Every group of friends has one member who, despite being a bit off-the-wall, is really key to the success of the group. The Golden Girls had Rose. The Friends had Phoebe.
And then there’s Atoms For Peace.
A supergroup with (so far) only one album, 2013’s AMOK, this is a group of talented 90s legends. The main creative force was Radiohead’s Thom Yorke; much of AMOK feels like an extension of Yorke’s 2006 solo album The Eraser, and even the album art is similar. There was also Nigel Godrich, who had made significant contributions to Radiohead as a producer, but who was a keyboardist in his own right. There was Joey Waronker, drummer for REM and Beck. And finally, on bass, the most surprising member: Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
If you’re familiar with 90s rock, a Radiohead / Chilli Peppers collaboration probably feels unlikely. Radiohead were rock infused with electronic, RHCP were rock infused with funk. Radiohead created poetic ballads to the alienation brought about by technology, while RHCP liked to take the stage wearing strategically placed socks. Yorke did a film score in collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra. Flea laid down one of the most famous hip hop bass lines of all time while wearing the most ridiculous pants of all time.
However, Flea told Rolling Stone that despite their different images, they shared an improvisational approach to music, and that was how many of the songs on AMOK came about. Yorke, Flea insisted, was not as “cerebral” as people might think, at least not in terms of being stuck to what’s printed on a sheet of music. “Thom is the type of musician who doesn’t think at all. He goes totally on feeling and intuition.”
I’m not sure what the lesson is here, other than the obvious one: every group of friends needs a Rose, or Phoebe, or Flea, just to balance the others out.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. There’s not really a typical drum beat, but there’s plenty of percussion.
2. There’s not a typical guitar solo, but the little descending riff the guitar plays is oddly catchy.
3. Flea’s bass line in the first two minutes is just a tiny but out of step with the metronomic percussion. Just weird enough.
Recommended listening activity:
Designing shirts for your favourite group of friends.