Album Review: Thom Yorke Recovers Lost Dreams in 'ANIMA'

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s long-awaited third solo album is a nightmarish yet beautiful album that contemplates the dreams and anxieties of the modern world.

Written by Haley Kennis

On June 13, 2019, a London Twitter user posted a tweet thread about a mysterious ad she saw in one of the trains on the London Tube. The ad read “Do you have trouble remembering your dreams?” and claimed a company called ANIMA created a “Dream Camera” capable of retrieving lost dreams with a simple phone call to the listed number. Many people called the number and heard a robotic voice say ANIMA was “ordered by the authorities to cease and desist” along with a short melody that played after being told they could leave a message. Those who texted the number were met with many cryptic and ominous phrases about the mystery company, such as “this is when you know who your real friends are.” Interest in ANIMA skyrocketed and a subreddit was created specifically to solve the mystery. Soon, people were posting sightings of the ads all over the United Kingdom and across European cities, and there were even printed ads in Dallas and New York newspapers.

Countless theories were formed to figure out the ANIMA mystery until the case was finally cracked. Some redditors recognized the message tone as the melody from an unreleased Thom Yorke song called “Not the News,” and others even tracked ANIMA Technologies’s website to XL Records. The puzzle was solved as quickly as it began: the ads were promoting the next solo album by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. ANIMA was then released on June 27 alongside a mini-film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, ending the five year wait for new music with a surreal album exploring the different kinds of dreams in our lives.

However, many of the dreams on ANIMA have turned into nightmares. ANIMA begins with a bouncing electronic beat surrounded by ghostly vocal samples on the song “Traffic.” The rhythm is infectious and dynamic, but also feels a bit off. The bleak lyrics “Submit / Submerged / No body / No body / It’s not good / It’s not right,” also establish the anxious atmosphere that continues through the entire album. The chorus calls to “Show me the money / Party with a rich zombie,” mocking the extravagant parties of the corrupt and powerful rich, while sounding like a deranged version of the club bangers played at those parties. The song becomes more angry and desperate as it continues with lyrics like “I can’t breathe / There’s no water,” and finally ends with the chorus stating the rich zombies “have to make amends” to those they’ve harmed.

Many of the other songs on the album blend energetic rhythms with real dread. “Impossible Knots” is driven by a tight and groovy bassline, while the lyrics talk about “heading in the wrong direction” and being “tied up impossible knots,” desperate for anyone to help Yorke escape how trapped he feels. “The Axe” is much darker, but a pumping rhythm is still at the core of the song beneath buzzsaw synthesizers as Yorke angrily talks to machinery, claiming that “one day [he is] gonna take an axe to” the machine for its betrayal of their “deal.” As the song gets more intense Yorke’s vocals fade into the background and echo that he has “had [his] fill of hurt” caused by the machine (which could be a metaphor for phones and the internet or the government). The bouncy, sparse beat of “Not the News” highly contrasts its feeling of being stuck and having no hope for the future. This hopelessness almost transforms into bleak humor as Yorke sarcastically calls to “Cue sliding violins / In sympathy” for his plight, while the simplistic beat opens into a massive arrangement of those very sliding violins. The music is a lot more cinematic in sound than previous albums, but never feels overblown. Instead, each song’s intricate layers perfectly swirl together to create unique rhythms that compel you to dance along, but also give the sense that something is terribly wrong. The lyrics add genuine fear and anxiety to the music, creating an album that feels intimately emotional and like an expansive world at the same time.

The slow, unnerving song “Last I Heard (...He Was Circling the Drain)” taps into a real nightmare Yorke said he had after flying to Japan in which rats were running the world and humans lived in the sewers. He awakens from the nightmare singing in a hazy voice, “I woke up with a feeling I just could not take,” and then paints the disturbing mental image of “humans the size of rats” that are “swimming through the gutter” with unnatural sounds and rhythms rising and falling. The skittering beat behind Yorke’s willowy vocals on “Twist” is interrupted during the first part of the song by sudden clips of kids cheering and a clip of the word “twist” edited into an uncanny ramble. The song itself has a twist midway through as it switches to swells of deep piano chords and fake strings, the words painting surreal images of “a boy on a bike who is running away / an empty car in the woods, the motor left running.” The theme of dreams in these two songs is very literal; whether it is the abstract imagery that makes it impossible not to vividly imagine the scenes painted in the lyrics, or the music that draws us into the unreal worlds. While many of the nightmares on ANIMA are reflections of real life, “Last I Heard (…He Was Circling the Drain)” and “Twist” manage to capture the cloudiness of subconscious dreams.

The hauntingly gorgeous “Dawn Chorus” stands out on the album. The slow, synth-led song has no backing beat: only a gentle, chilling, and melancholic repeating melody. Yorke sing-speaks lyrics in a monotone, almost defeated voice that mix between beautiful, vivid imagery and everyday language.

“I think I missed something
But I’m not sure what
In the middle of the vortex
The wind picked up
Shook up the soot
From the chimney pot
Into spiral patterns
Of you, my love.”

His voice is tender and vulnerable as he repeatedly asks “if you could do it all again,” either to himself or his loved one, and tells them to “please let [him] know when [they’ve] had enough.” He answers the question differently every time, but all the phrases mean the same thing: he wishes he could change the past and knows he can’t, but he still imagines how he would. “Dawn Chorus” is like waking up from a lovely dream and realizing in the foggy moments between consciousness that it was all fake, and then having to face the bitter reality. “Dawn Chorus” adds much needed tenderness and humanity to the chaotic rhythms of the rest of the album. Its simplicity allows the raw emotion in the lyrics to shine through, making for one of the most beautifully heartbreaking and bittersweet songs of Thom Yorke’s solo career.

“Runwayaway” ends the album, featuring some of the words texted to people from the ANIMA phone number spoken by Yorke in a creepy, pitched up voice over a continuously evolving beat: “this is when you know who your real friends are.” The album end doesn’t give any real closure to its uncomfortable realizations, nor any answers to the questions it posed. The ending is uncertain, and only we can determine how to process the dream-like state and nightmarish world presented to us. ANIMA revolves around dreams, but specifically the dreams we lose somewhere along the way, whether they are forgotten, broken, or transform into something unfathomable.

ANIMA is a fascinating, gorgeous, unnerving, and thought-provoking album that is the most musically and thematically confident project Yorke has released yet. Not many musicians can portray abstract concepts and emotions in sound like Thom Yorke can, and ANIMA is no exception. Dreams, whether they are the ones we strive for when we are awake or the ones come to us when we are asleep, are needed to process what is happening around us. In a time full of so much dread and confusion, Thom Yorke’s one of a kind and haunting perspective is a reminder of the dreams we’ve lost.

REVIEWSAfterglow ATXJuly 9, 2019