American critics review Jonny Greenwood's Bodysong

Jonny Greenwood's Bodysong score has been reviewed across the American press around its US release on Capitol on 24 February, four months after its release on Parlophone. Greenwood told Billboard that the hardest part was knowing no theme could come back half an hour later. A normal film tends to have two or three melodies repeated over and over.¹

Billboard's review starts from the same point and calls the result a run of short pieces in Radiohead's most experimental vein. It is no The Bends, the magazine says, but fans get an unvarnished look at how Greenwood thinks.

Jon Pareles in The New York Times went further and called the score the raw material Radiohead songs are made from, a look into Greenwood's laboratory, picking out the slow piano chords of “Moon Trills” and the glassy tinkling of “Clockwork Tin Soldiers”, which turns into a march.

Todd Simmons, in The Brooklyn Rail, calls it eclectic without being erratic. Guitar is on only two tracks, and most of the record belongs to the Emperor String Quartet. Simmons catches Moondog, the New York street composer, all through it, and likens “Splitter” to “The National Anthem” from Kid A. He also spots that “24 Hour Charleston”, with Colin Greenwood's bass set against a banjo, is the only track with another member of Radiohead on it.

The reviews