Thom Yorke says Radiohead can't face another album yet

Thom Yorke has told Ross Simonini of The Believer, in its July/August issue, that none of Radiohead want to make another full-length record, at least not straight away. They talked in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, months before “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” came out as a download yesterday. Asked whether singles and EPs are where the band are heading, he says that this time it could work. None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off. I mean, it's just become a real drag.¹¹

In Rainbows worked, Yorke says, because the band had a fixed idea of where they were going. But we've all said that we can't possibly dive into that again. It'll kill us.¹¹

The first alternative he describes is one he and Jonny Greenwood have talked over, songs scored for orchestra and recorded in a single take, then left alone. They have always wanted to do it, he says, but have only ever adapted songs that were never meant for an orchestra. He calls it one possible EP, and is not sure whether it should be a whole record or something to try for a while.

Greenwood is the one pushing for more. He can't stand it anymore, the pace of the way we work. It's fallout from all our false starts.¹¹ The band have not got together much, and Yorke has been working on his own with electronic drums.

Nigel Godrich's idea is to book three days in the studio and then put up two tracks a week for six weeks; Yorke says it will never happen.

The band do have a plan for putting music out, physical and digital, worked out with Stanley Donwood, who makes their artwork, but Yorke won't say what it is in case someone copies it.

The pay-what-you-like download of In Rainbows had its top price set at 99.99 so that nobody could show off how much they had paid, Yorke says. The point for him was that the band leaked the album themselves before someone at a pressing plant could. Money aside, he calls the internet the most amazing broadcasting network ever built.

There is still something great about the album, Yorke says, but the band need to get away from it for now. He blames the CD reissue era for nearly killing the form, with labels pushing bands to pad records with bonus tracks to justify the price. He and Donwood always hated CDs, and he will be glad to see them go. The music business was waiting to die in its current form about twenty years ago. But then, hallelujah, the CD turned up and kept it going for a bit.¹¹