Jonny Greenwood says Radiohead are hungry for new songs

Band practice is going very well, Jonny Greenwood told radiohead.com's message board today. v.v. good. we're all kind of hungry for new new new at the moment. Good songs..³ Asked about a release, he said they would have to do something with all the new songs. Thom Yorke had told the same board on 8 March that the band had started work.

A fan club tour of small venues would be a blast, Greenwood wrote, if he can persuade the others. He wants to go back to Hong Kong, and says the band must go to South America, Iceland and eastern Europe.

In Tuesday's Guardian, Tom Service interviewed him at the studio near Oxford where Radiohead first started out and where they are rehearsing again. His right hand was covered in burn ointment when they met. We all want to push forward, and when you have five people who are all like that, you couldn't ask for a better thing.¹

Service had come to talk about the programme Greenwood has put together for the London Sinfonietta at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday and Monday, part of the South Bank's Ether festival, with a revised “Smear” and a new piece, “Piano for Children”. Radiohead will always be at the centre of what he does, he says, and everything starts with songs and with Yorke. He admits that his enthusiasms drive the others mad: French horns, a song that ought to sound like Penderecki or Alice Coltrane, and, the day before Service arrived, the case for getting hold of a clavichord.