Thom Yorke’s Beautiful New Nightmare

Thom Yorke’s new album is inspired by Carl Jung’s theories of the unconsciousness and by the way the brain processes the world in sleep, which is to say, simply, it’s about dreaming. A red flag, no? Heavy-handed TV sequences about dead characters and the postcardification of Salvador Dali’s melting watches have made art of the subconscious all too ordinary, and everyone knows that there’s little more boring than someone else describing their own dream—unless it involved you.

For Yorke, particularly, a 2019 album about dreams might appear redundant. As Radiohead’s singer and as