Phil Selway releases Strange Dance, his third solo album

Strange Dance, Phil Selway's third solo album after Familial and Weatherhouse, is out today on Bella Union, produced by Marta Salogni. Radiohead's drummer plays very little of the drums on it. He meant to, but having not drummed for a while he stood himself down early in the sessions, he told The Big Issue.

I wasn't match fit when I got in there.

Philip Selway⁸

Salogni suggested Valentina Magaletti, with whom she had worked before, and Magaletti plays most of the drums and percussion; a few of Selway's takes made the finished record. Adrian Utley of Portishead is on guitar, Laura Moody plays cello and arranged the strings, and Hannah Peel adds electronics and synths.

“Check for Signs of Life” came out with the album's announcement in October. On the second single, “Picking Up Pieces”, tape loops of Selway's guitar were left out in the garden for a week to degrade, and the track was built on what survived, with Utley playing something like a fork between his strings. Selway says the song is about the masking young adults do to hide how shaky they feel. Its video, directed by William Williamson, has the choreographer Siobhan Davies among the dancers.

The title track followed on 8 February. In its first form, Selway's statement says, it was the first piece for the album to be written, over 20 years ago, and the last to be finished, its lyric taking shape in the final session. The “strange dance” is the contortions people go through to balance the parts of their lives that seem not to fit. It is probably the lowest he has ever sung, and his singing voice grew out of an impersonation.

I remember on my first album, Familial, I sort of tried impersonating Beth Gibbons, you know, from Portishead?

Philip Selway¹¹

The sleeve is a painting by Stewart Geddes, a friend Selway talked to almost every week through lockdown. Geddes came to the sessions and painted in response to them, and one of those paintings is the cover.

The album closes on “There'll Be Better Days” because, Selway says, he is broadly an optimist and wanted to leave the record somewhere hopeful.

Strange Dance, tracklist