"Eraser" really sets the tone for the entire album. Bare bones and subtle programming seem to celebrate "less is more" ideals. The song features a hissy gated piano loop and subtle analogue modeled drum machine. Stereo field is very narrow until the chorus. Vocal harmonies are nicely layered and set way out wide in the field. Reminds me of the bg's layering on "Karma Police" . Bleepy-bloopy synth arpeggios. Breakdown scales the song down to nothing and introduces a new noisy synth loop as well as Thom's vocal outro. Lyrics are typical York pessimism, "are you only being nice because you want something". Nice and sublte social commentary.

"Analyse" has skitchy drum programming with hi hats bouncing all over the place. Snare has some cool small room verb on it, again quite narrow field. Super wide synth washes right out of a sci-fi movie. Piano sounds recorded in a big cold room. Odd bass slides sometimes fights for space with the dry analogue kick. Lyrics remind you the world is pretty fucked up, and the more you think about it the worse it seems.

"The Clock" could have easily been on Hail to the Thief. Driving rythm section keep this song pushing forward with some bizarre urgency. Considering the song is about time running out for us, the rythm does it's job. There is a really sweet tenor L/R harmonizing in the midpoint of the song when an alto parts cuts right up the middle. Ends abruptly, like a countdown clock hitting zero.

“Black Swan” is just plain tasty. Desolation, desperation, and abandonment. Lyrics tell you to give up because “this is fucked up”. Bass slides and rim-stick break beat set a head bobbing groove throughout the piece. Gated kick is nice a punchy and TB808-ish. Left channel Hi Hat is disorienting while the right side is constant and even. Sounds like a 2-4 snare is missing but the pre-verb is still there. Far left guitar noodling is classic Radiohead. Great sub pusher or low frequency extension tester.

Droning fat analogue oscillators and slow opening VFC’s are featured on “Skip Divided”. Filters are open more and more through the song. Spooky vocal chopping and BGs are haunting. Lyrics confuse me just as they are supposed to do.

“Atoms for Peace” finally gives us a glimmer of hope. It’s a happy song for a change. Offbeat synth line is hypnotic and triplet/fivetuplet heavy. It sounds round and bouncy. “Peel all of your layers off. I want to eat your artichoke heart” is my favorite cheeky line and cracks me up every time. Plenty of static artifacts sound like overloaded preamps or VCA’s.

Return back to dreary side. “And it Rained All Night” is loaded with sci-fi inspired synths. It’s like driving down a dark alley, at night, in the rain. This song makes you want to lock the doors and speed up. Its got skitchy drum programming and a thud-thud kick drum. “It’s relentless, invisible, indefatigable, indisputable, undeniable. So how come it looks so beautiful?”

Thom’s political piece on this album is “Harrowdown Hill”. The Hills are actually in Oxfordshire where the body of Dr. David Kelly was found after appearing before a Parliamentary committee. The committee was investigating the WMD scandal that sent the UK to war in Iraq. Read the wiki for more info. This is a song from the grave in the voice of Kelly. Lyrics are longing and foreboding. I find the instrumentation is pretty weak and quite thin. It’s a lyric song with focus on the message not the medium. Really cool quirky vocal sampling sneak in on the far left channel throughout the song.

"Cymbal Rush" is a beepy-bloopy analogue ride. Long synth washes and drones accented with subliminal piano fingerings. The song takes a long time to go nowhere. Builds and builds and ends up somewhat anticlimactic. Real drums enter late in the piece, but almost too subtlety to be effective. Take away Thom’s voice and you get an ambient work similar to some early Apex Twin.

Artwork and packaging is simply beautiful. Stanley Donwood created a woodcut depicting London drowning. Simple black and white with red typeface accompanies the music nicely.

Summary

If you like Kid-A and Hail to the Thief, you will like this album. Better yet, if you are a fan of fat analogue sounds and spooky synth washes, the 180gram vinyl is the best way to listen to this album. Recording is high quality, pressing is damn good. The low end programming is a lot more satifying on the vinyl than it is on CD.

Weird, a cold album sounds warmer at 33 1/2rpm than it does at 44.1kbps.