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As a devoted Radiohead fan, I always expect them to reinvent themselves when they release a new album, but this one really surprised me. Somehow, they got even bigger by getting closer and smaller. This album feels the most intimate and the most fearless to me, as if they’re letting the cat out of the bag and they have nothing left to hide.
There’s another through-line for all these records we’re talking about. Maybe not Pink Moon as much, but definitely all of the other ones—they all have a very cinematic approach. There’s a feeling of place in each one of these records. Radiohead is very good at that. You know, everything on OK Computer feels like it comes from the same place—and it’s a very uncomfortable place. The Bends as well, it all comes from this “rock” place. You can feel it.
But on A Moon Shaped Pool, the difference to me… more than anything else they’ve made, it has this natural feel, almost like it was made in a forest. I’m not sure how else to describe it, this balance between electronic elements and organic elements. Right off the bat, it’s just an orchestra playing pizzicato strings, and every single second after that, for the whole record, if some electronic element comes in, whether it’s a fuzzy bass or delay pedals on an electric guitar, whatever it is that comes in, there’s this very interesting aspect to it that I really drew from to make Red Sky Warning. It’s this really close feeling, like whatever instrument you’re listening to, it’s right next to you, but it’s also very big and very deep.
It’s a very weird thing to try and pull off, because as I go back to anything that I wanted to really rock when I was just starting, I was just thinking about volume. And then at some point, you realise, you learn. Finding out, for example, that Jimmy Page recorded a lot of those Led Zeppelin guitar parts on small amps to get that tight sound, and then they made the recording sound big in other ways. It sounds like they mic’d a Marshall stack with everything up to 11. That’s like a weird thing to think about—how do you make a small thing so big? And that’s what fascinates me about A Moon Shaped Pool, that there are lots of the electronic elements, and of course, Johnny Greenwood doing all the messing around with Thom Yorke’s voice, reversing it and looping it, but it all feels very dry to me, as opposed to affected and bounced around. There’s just something about it that feels whispered in your ear.
“Burn The Witch” is a real barn burner (pun intended), but starting the whole album with just those dry pizzicato strings feels so exciting and untethered. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a more beautiful and heartbreaking song about being an artist than “Daydreaming”—it’s like a prayer and a confessional all wrapped up in the ghost of time spent. And “Decks Dark” is just so impossibly laid back and cool, it’s hard to figure out exactly how they managed to make a song this minimalist still resonate with the complexity that only Radiohead could deliver.
So I thought a lot about this while I was making my record. Clearly, Red Sky Warning is very oceanic. Everything about that record is about being lost at sea, and I really leaned into that, that feeling that each one of these records we’re talking about had a “place” as a collection.
Taken from an interview with David Cloyd in July 2025 about what albums inspired his latest album, Red Sky Warning, out now on ECR Music Group.
