Monolith Cocktail Blog

Live Revue
Words: Gianluigi Marsibilio

Thom Yorke Live
Rome 21^st July 2019

The stage is an icon, Thom Yorke a mirror.

Here’s the consideration that a metaphysical set like this leads you to do, but there’s more and then I tried to make a small setlist of short and ramshackle thoughts about Thom Yorke live in Rome.

Thom Yorke is a genre in itself

Yorke moves with a cinematic attitude, and the movement on stage is an ode to the dance of Suspiria. This is a meeting of the many elements, developments and musical paths undertaken over the years. Thom Yorke’s live performance in Rome is the closing of a cycle and, at the same time, the opening of another. Thom is, finally, a multidimensional being, who can musically make genre by himself, expressing at best a crisis of many ideas and visions: some, even very different from each other.

The concert is an iconographic tale

You could follow the concert from an artistic point of view, and tell how the digital painting that moves on video walls is a condensation of an artistic research that also includes graphics and visual art.

We could play to tell the live in three paintings, I choose, in doubt, “Number 11” Pollock. The idea of graphic contamination has served.

Anima is a pure germ

The new solo album Anima is a real art-attack. A light and structured breath on a homogeneous and not confusing storytelling, Anima is a solo peak in Yorke’s career, because it has a whole series of elements that are perfectly connected with the idea of drawing songs in an extremely scenic, told and cinematographic way.

Suspiria was a blessing for Thom

So let’s close the film, consistent with the live set. The clear element is that: Suspiria has done well to Thom’s work and creativity. Being under creative and artistic pressure is a test that every artist has to undergo, the cinema is a machine that eats and incorporates but Thom has been stronger than on any other destructive push, and has pulled out a genuine music score. Calmness is the virtue of the dead, creativity needs chaos and the work with Luca Guadagnino, also built on the strong common vision, has helped Thom to build and solidify even better.