Philip Selway doesn’t mind if you find his new album Strange Dance a little scary. In fact, he takes it as a compliment. “That’s the first time I’ve heard ‘scary’ as an adjective in relation to it,” he says, sounding delighted.
The Radiohead drummer—who now adds “solo shape-shifter” to his resume—has conjured up something ghostly with Strange Dance. It’s a record full of mist and melancholy, sculpted rather than written, built like an architectural oddity of melody and texture. “I had that widescreen soundscape in my head before we started,” Selway says, like a guy who casually daydreams in Dolby Atmos. “I wanted to explore orchestral textures… in the context of my songs.”
That context includes a small army of ringers: producer Marta Salogni, string arranger Laura Moody, and Portishead’s Adrian Utley among them. Salogni, who engineered Selway’s vocals back in 2013 and recently worked with Depeche Mode, proved especially pivotal. “She really absorbs what it is you want to get out of a record,” Selway says. “And then finds ways to unlock that for you.”
What they unlocked is an album that opens with the words Don’t believe what they say and closes with There will be better days—a tightrope walk between resignation and hope, written by someone who admits, “I’m not a paranoid person all the time… but it does seep up from time to time.”
The lead-off track, “Little Things,” might be the most deceptively polite way anyone’s ever tackled gaslighting. “That song is very much about that experience—on a personal level, or as we’ve all felt over the past three or four years, on a broader societal, governmental level,” Selway says. “I wanted to write songs which would be relatable, emotionally resonant… but not autobiographical.”
The title track is the album’s most peculiar beast, a song that’s been in Selway’s head for nearly two decades and mutated from an acoustic guitar sketch to an angular sound collage of orchestral swells and off-kilter rhythms. “It came from this very fluttering place… to this quite singular soundscape,” he says, giving major props to percussionist Valentina Magaletti. “It just felt like the culmination of that particular collaboration.”
That collaborative high carried over into Selway’s live setup—so far a rotating cast that includes full band gigs, solo acoustic sets, and a version with a string quartet and percussionist. “It’s really interesting seeing the material in all these different contexts,” he says. “Even though I’ve only done a dozen shows, it’s already gone through various incarnations.”
Of course, every solo Selway interview ends with the same question: What about Radiohead?
“We’re always talking about future plans,” he offers. “We’re all very keen to do something together again musically… whether that starts with an album, I don’t know. But there would be something happening musically.” He pauses. “When we do something again, it will be for the right reasons. If a record comes out of that, that’d be bloody marvelous.”
Until then, he’s content being the rare drummer who makes artful, unsettling chamber-pop records about truth, texture, and the occasional societal breakdown. And if anyone’s still clinging to the idea that Radiohead ran from melody, Selway shrugs.
“I think I’m still a bit of a pop head,” he confesses. “I don’t really start moving forward until I feel there’s some distinct melody. Something to hold on to.”
Catchiness, it turns out, is subversive when delivered through the right ghostly haze.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
