I keep trying to forget who I'm listening to when I listen to Running Blind, as though distancing myself from the associations I have with Philip Selway will help me to hear it as if it were made by a fresh name. I want to be able to judge it outside the shadow of Radiohead, the band Selway drums for, but I'm not sure that's really even possible. As Mark Pytlik did last year in his review of Selway's debut solo LP, Familial, I give Selway all the credit in the world for stepping out on his own and responding to a singing and songwriting muse that's never going to become a part of Radiohead's music. To make such straightforward singer-songwriter music only increases the challenge. It leaves him exposed as a performer in a way he's normally not when he's at the drum kit.