Hall of Shame: Thom Yorke – Anima (2019)

One of the worst presents I ever got was a copy of Thom ‘with an H’ Yorke’s Anima. Released in June 2019, Anima was instantly hyped as a “masterpiece“, followed by an aggressive PR campaign involving Netflix streaming a short musical film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson where Thom Yorke plays the lead “in a mind-bending visual- (hold on) – masterpiece“. We’re drowning in so many masterpieces, it has become difficult for me to handle it and live in this constant state of appreciation of cultural bliss and sublimity!

The 15-minute short film indeed bent my mind, but because it put such worn-out techniques and metaphors in its center and sold it as innovative art, that it was frankly unbelievable. On the technical side, the film’s choreography makes heavy use of the illusion of the dancers leaning beyond the center of gravity, which was a sensation already 32 years ago, when the move’s inventor Michael Jackson premiered it in the music video to “Smooth Criminal“.

On the symbolical side, Thom Yorke and his one sad eye are riding the subway, feeling lonely and alienated in the middle of all the other humans in their mechanical daily routine. Could it be a bit more precise? No. „The dystopian thing is one part of it, yes, but for me, one of the big, prevailing things was a sense of anxiety,” Yorke details the themes of Anima. It’s a prime example of the incomplete artist floating on the surface of things, riding the ever vague wave of sentimentality, emphasizing sensitivities instead of dissecting that “dystopian thing“ and distilling a precise critique.

Distrust of the modern dystopia, a sense of anxiety- yes, but what else, Thom? Where do we go from there? Wasn’t this already the vague concept of OK Computer 23 years ago? Could it be that Yorke and Radiohead have built a massive career on the trite statement “Something is wrong dot dot dot“ presented in different variations? Questions over questions, but all we get is a blank and juiceless situation report on the world from the perspective of Yorke’s almost gleeful anxiety. But one cannot claim that it is completely wasted or useless: it is another contribution to the prevailing glorification of anxiety, which is the new chic mental accessory. It’s nothing else but fear-mongering, and therefore completely in line with the politics and mechanisms it claims to oppose.

Anime is too vague to be saying or doing anything, and it’s too modern and graphic to claim cinematic openness. Let’s have a look at the lyrics:

“Swimming through the gutter
Swallowed up, swallowed up by the city, by the city, by the city
Humans the size of rats
Opportunity cracks, opportunity stutters“

Was Thom Yorke watching Aristocats or Ratatouille while putting this sucked out images to paper? Even Travis Bickle had fewer hallucinations and was much more eloquent on the topic. Let’s have a look at another classic Yorke:

“I can’t breathe
There’s no water
A drip feed
Foie gras
A brick wall
But you’re free“

To say it with the words of modern day Nietzsche, Liam Gallagher: Go fuck yourself. Full quote: „I heard that fucking Radiohead record (King of Limbs) and I just go, ‘What?!’ Them writing a song about a fucking tree? Give me a fucking break! A thousand year old tree? Go fuck yourself! You’d have thought he’d have written a song about a modern tree or one that was planted last week. You know what I mean?“

Anyway, I listened to Anima because it was gifted to me, and the album is mediocre beyond Thom Yorke’s insufferable trademark whining, it’s simply horrible. The primary- and lasting- impression is that there is a guy with his hair in a bun, playing around with his laptop and making random, fragmentary noises. Because Thom is confusing pretentious eccentricity with musicality, promises of melodies and climaxes go unfulfilled. Compensating mediocreness and a lack of vision & completeness with over-motivated distortion, it is one of countless attempts to elevate that distortion to the realms of art.

After listening twice, I decided that Anima was a waste of time, not even interesting enough to hate it, and so I listed it on Discogs to get rid of it. It was no valuable special edition or so, and after 2 weeks I had a buyer who was willing to pay 25€ for it and asked me how much the shipping to Moscow would be. I said that it would be another 20€, and he accepted.

Moscow?

It’s just fair that Putin has to deal with this shit now 🌈

by Saliha Enzenauer