Billboard: Aside from working with Colin, did you consult with any of your other Radiohead bandmates about the album?

Ed: Colin came and played on the demo back in 2013 and initially I thought maybe some of these songs might be Radiohead songs for the next album. In 2014 we started A Moon Shaped Pool and for that first session, there was a little bit of ambivalence of everyone getting back together again. So I said, “Why don’t you come and play on my songs.” I spoke to [producer] Nigel [Godrich] about it and he thought it was a good way of getting everybody back together again. The first day we worked on “Banksters.” And I knew, after that first day, I knew it wasn’t right. My songs helped get everybody back together but I think we all realized, I certainly realized, it’s a different energy.

Rolling Stone: This was a number of years ago. Why are we just hearing the music now?

Ed: Well, we got back to the U.K. in mid-2013. I started writing and demoing. I basically had everything written within a year. By 2014, I had songs and was ready to go if I had a team and a producer. But that is when the Radiohead cycle started for A Moon Shaped Pool, in September 2014. We didn’t finish the record until February 2016. [...]

Rolling Stone: I’ve read that you weren’t even sure at first if you’d sing the songs yourself. That surprised me, because I’ve always really liked your voice.

Ed: [...] I didn’t want to be in that situation where I have these great musicians and a great production team and the whole thing is let down by weak or poor vocals. To me, it’s all about the songs. If the songs needed to have another singer who was stronger, then that’s what I thought would happen.

In the demo process, however, I had to start singing. And the engineer, Ian Davenport, kept saying right from the very beginning, “You can sing this.” I said, “Nah, nah…” But a week before I reconvened with Radiohead in 2014, I had my last demo session. And I had a moment where I heard a quality in my voice and was suddenly like, “Oh, okay. You know what? I think I can do this.”

At this point, we asked O’Brien if he felt his increased confidence would in any way bleed into the songwriting of Radiohead’s next album, the long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’.

“Where did you get this idea that there’s another Radiohead record?,” he replied, laughing. “I know it’s so funny and it comes from a good place. People want to hear another Radiohead record. I can’t even imagine it because we’ve not even talked about another record. I think that’s because the last record was so fucking awful to make! The tale of that record is so fucking dark. It casts a long shadow. Maybe ask me in six years time!”