Stream EOB’s Debut Album Earth
Welcome to Earth, the debut solo album from Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien. Working under the name EOB, O’Brien has funneled a decade’s worth of ideas and a broad cast of collaborators into a truly fascinating collection of music. This album bleeps and surges and thumps and whirrs, all while congealing into something quite immediate and accessible. It’s a straightforward pop-rock collection in essence, a sonic exploration in practice.
O’Brien began working on Earth way back in 2013 upon returning home to Wales after a sabbatical in Brazil with his family. Life in Rio de Janeiro was vividly inspiring for him, particularly Carnivale, which he has described as “an explosion of light, melody, rhythm and love… for me, one of those musical eureka moments.” Since then, he’s wrangled in an impressive list of names to accent his vision, including members of Radiohead (Colin Greenwood), Portishead (Adrian Utley), and Wilco (Glenn Kotche) plus Laura Marling, Nathan East, Omar Hakim, and more. It was produced by Flood, known for his work on classics by U2, Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Smashing Pumpkins, and more.
We’ve already heard Earth’s punchy and inventive opening track “Shangri-La,” its epic Utopian metamorphosis “Brasil,” the spaced-out rave-up “Olympik,” and the album-closing Laura Marling duet “Cloak Of The Night.” There’s much more where that came from, and now you can dive into it all. Stream the full album below.
Earth is out now on Capitol.