Despite a reputation for difficult interviews Thom leaves enough breadcrumbs across the music press to get a rough handle on how he thinks or feels about the processes of writing and producing an album. These are a collection of comments and observations (specifically associated with the InRainbows album) that have interested me and again I feel might have some bearing on the direction of the Faust Arp clip. (I think much of this content may have come from Rolling Stone orignally):
ON WRITING & INTERPRETATION
… I work with what I have, I make do with what is at hand. For now, I have more than enough of the copy/paste. But also of the ’stream of consciousness’, of the fact of setting down my thoughts on pages and pages. This time, the first draft imposed itself most of the time. It’s doubtlessly the first time that I leave it so much to my instinct. Usually, the songs take time to come out, I think a lot about their meaning. Here, I tried to avoid this process and I tried to spit everything out, to make everything spurt at one stroke. What I feared with making interviews, was having to explain all these things that I actually wrote in a very spontaneous way.
… Ed always banged on about how this record was very sensual. The mind boggles slightly, but I think there was a lot of that. It was as much about the way it flowed and whatever, not specific things. But it is kind of… it’s not supposed to be in any way cerebral.
… of all the lyrics I’ve ever written, I hope that the ones on this record will deliver the widest range of interpretations.
… the more you absorb yourself in the present tense, the more likely that what you write will be good……But that’s scary. I mean, ‘Faust Arp’ is the exact opposite of that, pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages until eventually, the good ones stick.
… I vaguely know the story of Faust. But that would involve me having remembered it in some detail or picked it off the shelf. Which I didn’t. But yes, hmm, Goethe’s Faust. I’m going to have to look that one up, actually, ’cause that sounds suitably pretentious. We live in Oxford, after all. [ al little tongue in cheek methinks?]
ON EGO & POLITICS
… Well, I think it’s human nature to want to get lost in it and believe that you’re wonderful. But I went the other way too fast and assumed that absolutely all of it - and we’re talking about the OK Computer era - was all bullshit, including me. I’d regularly stop midway through a song and think, I don’t mean a fucking word of this, I’m off. Which, I guess, is the polar opposite of someone like Marc Bolan. But it’s a product of the same thing. You’re always trying to deal with the fact that you’re a small crumbly piece of stuff when you write these songs, and maybe that’s why the songs are good. So you’re always taking one poison or another. Perhaps that’s what makes carrying on so hard. You make a record, you wake up and start writing something new, and everything crumbles again.
Using one’s influence as an artist to shed light on the atrocities of modern life isn’t really in the job description, but its evidently always tempting; the real dichotomy seems in his wanting to be in wanting to wake the world up to its complacency by screaming from the rooftops while simultaneously wanting to be nothing more than a good singer in a great rock ’n’ roll band:
… I wouldn’t want to take on that kind of responsibility, but I think I can’t help finding myself—given the particular weapon I have at my disposal—wanting to use it occasionally in certain circumstances. But I think it’s best used inside the music; that’s where you can have the best effect. Some people are able to do it—Neil Young, Bob Marley; Bob Dylan’s done it endlessly. Lots of rap does it; Public Enemy does it endlessly, so it’s possible to do and do well. But I always have to be aware when it comes to writing and when it comes to music, you don’t just come and say, ‘I want to put this in the song.’ It naturally evolves, and it’s naturally a part of what’s going on. … Anger is an energy source for me, especially lyrically when I’m presented with something I consider utter madness. … My writing is a constant response to doublethink.
I think I’m more acutely aware now than I was that the vast majority of human life on this earth is concerned with looking after their babies and making sure there’s enough food to eat. … For me there’s a different sort of ‘compassion’ there—for want of a better word—and I’m much more interested in trying to not be part of the fetish of general politics and the personality cults of this or that figure in public life because, to me, that’s all part of the game of irrelevance, which is, in a way, the fog held up for people to just ignore what’s going on in their life.
IN SUMMARY(?)
In much of this it seems that the value of the album is not intended to be a message per se but the way of expression. The value of a finer art is not teaching the audience something, not even awaking thoughts on the cognitive level, but awaking feelings by how it shows something - operating on another more subtle level somehow. As one commentator puts it: ”One of the best paintings ever was painted about a bunch of sunflowers. Are the sunflowers that interesting? Not, particularly. What is interesting is the way they were expressed.” This is not to be confused with simply appreciating technique but is more the careful distillation of all conscious and unconscious ideas into a form of expression that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
This all adds up to a large part of what makes this album so appealing. It is woven with the same ideas, philosophies and human currency that has always pervaded Thom’s writing (and Radioheads music) but it is offered in a less absolute and less angst ridden style that somehow transcends the more literal themes.