Album Review: Thom Yorke - Suspiria (Music For The Luca Guadagnino Film)

A soundtrack is a tricky thing to enjoy; supposed to augment, supplement or transcend it's accompanying art, but taken out of context it can sometimes feel inadequate. Thom Yorke soundtracking a Suspiria reboot is so incredibly difficult to decouple from context, it’s hard to say if it can stand without the weight of the movie or the man.

Some parts scream Yorke, or rather, Yorke laments across them in a vaguely hallucinogenic way, while other elements list from faintly eldritch to outright sinister with the help of synth stabs and Gregorian chants delivered with the guttural malaise of noise-rock in a foley room. It’s a lattice of semi-irrelevant ambience and isolated SFX that gives Suspiria a disconcerting feeling like it's the ghost of Radiohead rattling chains on a haunted house tour. Though deliriously long, it is a wonderful tour punctuated by some suspiciously charming songs that wouldn’t feel out of place on a The King Of Limbs successor.

Overall, Yorke’s take lands on a softer side of psychedelic than Goblin’s original, for better or worse, featuring far less saxophone and its own diffident kind of flamboyance.