Does anyone cover Radiohead besides pianists? Whereas most straight covers tend to remain either live-set whimsies or B-side obscurities (take John Mayer's "Kid A"...or not), ivory-ticklers like Christopher O'Riley and Brad Mehldau have recorded not just one or two, but numerous Radiohead covers. This affinity doesn't seem too surprising, though, since the band is far more innovative musically than lyrically, and the sound of Yorke's vocals adds perhaps more tension and meaning to the lyrics than the words he sings. The band famously varies the complex meters, keys, structures, chord progressions, and tones of its songs, making them challenging workouts for musicians.
Two years after releasing his first covers album, True Love Waits, O'Riley returns with another batch, titled Hold Me to This. Compared to Mehldau, who often records as one member of a trio, O'Riley is something of a purist: His arrangements are strictly for solo piano, with no overdubs or guest musicians. These are impressionist covers, loosely translating rather than strictly transcribing tone and atmosphere into the more constrained setting. O'Riley fares best when his piano merely suggests a melody, as on "The Tourist" and "No Surprises". Conversely, bold melodic lines don't work very well. On "Like Spinning Plates", while one hand plays the low, rumbling pattern, the other bangs out the central melody in glaring chords that sound altogether out of place amid the subtler texture.
Culling material from every stage of Radiohead's career (although not necessarily in chronological order) into a particularly ambitious tracklist, he makes only a few obvious choices in songs: his "Paranoid Android" meanders even at a short five minutes, "Sail to the Moon" sounds like the instrumental track for the original, but "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" makes an effective album closer. Not surprisingly, he picks no tracks from Pablo Honey or Kid A, which dominated True Love Waits. Instead, he selects three from 2003's underrated Hail to the Thief. Almost half of Hold Me to This, however, is devoted to B-sides, which reveals his fan's obsession behind this project. "Polyethylene Part II" moves from quiet to thunderous fluidly, while "Talk Show Host", from the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack (remember that?), draws the arresting four-note melody out for seven minutes.
Working out the complexities of Radiohead's textured music in a solo setting has its advantages-- a living-room intimacy among them-- but too often this constrained approach blurs the tracks together. Tonally, many of the songs on Hold Me to This often sound indistinguishable from each other, despite the range of source material. As a result, this album may end up as a novelty for Radiohead fans and perhaps a nonentity for everyone else.
