Ed O'Brien

Ed O'Brien sits down with a Los Angeles radio host the day after the fourth solo show of his life, following Toronto, Chicago and New York, with Earth due in April. He has never been a frontman, and the four or five yards from his usual spot to centre stage feel more like four or five hundred. Most people get a year of small gigs to learn; coming out of Radiohead, he goes straight into the spotlight. He told the Toronto crowd he had been nervous since Christmas, meaning Christmas 2018, not the one just gone. His band are taking a leaf out of Phish and jamming the endings, waiting for the night something happens.

The writing began in Brazil. When In Rainbows came out he told the others he would take 2012 off, and the family lived on a farm with no phone signal and no wifi while the children went to the village school. Carnival in Rio set the songs going. The recording started in Wales, and the hard slog was done in London.

The working title was Pale Blue Dot, after Carl Sagan's words on the Voyager photograph of Earth. When Radiohead fans on tour asked what kind of record he was making, he told them an existential dance record, which he says was only slightly flippant. He first thought someone else would sing the songs. Like Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, who likes to say he could be at home feeding the peacocks, he has no need to do any of this, but he feels compelled to, and he is already thinking about the second record and the third.