Ed O'Brien: “There's no Radiohead at the moment”

Ed O'Brien has told Shaun Keaveny that there is no Radiohead at the moment, and that he can't promise there will be again. Keaveny asked him on The Line-Up Podcast, in an April episode that fans turned up this month, whether the band would get back together. It might happen, but the other thing is...it might not. And does that matter?¹

O'Brien puts the pause down to the years they have spent together. Each of them is reaching for different things now, he says, and that should be allowed and encouraged. Something could happen in a couple of years, or it might not, and it would take five people who each want to do it again with the other four. There's a truth to what we do. So we're not going to be one of those bands that gets together for the big payday.³

Radiohead have not made an album since A Moon Shaped Pool in 2016, or toured since 2018. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood put out A Light for Attracting Attention in May as The Smile, with Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet on drums. O'Brien, who released Earth as EOB in 2020, has a second solo album due later this year, American Songwriter reports, and he tells Keaveny that Philip Selway has a new record coming too.

He still expects the five to play together again, though he says one has to be able to live with it not happening. We love one another. We're brothers. We probably will play together. It could be that it doesn't happen. I'm sure it will do. I'm almost certain that it will do.¹