A timid first step marked 2020, “Earth”: this is how the solo career of the most elegant of Radiohead members took shape: Ed O'Brien, the use of an acronym, EOB, confirmed the author's shy style, but it was also the result of insecurities linked to depression, that same depression that stirs the waters of the Oxford musician's new album.
“Blue Morpho” is a record as personal as it is choral, which also arises from the multiple creative exchanges of the English guitarist and percussionist – the meeting with Shabaka Hutchings at the Glastonbury festival, the casual acquaintance on the occasion of a school trip with Paul Epworth (former producer of Paul McCartney and Adele), the trip to Estonia and the friendship that blossomed there with Tõnu Kõrvits, responsible for the string arrangements and the contribution of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra – and which found its definitive genesis with the presence of Dave Okumu on guitar, Crispin Robinson on percussion, Nick Ramm on keyboards and Phil Selway, O'Brien's former bandmate in Radiohead, on drums.
Just as a flutter of wings captures attention, so “Blue Morpho” reawakens sensations that defy the inexorable passing of time. Ed O'Brien puts nightmares and traumatic post-depression suffering to music with a clarity and audacity that pierces the darkness with blue-tinted sound hatches, the same shades of color as the great Brazilian butterfly that Ed observed with amazement while living in Brazil.
With “Blue Morpho”, O'Brien frees himself from the role of member of Radiohead, an evolution that does not sever the bond with the band but which develops its most tortuous and changeable sounds, leaving out the melancholic folk-psych nuances more linked to the song format, in this following the fate of his colleagues, but with a dialectic that constantly keeps the nuance more soporific post-“Kid A”.
The first song, “Incantations”, immediately dictates the coordinates with a hypnotic and velvety post-rock ride which at the end incorporates psychedelia, kraut-rock, space-rock and neo-jazz remnants, a perfect introduction for the swaying sounds of strings and the vaulting of voices and instruments of the title track (which for a moment refer to the union between Robert Kirby and Nick Drake), the first authentic surprise of a record with a wide creative scope.
The tribal-funk jolt filled with psych-rock of “Teachers” and the dreamlike journey based on acoustic guitars, voices and floating instruments that takes shape at the end of “Sweet Spot” are the two pages closest to the past shared by O' Brien with the band. But it is contained in the nuances of the two shortest and most intense tracks, “Solfeggio” (passionate and sensual) and “Thin Places” (ethereal and suspended like a breath in silence), the keystone that reveals the profound and meticulous tuning of “Blue Morpho”. And in any case, the last almost ten minutes of “Obrigado” are the real strong point of the album, a bossa nova in a psych-soul key where the Temptations of “Masterpiece” meet with digressions on the theme of Pink Floyd and Os Mutantes. A sensorial experience that evolves towards a new form of spirituality that enhances all the musical components made available by a musician in full creative euphoria, who has carefully chosen the traveling companions of a decidedly unordinary album.
05/30/2026
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
