Phil Selway says Radiohead are still writing the next album

Phil Selway says the next Radiohead album is not finished and the band are still writing it. Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork met him at a hotel in downtown Manhattan to talk about his first solo album, and at the end of the interview had barely begun the Radiohead question when Selway laughed and answered it. We're still writing-- slap dab in the middle of it.¹

Familial is out on 30 August in Britain on Bella Union and a day later in the US on Nonesuch. On its ten songs Selway sings and plays acoustic guitar, and most of the drumming is by Glenn Kotche of Wilco, who works, Selway says, very much as Jonny Greenwood does. For me, if Jonny [Greenwood] played drums, he'd be Glenn.¹ Kotche's bandmate Pat Sansone and Lisa Germano play on it too.

“The Ties That Bind Us” is about parents seeing their own failings come out in their children. Every family, he says, passes its eccentricities down.

He has played guitar and written songs since he was 15 and began thinking about an album about four years ago, but did not think his voice was convincing until he heard it played back in the studio. No singer, he says, sounds the way he imagines, like how you think your speaking voice sounds like James Earl Jones in your head but it's really more like Mickey Mouse¹.

Hearing Thom Yorke sing made it both easier and harder, though everyone in Radiohead has found their own voice over the years. Earlier in July he told NME's Jamie Fullerton, half joking, that being in a band with Yorke is daunting. I think he's one of the best songwriters around, it's a very high benchmark to have, a very high bar to have set for you.² The rest of the band have been very supportive, he said, but he did not ask Yorke for advice on the album.

Selway calls himself one of the more shadowy figures in Radiohead, and says he likes it that way. The drummer, he says, is always at the bottom of the list for interviews.