Radiohead finish “Knives Out” 373 days after starting it

Radiohead have finished “Knives Out”, begun in Copenhagen on 10 March 1999 and done some 373 days later by Ed O'Brien's count. He told a friend about it over the weekend, he writes in his diary, and the friend assumed anything that long in the making must be a kind of paranoid android to the power of ten¹.

In the studio a line is drawn across a list, with tracks finished bar mixing above it and nearly finished ones below. At 5am on Friday the two halves were equal for the first time.

O'Brien calls “Knives Out” probably the most straight-ahead thing the band have done in years, and thinks that may be why it took so long. Bands lose the knack of simple songs as they get more successful, he believes; the urge to dress a track up with melodies and sounds takes over, and the song loses its essence, above all one written on acoustic guitar. but i think we’ve done alright on ‘knives out’¹