Ed O'Brien

The Radiohead guitarist’s first solo album, Earth, released under the name EOB in 2020, didn’t really win me over. Even having Flood and Alan Moulder on board couldn’t save it. The record lacked vision and character. It fell short both as a collection of songs — O’Brien does a good job on the backing vocals in Karma Police, but he’s no natural lead singer — and as an experimental album. The only track that stayed with me was Brasil, a hypnotic single that unfolds in interesting ways.

That’s probably why the first news of O’Brien’s new album didn’t get me particularly excited. Spotify, however, did its thing, slipping tracks from Blue Morpho into the autoplay queue after albums by Paul McCartney, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse and a few other artists I’d been listening to lately. Each time, I found myself thinking: Hang on, what’s this? Then it turned out to be Ed, who had spent the past few years finding a new musical direction.

Smiling, connecting with the audience and looking like the happiest of the five — that’s exactly how I remember O’Brien from last year’s Radiohead show in Berlin. It’s hard to believe that not long before, he hadn’t wanted to hear about the band returning to the stage. In interviews around the tour, he spoke openly about problems within the band stretching back to the A Moon Shaped Pool sessions, as well as burnout and depression made worse by the pandemic. He had come close to leaving the band he’d spent thirty years of his life with.

Instead, he left London and moved to Wales, where he found peace living close to nature. Music helped too: regular daily sessions with musician friends eventually became Blue Morpho.

Its seven tracks are all very different, yet share a consistent sound, with strong echoes of nu jazz and the atmospheric electronics of The Cinematic Orchestra. The album also feels close to Hail to the Thief, another record on which Radiohead managed to escape their fans’ expectations. Blue Morpho shares the dense, dark atmosphere of that 2003 album and is just as bold in bringing different genres together.

The title track begins with a simple guitar figure, gradually joined by layers of voices, before orchestral parts with a strong Jonny Greenwood feel take the melody further. On Teachers, a lively jazz bass line takes centre stage, bringing Atoms for Peace to mind. There are purely ambient tracks too, Solfeggio and Thin Places, while the album closes with Obrigado, a cinematic piece running close to ten minutes.

One of the album’s great strengths is the group of musicians involved. Producer Paul Epworth, known for top-class pop and alternative rock, proves equally at home with these experimental, ambient sounds. Here and there, you can hear flute from Shabaka, known for Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, alongside keyboards from Nick Ramm, whose playing you may recognise from The Cinematic Orchestra’s Ma Fleur. Phil Selway also makes guest appearances on two tracks.

This is exactly the kind of record I hope for when musicians from my favourite bands decide to go solo. It doesn’t have to break new ground, but it should draw me in and make me think: Oh, I wasn’t expecting that.