As promised earlier in the day, Thom Yorke has premiered a brand new song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Yorke performed ‘Plasticine Figures’ via video link on Wednesday night’s episode of the show.
“Performing ‘Plasticine Figures’ for the very first time in a public audience, here is the great Thom Yorke,” said Fallon. The broadcast then cut to a dark room with a hirsute Yorke sitting close to the camera. He accompanied himself on piano for the solemn, melancholic song.
Watch: Thom Yorke – Plasticine Figures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgyHOfV-i1k
Yorke posted a photo of the song’s lyrics and chord changes to Twitter in the lead up to the performance. It’s fair to say ‘Plasticine Figures’ isn’t a happy song. The lyrics seem to lament willing obedience to some malign order. “Happy to serve, happy to linger, while you make up your face,” Yorke sings in the second verse. He later offers this evocative couplet: “Stick a hole where your mouth was / Fill your eyes with rocks.”
‘Plasticine Figures’ is the first new music we’ve heard from Yorke since his contribution to the Motherless Brooklyn soundtrack, ‘Daily Battles’, which came out last August. Yorke released his third solo album Anima in June 2019 and followed up with the ‘Not the News’ remix EP a couple of months later.
The Radiohead frontman was due to take Anima on the road across the US in March and April. However, all dates were postponed due to the coronavirus. In mid-April Yorke somewhat ambitiously announced the dates would now be occurring in October.
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