Pitchfork makes Thom Yorke's ANIMA Best New Music

Thom Yorke's ANIMA, announced only a week before, came out on 27 June, and most of the first week's critics welcomed it. Pitchfork gave it 8.3 and Best New Music, and The New York Times had already made it a Critic's Pick the day before release.

The song nearly all of them picked out was “Dawn Chorus”, a title fans had attached for over a decade to a two-minute jam from the In Rainbows tour. Philip Sherburne, reviewing it for Pitchfork, says both the record and Paul Thomas Anderson's film turn on it, and counts it among the simplest and loveliest songs Yorke has written. Vulture calls it the album's centrepiece and Stereogum its best song.

Sherburne rates ANIMA Yorke's most ambitious and assured solo album, and puts it in the company of dance producers such as James Holden, Four Tet and Floating Points. Stereogum warns that anyone hoping for another Kid A or In Rainbows will be let down, but says the album picks up where Tomorrow's Modern Boxes stopped and mostly improves on it.

Jon Pareles, in the Times, says Yorke has lightened up a little, with some humour about the business of making art on “The Axe” and “I Am a Very Rude Person”. Stereogum calls “The Axe” a seven-minute dirge that never pays off, and Spin calls “I Am a Very Rude Person” the album's one real misstep.

Only Michael Donovan at RTE wanted none of it. He waved away Pitchfork's praise, said Anderson's film made the album's faults worse, and told readers he could see no reason to buy the record or go to Yorke's shows.

Alexis Petridis makes ANIMA The Guardian's album of the week but gives it three stars, a look into an artist's sketchbook that is interesting rather than essential. He is also the one critic to hold back on “Dawn Chorus”, whose music he rates nearly as lovely as a real dawn chorus; he wishes Yorke had sung something over it other than a flat, half-spoken monotone.

The first week's reviews