Much lofty ink has rightly been spilled about Radiohead’s evolution on 2000’s Kid A, the album where they (temporarily, at least) pivoted away from the guitar-rock theatrics and instant-grat choruses that made them stars. For many fans, the soundscapes within felt jarring: the stark and relentlessly looped drums of “Morning Bell,” the textural synthesizers of “Everything in Its Right Place,” the eerily processed vocals on the title track. And they were also disorienting for guitarist Ed O’Brien, who found himself with the unexpected pressure to shape-shift.
Urged by Thom Yorke’s quest to unlearn their habits, O’Brien found fascinating new ways to yield his trusted instrument. At this point, he’d already become Radiohead’s de-facto texture man, elevating songs like “Karma Police” and “Lucky” with subtle but irreplaceable effects and counter-melodies. But on Kid A, he went deeper: slapping a sustainer pickup to his Fender Strat, tinkering with new pedals, often treating his guitar to sound like anything but one. Expressed in the parlance of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, O’Brien has always been Radiohead’s “wild card” member—it’s hard to imagine this band without him, even when you have to dust for his fingerprints on the final product.
For that reason, not to mention the earnestness of his interviews and the sweetness of his stage presence, it was impossible not to root for his 2020 solo debut, Earth—a sonically rich album that still stumbles to spread its wings naturally. In its aftermath, during pandemic lockdown, with his first-ever tour derailed, he found himself in a “dark night of the soul.” But he eventually emerged from this depression: connecting with nature, embracing new habits (like the cold-exposure methods of Wim Hof), and immersing himself in music. He wound up with Blue Morpho, a gorgeous and imaginative work that feels like a do-over—ditching everything that didn’t work about Earth (like the occasional, dated nods to Nineties U2) and gently refining everything that did.
A critical part of this creative leap was expanding his cast of collaborators—including, pivotally, producer/co-writer Paul Epworth (Adele, Rihanna), whose path he crossed through chance, as their respective kids attended the same school. Together, they recruited backing vocalists (ESKA, Awsa Bergstrom), string players (The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, with arranger Tõnu Kõrvits), musicians both familiar (Radiohead drummer Phil Selway, returning guitarist-bassist Dave Okumu) and new (woodwind player Shabaka Hutchings). That scope—expanding the world for the benefit of the song—feels somewhat ironic, given that he’s now recording under his own name rather than his earlier moniker, EOB. But it’s also a testament to the album’s confidence. On Blue Morpho, O’Brien almost feels more like a band member than a bandleader: relying less on lyrics, leaning more into psychedelic atmospheres, quilting together the kind of percolating arrangements that define many of the best Radiohead songs.
Many of these thirty-eight minutes build on the quieter, gentler feel of Earth’s deep cuts—but here, the results feel more like full-fledged worlds than promising teases. The first three songs all open with twinkly acoustic fingerpicking, but they rarely end in that same place. On “Incantations,” where O’Brien sings about outrunning “ghosts of long ago,” the piece slow-builds with ESKA’s soaring vocal harmonies and the tasteful percussion of Crispin “Spry” Robinson. You think it’s all going to drift away peacefully, but then O’Brien introduces his first U-turn: A firecracker snare ushers in a trance-like kraut-rock/post-rock groove, and a convulsing electric guitar electrifies the black-sky vibe with lightning. Equally cinematic is the title track, which drifts by on the autumnal breeze of Kõrvits’ strings—it could have slotted perfectly on A Moon Shaped Pool, with zero dip in quality.
But the record never settles rigidly into this magic-hour ambiance. “Teachers” feels like a funkier, proggier extension of Earth centerpiece “Brasil,” pulling from trip-hop and alt-dance as our maestro exercises some more demons (“Midway through life, I just lost my way”). In that signature O’Brien way, it’s hard to even describe what’s happening sonically in the back half, as some kind of instrumental solo (A talk box smothered in phaser? Bergstrom’s vocals run through effects pedals?) launch the groove into deep orbit. “Obridgado,” meanwhile, ends the record in a nearly 10-minute odyssey of cosmic prayer—a tumbling, genuinely affecting head trip laced with jazzy keyboards and climaxing with a brain-scrambling backward guitar solo that conjures Hendrix tackling “The Great Gig in the Sky.” Blue Morpho is the exact album Radiohead fans hoped O’Brien had in him: as adventurous, curious, and open-armed as the man himself. [Transgressive]
Ryan Reed is a writer and editor from Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to Paste, his work has appeared over the years in Rolling Stone, Revolver, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and many other publications.
