Radiohead, R.E.M. Hit the Studio to Work On New Albums

A pair of the biggest bands in rock, Radiohead and R.E.M., hit the studio recently to begin work on their next albums. While both groups are in the beginning stages of writing and recording, they offered up some early details in a series of interviews.

Radiohead have reconvened with longtime producer Nigel Godrich to start work on the follow-up of 2007's In Rainbows. "It was very noisy and chaotic and really fun," bassist Colin Greenwood told BBC's 6 Music of the band's recording session. "It's at the stage where we've got the big Lego box out and we've tipped it out on the floor and we're just looking at all the bits and thinking 'What's next?' I'm very impressed and grateful for Nigel our producer and his ability to make it all sound vaguely plausible."

Greenwood had some more vague details for NME.com, adding, "It's really cool and everything is sounding great. It's early days and it is a bit like having a scrapbook at the moment because everything is up in the air, but it's good to be back in the studio." Considering the recent report that the band was encouraged by their management to "split up" during the tumultuous recording of In Rainbows, we're glad to hear that things thus far are going smoothly. While the band provided no specifics, one of the tracks that may get the studio treatment is "Super Collider," which Radiohead premiered during concerts on their In Rainbows tour.

As for R.E.M., guitarist Peter Buck spoke to Pitchfork about the early stages of recording their follow-up to last year's Accelerate. Buck and bassist Mike Mills recently entered a Portland, Oregon studio to record skeletal tracks that they written wrote touring behind their recent album in the hopes of making some music that would "excite Michael [Stipe] about getting inspired." Unlike the stripped-down Accelerate, Buck says, "This record, I want it to be broader; I think Michael [Stipe] is into that. So there are some really pretty acoustic things, some really total noisy rock, and some kind of poppy stuff. It runs the gamut." While Jackknife Lee will likely serve as producer again, Tucker Martine, who produced the Decemberists' Hazards of Love helped Buck and Mills lay down the demos.

Related Stories:

• Radiohead Advised to "Split Up" Prior to "In Rainbows"
• R.E.M. Play Surprise Song at Tribute to Their Three-Decade Career
• From Art School to the Hall of Fame: R.E.M. Give a Tour of Their Discography

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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