Great article. You've identified some universal themes in this music and tied them brilliantly to this present moment. It helps, I guess, that I absolutely love this album.
I'd be curious to see an analysis of the music beyond just the words with your essay as an interpretive frame. For example, "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "The Tourist" are the only tracks in waltz time; both songs are sort of slow and more outward looking than the rest of the album. The former has an interesting pattern in the chorus where the single word "uptight" is sung on the two beats before the major and secondary downbeats in each measure; this is a good representation in voicing against the meter of what it means to be, umm, uptight. "No Surprises" has a strong dipodic duple meter that extends up from the measure to the quatrain; Yorke uses melisma to sort of chain the measures together in an interesting way across each quatrain. This is an important contributor to the lullaby quality of the song, and the cyclic feeling that results reinforces the theme of the words: "We're going around in a circle -- please no surprises!"
I've noticed in the past that Yorke's approach tends to be spare and not very rhythmically complex. If you want a counterpoint for rhythmic complexity from an artist who sings in a similar register and is of a similar generation, listen to Sufjan Stevens. My sense previously has been that Yorke's singing is more architectural to the music than a lot of other artists who have distinctive voices, but I wonder now if, in addition to his amazing tone and the strength of his voice, the strategy that makes his singing powerful is this kind of iconicity.
Great article. You've identified some universal themes in this music and tied them brilliantly to this present moment. It helps, I guess, that I absolutely love this album.
I'd be curious to see an analysis of the music beyond just the words with your essay as an interpretive frame. For example, "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "The Tourist" are the only tracks in waltz time; both songs are sort of slow and more outward looking than the rest of the album. The former has an interesting pattern in the chorus where the single word "uptight" is sung on the two beats before the major and secondary downbeats in each measure; this is a good representation in voicing against the meter of what it means to be, umm, uptight. "No Surprises" has a strong dipodic duple meter that extends up from the measure to the quatrain; Yorke uses melisma to sort of chain the measures together in an interesting way across each quatrain. This is an important contributor to the lullaby quality of the song, and the cyclic feeling that results reinforces the theme of the words: "We're going around in a circle -- please no surprises!"
I've noticed in the past that Yorke's approach tends to be spare and not very rhythmically complex. If you want a counterpoint for rhythmic complexity from an artist who sings in a similar register and is of a similar generation, listen to Sufjan Stevens. My sense previously has been that Yorke's singing is more architectural to the music than a lot of other artists who have distinctive voices, but I wonder now if, in addition to his amazing tone and the strength of his voice, the strategy that makes his singing powerful is this kind of iconicity.