Thom Yorke debuts “Silent Spring” at the Pathway to Paris benefit

Thom Yorke played two new songs, “Silent Spring” and “Desert Island Disk”, at Pathway to Paris, a benefit at Le Trianon in Paris timed to the UN climate conference, on Friday 4 December. Midway through “Silent Spring” he paused to say This is Jonny's bit.² Reports of the night took that to mean the song is a Radiohead one, meant for the follow-up to The King of Limbs. DIY notes that Radiohead have been in the studio all through 2015.

He played both slow and sparse on acoustic guitar, their titles on a setlist taped to the stage. “Silent Spring” is an openly political song, named after Rachel Carson's 1962 book on pesticides, a nod Slate took as deliberate.

Pathway to Paris was founded by Jesse Paris Smith, Patti Smith's daughter, and the cellist Rebecca Foon, and its ticket money goes to the climate campaign 350.org. Patti Smith and Flea shared the bill with Yorke, and all three are back at Le Trianon tomorrow, Saturday 5 December, for a second night.

The rest of his set was older. Alongside “The Clock” he played a reworked “The Present Tense”, an unreleased song first heard at a Radiohead soundcheck in 2008, and “Bloom” alone at the piano. Flea joined him for “Atoms for Peace” and “Default”. The two had played a stripped-back “Atoms for Peace”, from Yorke's solo album The Eraser, earlier in the week on Canal+'s Le Grand Journal, their first performance together since 2013. The night ended with Yorke, Flea and the rest of the bill joining Patti Smith for her “People Have the Power”.

Thom Yorke playing Bloom alone at the piano, Pathway to Paris, Le Trianon, 4 December 2015· Thom Yorkewatch on youtube →