Critics split on Thom Yorke's The Eraser, but agree on “Harrowdown Hill”

The reviews of Thom Yorke's The Eraser, out on XL since 10 July in Britain and a day later in America, have split over how far the record stands apart from Radiohead. Yorke wrote, played and recorded its nine songs, with Nigel Godrich producing, and has asked people not to call it a solo record. It went into the UK albums chart at number three on Sunday.

Almost every critic picks out “Harrowdown Hill”, which is now the first single, announced last week. Louis Pattison of NME calls it the key moment and Yorke's most openly political lyric yet, and ties it to the weapons expert Dr David Kelly, whose body was found on Harrowdown Hill, on the edge of Oxford, in 2003. The song, he reports, goes back to the Hail to the Thief sessions.

Pattison also reports that the record began as soundtrack work, with “Black Swan” over the closing credits of Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly. The critics at musicOMH and Treble both liken that song to “I Might Be Wrong” from Amnesiac.

For the cooler reviews there is too much of the band in it. Slant, a month before release, called the songs half-formed sketches and decided Yorke needs Radiohead to ground him, and Cokemachineglow calls it dull next to the band's records.

Pattison expects The Eraser to divide Radiohead's following as Kid A did, and rates it Kid A's equal. Hua Hsu goes furthest in Slate, ranking it as gripping as anything the band have made and reading it as Yorke turning from public subjects to himself.

The reviews of The Eraser