In Radiohead’s best music, songs and arrangements have a holistic and nearly inextricable bond. The free-jazz freakout in the middle of “The National Anthem” is just as crucial as the lyrics or vocal melody; “Pyramid Song” wouldn’t be “Pyramid Song” without its drunkenly stumbling percussion. The third solo album from Philip Selway, the man behind that indelible drum part, sometimes comes impressively close to the work of his main band in terms of the ambition and inventiveness of its musical settings. They tend to draw from a similar well of influence: the dissonance and rhythmic pulsation of contemporary classical music, or the forward thrust of krautrock, with various electronics beeping and buzzing at the edges.
But these arrangements don’t stick to the bones of the songs with the same force that they do in Selway’s main band. Swap one song’s power-ballad orchestration with another’s mellow mallet percussion and they might sound just as natural as they did in their original forms. The songs themselves are part of the problem: Slow and somber, with little lyrical specificity or melodic surprise, they give the sense of Strange Dance as a set of beautiful musical accouterments in search of worthy compositions to adorn.
As one might expect from a drummer, Selway fares best as a songwriter when the music is rhythmically active. Strange Dance’s best track by a significant margin is also its most upbeat: “Picking Up Pieces,” which charges ahead in a series of interlocking syncopations, with guitars and bowed strings all acting like percussion instruments, making their brief contributions to the precisely arranged tapestry and then backing away until it’s time to strike again. The title track also foregrounds Selway’s idiosyncratic approach to rhythm, setting his voice against drums that clatter and echo like a digital-age update to Tom Waits’ junkyard blues, with little other accompaniment. (Interestingly, Selway chose not to play his primary instrument on Strange Dance, handing drum duties over to Valentina Magaletti of Vanishing Twin.) In these moments and others—like “What Keeps You Awake at Night,” which begins with percolating vibraphones and dissolves in a flurry of pizzicato strings—it’s possible to glimpse an alternate vision of Selway’s music, which focuses on his and his collaborators’ ears for unusual grooves and striking combinations of sounds, treating these as the main event rather than set dressing.
Strange Dance more often presents itself as a traditional singer-songwriter album, albeit one with some killer sound design. Most of the lyrics seem to describe a breakup of some sort, though the details are fuzzy. As a writer, Selways works in broad, bland strokes: “I couldn’t be alone tonight/I need you here by my side/I’m lost without you now,” goes one representative passage from “Check for Signs of Life.” There are plenty of great pop songs built on platitudes, but Selway has neither the tunefulness as a composer nor the expressiveness as a singer to sell this stuff. “The Other Side” strikes a particularly sour note, addressing a partner at the brink of a relationship’s end. “I’ve seen you in all your faults and doubts/I can’t unsee it now,” Selway sings, his almost cartoonishly mannered delivery and a prim orchestral arrangement reinforcing the notion that the narrator couldn’t possibly bear any blame himself. A breakup song as bitter as “The Other Side” should come with a little piss and vinegar. This one just sounds smug.
Familial, Selway’s 2010 solo debut, was self-consciously low-key, built mostly on voice, acoustic guitar, and occasional electronics. Given Selway’s membership in the biggest and best art-rock band of our era, it’s no surprise that he might eventually aim higher. But as appealing as the arrangements and production of Strange Dance are on a sonic level, they end up harming the songs as often as they help. The dramatic crescendos and ostensibly cathartic payoffs of “Little Things” and “The Heart of It All” suggest profundity but mostly draw attention to its absence. Strip away the bombast and these are humble little songs. Humble treatment might suit them.
