Identikit

three loops

It was left over from The King of Limbs. The band had been working with loops, and Yorke recorded three of himself singing; Colin Greenwood told Bass Magazine that at that point it was more sketch than song. Colin took the loops home and played with them on his Akai MPC until he was, in his word, obsessed with the melodies. He sent ideas to Yorke, Yorke sent them back with piano on top, and that exchange became the bridge after the last verse.

the head of the class

On 26 February 2012 David Fricke of Rolling Stone watched the last rehearsal before the tour, in the American Airlines Arena in Miami, and “Identikit” was one of two new songs run through that night, with “Cut a Hole”. Yorke described it for him:

joyful, slow but with a wonky hip-hop beat

thom yorke · rolling stone, 26 april 2012

He added that it had wormed its way to the head of the class. He also said it felt odd to be rehearsing songs that had no finished recording, because the recording is where the decisions get made.

It opened its account the next night in Miami, 27 February, and was played 35 times that year. Somewhere on that tour they went into Jack White's Third Man studio in Nashville and recorded two songs, this among them. Nothing came out. Ed O'Brien told Matt Everitt on BBC Radio 6 Music in 2016 that the session had been fun, and that White recorded everything on eight-track. Then he put it plainly.

Listen, it's not worth waiting for.

ed o'brien · nme, 9 october 2016

a p-bass in france

In France, working with Nigel Godrich at La Fabrique, Colin wrote his part on his old Precision bass, which has a slight fuzz in the low end. He said the chord sequence was so plain that he over-harmonised it a little.

What came out is different from the live versions. Nina Corcoran in Consequence found that the 2012 performances had stuttered, and that the studio take added a groove breakdown and dreamlike backing vocals. Will Hermes in Rolling Stone heard the downtempo B-side of a 1982 post-punk 12-inch, Yorke's voice split into several, and a burst of staccato guitar near the end that struck him as almost too plain for this band.

a ragdoll mankind

The backing voices at the very start sing the phrase the album is named after. The verses are about sweet-faced people with nothing inside who are easy to love, and a mankind put together from ragdoll parts; then Yorke refuses, over and over, to know when someone is messing him around. The chorus is the hook about broken hearts and rain, which Jon Pareles in the New York Times heard as Beatles-tinged. Pareles also wondered whether the title meant the police Identi-Kit, the system for building a face out of interchangeable parts.

on stage

After Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on 16 November 2012 it was gone for 1,281 days, until the Amsterdam opener on 20 May 2016. In 2017 it usually came straight after “Bloom”. The archive counts 86 nights: 35 in 2012, 24 in 2016, 20 in 2017 and seven in 2018, the last at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on 19 July 2018. It has never opened or closed a show.