Whoa, whoa, whoa. I go to sleep for one night, and when I wake up I discover that Radiohead, my favorite band of all time, has just put a brand-new song for sale on their website while I was slumbering? They’ve gotta stop surprising me like this. If only I’d known, I would totally have stayed up all night just so I could hear this song that much earlier.
Radiohead’s first officially released song since 2007’s In Rainbows is called “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” As the title suggests, it’s a tribute to Harry Patch, the oldest surviving British veteran of World War I, who died recently at age 111. You can probably guess that I love this song. Apparently recorded in the weeks before Patch’s death, it’s a gorgeous anti-war ballad, juxtaposing Thom Yorke’s Wilfred Owen-esque lyrics about the terrors of the trenches against a lush orchestral backdrop arranged by Jonny Greenwood. Radiohead is selling the song for £1, with all proceeds going to the Royal British Legion, a veterans’ charity. Needless to say, it’s very much worth any Radiohead fan’s pound, regardless of the exchange rate.
“Harry Patch” is only the latest Radiohead-related bit of news to creep out lately. We know the band has been working in the studio for some time on new material, and now we’ve heard the first finished product of those sessions. I’m thinking (okay, hoping) that it can only be a matter of time before they surprise us again with an announcement about their next album. Just to be safe, I’m considering not sleeping at all for the next few months, just in case that announcement comes at night. How about you? What do you think of “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)”? Are you as excited as I am by the growing trickle of information about Radiohead’s recent studio activity?
