Harry Patch (In Memory Of)
Encyclopedia
"Harry Patch" is a song by the English alternative rock
band Radiohead
. The band wrote and recorded the song as a tribute to the British supercentenarian
Harry Patch
, the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches during World War I
. The song was self-released on 5 August 2009 as a downloadable single
and sold for £
1 from the band's website, with all proceeds donated to The Royal British Legion
.
Recorded in an abbey shortly before Patch's death, the song consists of Thom Yorke
's singing and a string arrangement composed by Jonny Greenwood
, absent of Radiohead's typical mix of rock
and electronic
instrumentation. The lyrics are from the perspective of a soldier in the First World War, and include modifications of quotations from Patch. While reception to the song was generally positive, with many critics praising the song's message, others panned the song as overly somber. The Patch family voiced their approval of the song's message and the band's charitable use of the proceeds.
Dead Air Space, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" was inspired by a "very emotional" 2005 interview with Harry Patch on the Today programme
on BBC Radio 4
. Yorke wrote that "The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me." The song was recorded live in an abbey
, only a few weeks before Patch died on 25 July 2009 at the age of 111. Along with follow-up single "These Are My Twisted Words
", "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" represents the earliest releases from the recording sessions that would result in Radiohead's next album, The King of Limbs
, although neither song is included on that album.
The track has no standard rock instrumentation, and instead comprises an orchestral string arrangement composed by Jonny Greenwood
and Yorke's vocals. Strings introduce the song with a series of repeated arpeggiated
notes, which continue as Yorke's singing begins. There is a bridge
described as a "grim, delicately furious peak" halfway through the song. Pitchfork Media
s Mark Richardson compared the track to Gavin Bryars
' 1971 composition Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
and Samuel Barber
's 1936 Adagio for Strings
. Critics from Rolling Stone
, The Village Voice
, and The Daily Telegraph
drew comparisons between the song's string arrangements and the score
to the film There Will Be Blood
, primarily composed by Greenwood; however, Jim Fusilli of The Wall Street Journal
believed that the two works "[bear] no resemblance" to each other. Andrea Rice of American Songwriter simply noted that the song's style was far removed from "anything emblematic of Radiohead".
While Radiohead has expressed anti-war
sentiments in the past—including a contribution to the 1995 War Child
charity compilation The Help Album
—"Harry Partch (In Memory Of)" marks the first time that a Radiohead song explicitly refers to war in its lyrics. For this reason, the song marks a departure from Yorke's typically abstract writing. The lyrics are from the perspective of a soldier in the midst of First World War trench warfare. Several of the lines, including "Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves" and "The next will be chemical but they will never learn", are adapted from quotations by Patch. Both Luke Lewis of NME
and Simon Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment Weekly
compared the lyrics to Wilfred Owen
's First World War-era poem Dulce et Decorum est
. Rice referred to Yorke's voice in the song as an "innocent and youthful falsetto
" and the NME said his singing is "subdued to the point where you really need to read the lyrics".
's Today programme on the morning of 5 August 2009, one day before Patch's burial. It became available for purchase later that day on Radiohead's online store W.A.S.T.E. as a download for £
1, or US$
1.68 at the time of release. All proceeds from the song are donated to The Royal British Legion
, a charity
supporting those who are serving or have served in the British Armed Forces
. The track can also be streamed
from the Today section of BBC Online, where it was posted along with a description and the lyrics. Based on internet traffic data for Radiohead's website taken from Alexa Internet
, The Guardian
s Chris Salmon believed that if the single had been released conventionally it would have likely cracked the UK Singles Chart
's top ten.
The song's unconventional release, carried out "in classic Radiohead fashion" according to Mehan Jayasuriya of PopMatters
, was praised by The Guardians John Harris: "Welcome, once again, to the future of popular music: no need for albums, or marketing campaigns, or grand announcements—just a song by Radiohead, recorded mere weeks ago, premiered on yesterday's Today programme, and now available to download." Caleb Garning of Wired
noted the song's "abrupt creation" and the sudden announcement of The King of Limbs as part of Radiohead's move towards an unpredictable release schedule for new recorded material. In a feature for The Quietus
, Wyndham Wallace argues that the track's release is in line with broader music industry trends towards "instant gratification", kick-started by the digital release of Radiohead's previous album In Rainbows
.
Critical reception was generally positive. Jim Fusilli of The Wall Street Journal referred to the song as "a masterly achievement", highlighting Yorke's "eerie" vocals and Greenwood's "elegant" arrangement, and concluding that "with Radiohead, the unexpected isn't merely a ploy. It's a new approach to modern music that's often thrilling." Dan Martin of The Guardian described the song as "a desolate lament over bleak, circling strings that build as the song progresses" and wrote that "considering the solemnity of the subject, the song finds Radiohead at their most understated and serene". Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment Weekly called the song "a gorgeous anti-war ballad" and said that "Needless to say, it's very much worth any Radiohead fan's pound, regardless of the exchange rate." NME named the track as one of the ten best tracks of the week and called it an "elegaic", "affecting, slow-burn statement" that "rather than hectoring, [...] states simply the horrors of war that Patch spoke so movingly about".
Critic Allan Raible of ABC News
compared the song to earlier Radiohead songs "How to Disappear Completely" and "Pyramid Song
" and called it "one of the most beautiful compositions Thom Yorke and company have ever released." Richardson gave the song a score of seven out of ten in Pitchforks song review feature The Playlist, and wrote that while it could be criticized as "a noble but failed experiment, overly maudlin and sentimental even if it is surface-level pretty", the song's "simplicity and unsubtle affect, especially coming from this band, wind up being strengths." In a later column, Richardson would further defend the song from charges of excessive sentimentality and attributes the song's emotional success to its severe subject, death: "If these pieces were connected to thoughts of breaking up with a girlfriend or getting fired or lamenting cold weather or any of a million other of life's tragedies, they wouldn't work, at least not in the same way. They need that huge weight [of death] [...] on the other end to balance them out." Kyle Anderson of MTV.com
called the song a "slow, florid affair" and placed its "typically dark" lyrics in the context of Radiohead's previous political activism, such as their participation in the anti-human trafficking
MTV EXIT
campaign.
Praise for the song was not universal. Rob Harvilla of Village Voice wrote that the track offered "nothing terribly earth-shattering" and thought that "the contrast between Thom's dolphin-soothing calm and lyrics like 'I've seen hell upon this earth/The next one will be chemical/But they will never learn' might just ruin your lunch." David Malitz of The Washington Post
unfavourably compared the song to Sigur Rós
and wrote that it "doesn't really go anywhere", but also that it "[still] kept my interest for five and half minutes".
Patch's grandson Roger Patch voiced his family's approval of the song, saying:
Peter Cleminson, national chairman of The Royal British Legion, thanked Radiohead for their support and said "Radiohead has picked up the torch from Harry Patch to hold it high. [...] Radiohead uses Harry's own words to remind us of the horrors of war, and we believe Harry would be pleased."
In an interview with AOL
's Spinner.com
, Matthew Friedberger
of The Fiery Furnaces
criticized the song's release, saying of Radiohead: "Fuck you! You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That's a put-on. That's a branding technique, and Radiohead have their brand that they're popular and intelligent, so they have a song about Harry Patch." The Fiery Furnace's publicist said that Friedberger confused Harry Patch, the veteran, with Harry Partch
, the microtonal
composer. Indeed, in the interview Friedberger mockingly asks "Is it 48 notes to the octave?" in reference to Partch's just intonation
43-tone scale
. Friedberger defended his reference to the composer as deliberate "fooling around" rather than genuine confusion. In the same statement, Friedberger says he "would have much preferred to insult Beck
but he is too afraid of Scientologists
"; shortly thereafter, Beck released a song about Harry Partch, which Pitchfork referred to as either "directly related to Friedberger's remarks, or just one hell of a coincidence". Radiohead did not respond to Friedberger's criticisms.
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
. The band wrote and recorded the song as a tribute to the British supercentenarian
Supercentenarian
A supercentenarian is someone who has reached the age of 110 years. This age is achieved by about one in a thousand centenarians....
Harry Patch
Harry Patch
Henry John "Harry" Patch , known in his latter years as "the Last Fighting Tommy", was a British supercentenarian, briefly the oldest man in Europe, and the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War...
, the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. The song was self-released on 5 August 2009 as a downloadable single
Music download
A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...
and sold for £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
1 from the band's website, with all proceeds donated to The Royal British Legion
The Royal British Legion
The Royal British Legion , sometimes referred to as simply The Legion, is the United Kingdom's leading charity providing financial, social and emotional support to those who have served or who are currently serving in the British Armed Forces, and their dependants.-History:The British Legion was...
.
Recorded in an abbey shortly before Patch's death, the song consists of Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
's singing and a string arrangement composed by Jonny Greenwood
Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer, best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, but serves mainly as lead guitarist and keyboard player. In addition to guitar and keyboard, he plays viola, harmonica,...
, absent of Radiohead's typical mix of rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
and electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
instrumentation. The lyrics are from the perspective of a soldier in the First World War, and include modifications of quotations from Patch. While reception to the song was generally positive, with many critics praising the song's message, others panned the song as overly somber. The Patch family voiced their approval of the song's message and the band's charitable use of the proceeds.
Recording and music
According to a post by Yorke on Radiohead's blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
Dead Air Space, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" was inspired by a "very emotional" 2005 interview with Harry Patch on the Today programme
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
. Yorke wrote that "The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me." The song was recorded live in an abbey
Abbey
An abbey is a Catholic monastery or convent, under the authority of an Abbot or an Abbess, who serves as the spiritual father or mother of the community.The term can also refer to an establishment which has long ceased to function as an abbey,...
, only a few weeks before Patch died on 25 July 2009 at the age of 111. Along with follow-up single "These Are My Twisted Words
These Are My Twisted Words
"These Are My Twisted Words" is a song by the English alternative rock band Radiohead. It was officially released on 17 August 2009, as a free download from the band's website.-Release:On 12 August 2009, the song was leaked via BitTorrent...
", "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" represents the earliest releases from the recording sessions that would result in Radiohead's next album, The King of Limbs
The King of Limbs
The King of Limbs is the eighth studio album by English rock band Radiohead, produced by Nigel Godrich. It was self-released on 18 February 2011 as a download in MP3 and WAV formats, followed by physical CD and 12" vinyl releases on 28 March, a wider digital release via AWAL, and a special...
, although neither song is included on that album.
The track has no standard rock instrumentation, and instead comprises an orchestral string arrangement composed by Jonny Greenwood
Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer, best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, but serves mainly as lead guitarist and keyboard player. In addition to guitar and keyboard, he plays viola, harmonica,...
and Yorke's vocals. Strings introduce the song with a series of repeated arpeggiated
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
notes, which continue as Yorke's singing begins. There is a bridge
Bridge (music)
In music, especially western popular music, a bridge is a contrasting section which also prepares for the return of the original material section...
described as a "grim, delicately furious peak" halfway through the song. Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
s Mark Richardson compared the track to Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.-Early life and career:Born in Goole, East...
' 1971 composition Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a 1971 composition by Gavin Bryars. It is formed on a loop of an unknown homeless man singing a brief stanza. Rich harmonies, comprising string and brass, are gradually overlaid over the stanza. The piece was first recorded for use in a documentary which...
and Samuel Barber
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...
's 1936 Adagio for Strings
Adagio for Strings
Adagio for Strings is a work by Samuel Barber, arranged for string orchestra from the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. Barber finished the arrangement in 1936, the same year as he wrote the quartet...
. Critics from Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, and The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
drew comparisons between the song's string arrangements and the score
There Will Be Blood (album)
There Will Be Blood is the soundtrack to the 2007 film There Will Be Blood and features an original orchestral score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood...
to the film There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood is a 2007 drama film written, co-produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film is based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!. It tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California's oil boom of the late 19th and...
, primarily composed by Greenwood; however, Jim Fusilli of The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
believed that the two works "[bear] no resemblance" to each other. Andrea Rice of American Songwriter simply noted that the song's style was far removed from "anything emblematic of Radiohead".
While Radiohead has expressed anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
sentiments in the past—including a contribution to the 1995 War Child
War Child (charity)
War Child is a non-governmental organisation founded in the UK 1993, which focuses on providing assistance to children in areas of conflict and post-conflict. They use their film and entertainment background to raise money for aid agencies operating in former Yugoslavia...
charity compilation The Help Album
The Help Album
The Help Album is a 1995 charity album devoted to the War Child charity's aid efforts in war-stricken areas, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina...
—"Harry Partch (In Memory Of)" marks the first time that a Radiohead song explicitly refers to war in its lyrics. For this reason, the song marks a departure from Yorke's typically abstract writing. The lyrics are from the perspective of a soldier in the midst of First World War trench warfare. Several of the lines, including "Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves" and "The next will be chemical but they will never learn", are adapted from quotations by Patch. Both Luke Lewis of NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
and Simon Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
compared the lyrics to Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
's First World War-era poem Dulce et Decorum est
Dulce et Decorum Est
Dulce et Decorum est is a poem written by poet Wilfred Owen in 1917, during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. Owen's poem is known for its horrific imagery and condemnation of war. It was drafted at Craiglockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at...
. Rice referred to Yorke's voice in the song as an "innocent and youthful falsetto
Falsetto
Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...
" and the NME said his singing is "subdued to the point where you really need to read the lyrics".
Release
"Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" premiered on BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
's Today programme on the morning of 5 August 2009, one day before Patch's burial. It became available for purchase later that day on Radiohead's online store W.A.S.T.E. as a download for £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
1, or US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1.68 at the time of release. All proceeds from the song are donated to The Royal British Legion
The Royal British Legion
The Royal British Legion , sometimes referred to as simply The Legion, is the United Kingdom's leading charity providing financial, social and emotional support to those who have served or who are currently serving in the British Armed Forces, and their dependants.-History:The British Legion was...
, a charity
Charitable organization
A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...
supporting those who are serving or have served in the British Armed Forces
British Armed Forces
The British Armed Forces are the armed forces of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.Also known as Her Majesty's Armed Forces and sometimes legally the Armed Forces of the Crown, the British Armed Forces encompasses three professional uniformed services, the Royal Navy, the...
. The track can also be streamed
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
from the Today section of BBC Online, where it was posted along with a description and the lyrics. Based on internet traffic data for Radiohead's website taken from Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
s Chris Salmon believed that if the single had been released conventionally it would have likely cracked the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
's top ten.
The song's unconventional release, carried out "in classic Radiohead fashion" according to Mehan Jayasuriya of PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
, was praised by The Guardians John Harris: "Welcome, once again, to the future of popular music: no need for albums, or marketing campaigns, or grand announcements—just a song by Radiohead, recorded mere weeks ago, premiered on yesterday's Today programme, and now available to download." Caleb Garning of Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
noted the song's "abrupt creation" and the sudden announcement of The King of Limbs as part of Radiohead's move towards an unpredictable release schedule for new recorded material. In a feature for The Quietus
The Quietus
The Quietus is a British online rock music and pop culture magazine, focusing on arts news, reviews, and features. The site is an editorially independent publication led by John Doran and a group of freelance journalists and critics, some of whom have worked for other media outlets...
, Wyndham Wallace argues that the track's release is in line with broader music industry trends towards "instant gratification", kick-started by the digital release of Radiohead's previous album In Rainbows
In Rainbows
In Rainbows is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was first released on 10 October 2007 as a digital download self-released, that customers could order for whatever price they saw fit, followed by a standard CD release in most countries during the last week of 2007. The...
.
Reception
Critic Allan Raible of ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
compared the song to earlier Radiohead songs "How to Disappear Completely" and "Pyramid Song
Pyramid Song
"Pyramid Song" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was the first single from their 2001 album Amnesiac and the first Radiohead single released in over three years, after none were taken from their previous album Kid A....
" and called it "one of the most beautiful compositions Thom Yorke and company have ever released." Richardson gave the song a score of seven out of ten in Pitchforks song review feature The Playlist, and wrote that while it could be criticized as "a noble but failed experiment, overly maudlin and sentimental even if it is surface-level pretty", the song's "simplicity and unsubtle affect, especially coming from this band, wind up being strengths." In a later column, Richardson would further defend the song from charges of excessive sentimentality and attributes the song's emotional success to its severe subject, death: "If these pieces were connected to thoughts of breaking up with a girlfriend or getting fired or lamenting cold weather or any of a million other of life's tragedies, they wouldn't work, at least not in the same way. They need that huge weight [of death] [...] on the other end to balance them out." Kyle Anderson of MTV.com
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
called the song a "slow, florid affair" and placed its "typically dark" lyrics in the context of Radiohead's previous political activism, such as their participation in the anti-human trafficking
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...
MTV EXIT
MTV EXIT
The ' campaign is a multimedia initiative produced by MTV EXIT Foundation to raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking...
campaign.
Praise for the song was not universal. Rob Harvilla of Village Voice wrote that the track offered "nothing terribly earth-shattering" and thought that "the contrast between Thom's dolphin-soothing calm and lyrics like 'I've seen hell upon this earth/The next one will be chemical/But they will never learn' might just ruin your lunch." David Malitz of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
unfavourably compared the song to Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós is an Icelandic post-rock band with classicaland minimalist elements. The band is known for its ethereal sound, and frontman Jónsi Birgisson's falsetto vocals and use of bowed guitar. In January 2010, the band announced that they will be on hiatus. Since then, it has since been announced...
and wrote that it "doesn't really go anywhere", but also that it "[still] kept my interest for five and half minutes".
Patch's grandson Roger Patch voiced his family's approval of the song, saying:
"Our family is very touched that Radiohead has reached out to its followers and especially the younger generation through the single that echoes Harry's interview in 2005. Harry loved music and would be 100 per cent behind Radiohead in raising awareness of the suffering of conflict—not least the futility of it—in a way that can also benefit the Legion. It's a great idea which we support wholeheartedly."
Peter Cleminson, national chairman of The Royal British Legion, thanked Radiohead for their support and said "Radiohead has picked up the torch from Harry Patch to hold it high. [...] Radiohead uses Harry's own words to remind us of the horrors of war, and we believe Harry would be pleased."
In an interview with AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
's Spinner.com
Spinner (website)
Spinner is an AOL Music property, which bills itself as "the ultimate music blog for free MP3s, free CD listening, [and] discovering new artists."...
, Matthew Friedberger
Matthew Friedberger
Matthew Friedberger is half of the indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces. In the band he contributes the majority of the instrumentation, writes most of the songs and lyrics and occasionally sings...
of The Fiery Furnaces
The Fiery Furnaces
The Fiery Furnaces are a U.S. indie rock band formed in 2000 in Brooklyn, New York. The band's primary members are Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. The siblings are originally from Oak Park, Illinois, a near-western suburb of Chicago.- Band biography :...
criticized the song's release, saying of Radiohead: "Fuck you! You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That's a put-on. That's a branding technique, and Radiohead have their brand that they're popular and intelligent, so they have a song about Harry Patch." The Fiery Furnace's publicist said that Friedberger confused Harry Patch, the veteran, with Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...
, the microtonal
Microtonal music
Microtonal music is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.-Terminology:...
composer. Indeed, in the interview Friedberger mockingly asks "Is it 48 notes to the octave?" in reference to Partch's just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
43-tone scale
Harry Partch's 43-tone scale
The 43-tone scale is a just intonation scale with 43 pitches in each octave, invented and used by Harry Partch.The first of Partch's "four concepts" is "The scale of musical intervals begins with absolute consonance and gradually progresses into an infinitude of dissonance, the consonance of the...
. Friedberger defended his reference to the composer as deliberate "fooling around" rather than genuine confusion. In the same statement, Friedberger says he "would have much preferred to insult Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
but he is too afraid of Scientologists
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
"; shortly thereafter, Beck released a song about Harry Partch, which Pitchfork referred to as either "directly related to Friedberger's remarks, or just one hell of a coincidence". Radiohead did not respond to Friedberger's criticisms.
See also
- Last PostLast Post (poem)"Last Post" is a poem written by Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, in 2009. It was commissioned by the BBC to mark the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, two of the last three surviving British veterans from the First World War, and was first broadcast on the BBC...
, a poem in memory of Patch by British poet laureatePoet LaureateA poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
Carol Ann DuffyCarol Ann DuffyCarol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...