Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien has confirmed that Thom Yorke will be releasing a solo album later this year.
Last week, guitarist O’Brien announced his own new solo record, ‘Blue Morpho’, a seven-song project that will be his second solo album and the first under his own name. His debut LP ‘Earth’ was released in 2020 under the moniker EOB.
‘Blue Morpho’ will be released on May 22 via O’Brien’s new label Transgressive and you can pre-order/pre-save it here. Check out the title track below.
Now, O’Brien has revealed that he is not the only Radiohead member releasing a solo project this year, telling Consequence that a Yorke solo album is “coming out later in the year.”
“What’s so lovely is it feels they both can coexist,” he said. “The Radiohead thing can go out and tour – and that’s the mothership, I guess, for all of us. But we’ve got these little satellites.”
“You know, there’s The Smile, and there’s – Thom’s got a solo album that’s going to come out later in the year, I think. And Jonny’s got his stuff, and you know, Philip [Selway]’s got his stuff, and Colin [Greenwood]’s playing with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.”
Yorke has released three solo albums to date, most recently 2019’s ‘Anima’, which was accompanied by a short film directed by recent Oscar winner Paul Thomas Anderson. Last year, he also released ‘Tall Tales’, a collaborative album with Mark Pritchard, and he recorded the soundtrack for the film Confidenza in 2024. The Smile, meanwhile, released their third album ‘Cutouts’ in the same year.
‘Blue Morpho’, meanwhile, has been produced by Paul Epworth (Paul McCartney, Adele, Florence + The Machine), and it emerged from “one of the most challenging periods” of O’Brien’s life, and finds him “beginning anew, finally starting to figure out his approach”. It is said to contain elements of “hypnotic psych-folk” and “beguiling trip-hop”, as well as boasting some “radiant guitars” and “luminous stillness”.
An accompanying short film, Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play, is also being released after premiering at SXSW yesterday (Monday March 16). More information on this will follow at a later date. See the trailer below.
O’Brien also recently revealed that Radiohead have plans to hit the road in 2027 and beyond, following on from their UK and European run late last year. “What we’re going to do is, every year we’re going to do a different continent, and we’re going to do 20 shows each year. No more, no less,” he said. “We won’t do anything this year, but we’ll do something next year.”
All five members of Radiohead formed a new private limited company last month, suggesting that the band were planning something in the near future. Their latest full-length record, ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’, was released in 2016.
In a glowing, five-star review of one of Radiohead’s gigs in London last November, NME wrote: “What a show: a visceral energy, a tasteful spectacle, all delivered with a generosity of spirit, Yorke in full rockstar mode as the band trade places to tend to each corner of the venue.
“For a band once embarrassed by the notion of ‘arena rock’, nobody does it better. A new album and another night like this can’t come soon enough.”
