In R.E.M.’s World Leader Pretend, Stipe sings:
Reach out for me and hold me tight
Hold that memory, let my machine talk to me
Let my machine talk to me
In The Axe, Yorke sings:
Goddamned machinery
Why don’t you speak to me?
One day I am gonna take an axe to you
[unclear / out of order]
The title of Thom Yorke’s 2014 song, Youwouldn’tlikemewhenI’mangry (also stylized as YouWouldn’tLikeMeWhenI’mAngry) is a phrase often said by the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk TV series. Wikipedia claims that the series introduced the catchphrase and it did not originate in the comics.
In His Rope, Thom Yorke sings:
Here’s the tiny piece of you I save
https://genius.com/Burial-four-tet-and-thom-yorke-his-rope-lyrics
Just enough rope
The phrase, “just enough rope” is a shortening of, “give him/her just enough rope to hang himself/herself.” Giving a person, “just enough rope” in this way means setting them up for failure. In the song, the person being setup for failure
In rhetoric, truncating a commonly known phrase in this manner is called anapodoton.
And using common phrases in this way is something Yorke has a history of doing, as I’ve tried to document.
Earlier today, Radiohead released seasonal greetings cards via the Radiohead Public Library.
In the video for “A Brain In A Bottle,” Thom Yorke appears wearing boxing gloves:
From a 1995 Rolling Stone article entitled Radiohead Transform Emotional Turmoil Into Kinetic Pop:
His father sold chemical-engineering equipment and was a champion university boxer. “One of the first things he ever bought me was a pair of boxing gloves,” says Yorke. “He used to try to teach me to box, but whenever he hit me, I’d fall flat on my ass.” When Yorke was 8, his family moved to Oxford. At 10 he formed his first band, and two years later he wound up at a boys boarding school near Abingdon, England, where he spent several of his most unhappy years. He had few friends, fought frequently and, despite his formative training, usually lost boxing matches.
Colin Greenwood, in an interview with The Word magazine (now defunct, article mirrored here), said Thom Yorke’s “bobbly head thing” while dancing is “a hangover from the days when Thom’s father taught him how to box. ‘Thom’s got really broad shoulders,’ says Colin. ‘When you see them go down, boxer-style, that means he’s really enjoying it.'”
[edit Jan 2, 2021 to correct link to citizeninsane.eu]
Listening to Kid A we were told we had our heads, or were holding heads, on sticks: “you’ve got heads on sticks.”
Listening to The King Of Limbs, the voice in “Lotus Flower” wants “the moon upon a stick.”
Heads on sticks. A moon upon a stick.
01 Bloom 5:15
02 MorningMrMagpie 4:41
03 LittleByLittle 4:27
04 Feral 3:13
05 LotusFlower 5:00
06 Codex 4:47
07 GiveUpTheGhost 4:50
08 Separator 5:20
Release date: Tomorrow? No. Today.