Review Summary: How could one pianist (with no vocal support) capture a group known not only for the delicacy and wide range of its lead singer’s voice but also for the depth and detail of the accompanying instrumental parts? Here's your answer.
“True Love Waits” is a Radiohead-freak’s dream – a series of excellent renditions of classic Radiohead songs that accomplishes exactly what a ‘tribute album’ should set out to accomplish. Here, Christopher O’Riley adds something new to an already brilliant selection of music. The album conjures its own deep, meditative atmosphere. The song selection is just right; not only are songs from nearly every era of Radiohead’s career (at this point Radiohead’s most recent album was “Amnesiac”, though “Hail to the Thief” was officially released a day after “True Love Waits”), but each song seems carefully selected to make for the best tribute. O’Riley must have been tempted to do “Creep”, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, “Paranoid Android”, and plenty of others, but the quality of the songs he does use leaves little room for complaining.
The album opens mysteriously with “Everything In Its Right Place” and “Knives Out”. The first chords of “Everything In Its Right Place” match up with those from “Kid A”, but soon a fluttering, slightly higher progression creeps into the background, until the music comes alive in a way that’s stunning and unique. Where the “Kid A” version has Thom’s synthesized voice, O’Riley substitutes with complex melodic lines, creating a hectic sound that is brilliant in its own right. “Knives Out” may have the most enveloping atmosphere on the album. The music sifts around with the constantly changing melody line held together only by a striking key chord phrase.
The album takes a welcome jump back to “The Bends” with “Black Star”. It’s a loud, booming piece, quite the opposite of “Bulletproof”. The anguish of the endlessly astounding sound of Thom’s voice sustaining the third syllable of “bulletproof” in the original is replaced by a bright, pretty, and altogether more hopeful line by O’Riley. “Fake Plastic Trees” is the last track from “The Bends” to appear, and it doesn’t disappoint. Like “Bulletproof”, the lack of downbeat lyrics gives a more optimistic spin than before.
O’Riley’s “Let Down” keeps the features that made the original one of Radiohead’s all-time greatest, from the wide array of perfectly-placed notes sprinkled all over the music to the repeated buildups. The final section, as before, is knock-out, as the music booms into a forte. The “Pablo Honey” tracks, “You”, “Thinking About You”, and “I Can’t” are the loudest. They’re all driven by a flurry of notes and are played with energy to match.
On “Karma Police”, the final moments make up perhaps the best section on the album. The slow, deliberate buildup retains the mood of the original minus, regretfully, the biting sarcasm of the Karma Police arresting a loud man and a woman with a “Hitler hairdo”. However, the song more than makes up for the lyrical loss with the piano version of the final verse. You can almost here “For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself”, and the movement carries a striking punch.
Other parts shine as well, from the deep groans of “Airbag” to complex “Subterranean Homesick Alien”. “Motion Picture Soundtrack” provides a finish just as introspective and fitting as it did on “Kid A”. O’Riley uses the same opening and closing as that album, an appropriate choice, as “True Love Waits” carries a dark, otherworldly similar to that of “Kid A”.
The title track deserves attention as well. “True Love Waits” is the most hauntingly beautiful piece on the album. O’Riley keeps the acoustic melody as the central rhythm, supporting it with a unique series of growing melodies. The song sums up the basic strength of the album: what it loses by the absence of Thom Yorke it gains with new, deep, and startling supporting lines.
“True Love Waits” is an excellent tribute. I personally can’t justify giving it a higher rating than 4/5 because, well, Radiohead came up with all this. What Christopher O’Riley does, though, is successfully keep the essence of the original songs while adding something interesting. This is more than a mere collection of ‘alternate versions’, but a work of art worthy of repeated listens.
