He and the rest of Radiohead have already decided, however, not to make another album like The Bends. They don't want to push themselves through so much torment again, and besides, they've reached a level where they don't have to. Instead, they will try to record at a much more leisurely, relaxed pace: Yorke has told their label, Parlophone, that they want a year to make their next album. Apparently, the paymasters have agreed.
"You know, the big thing for me is that we could really fall back on just doing another moribund, miserable, morbid and negative record, like lyrically," he explains, "but I really don't want to, at all. And I am deliberately just writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. But I'm not able to put them into music yet. I don't want to force it because then all I'm doing is just addressing all the issues where people are saying that we're mope rock. As far as I'm concerned The Bends is like that because that was really, really where we were at when we did it. And you could say the same about REM's Automatic For The People. It's a really miserable record, you know."
Instead, Radiohead will record songs like 'Lucky', the stand-out track on War Child's Help compilation album. That was Jonny Greenwood's idea, to donate a song Radiohead were playing every night on tour which the fans loved even though they didn't know what it was. When Greenwood suggested it however, Yorke wasn't so sure.
"There wasn't that sense of screaming and fighting and being on the phone to people for ages and spitting and swearing anymore, I don't think. There was a sense of release to me, that was the thing, that was the thing I wanted. To me, 'Lucky' was sort of like that. 'Lucky' is a song of complete release. It just happened, writing and recording it, there was no time, no conscious effort."
