in this case. Also, all that is left to hear beside the singles are more brief and acoustic tracks that just aren’t terribly interesting.

I realize that I said a lot of negative things about an album that I kind of enjoy. I just know it’s  a project perfectly tailored for me. Still, I wish some of the better songs on here, like Shangri-la or Brasil went back to the drawing board and were fleshed out into a complete Radiohead tracks. Also no Radiohead side project ever gonna top Philip Selway and Jonny Greenwood performing Do The Hipogriff  with members of Pulp in the fourth Harry Potter movie. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you’re in for a treat.

Rating: 5.5/10