As any athlete will tell you, when you fall out of the routine of training and regular conditioning, you begin to quickly slip from your peak level of performance. So it is with songwriting. While Yorke avoided the craft for several years with a career change, the results of Simple reveal a more spotty and less assured version of what we remember from Unbelievable Truth. Songs such as "Simple", "Twist Of The Knife", "Always By Your Side" and "Lay Down", for the most part, underwhelm. In days gone by they would have been acceptable non-album cuts, but here they receive too much attention and deliver too little reward.
Fortunately, there are also definite reasons to embrace this return, and those reasons include some quality tracks. Lead single "Rise And Fall", "One In A Million", "Let It Be True", and the closer "Ode To A Friend" quickly hit their mark, delivering effortlessly thoughtful songs. The ones that work, really work, and overall make up for some less than stellar cuts. Yorke has a talent still sorely missed from many of his more popular peers.
For a taste of the record, there is a free download available of "Rise And Fall".
In general, Simple seems to alternate back and forth between some tracks that are wonderful returns to form and then others that are "nice enough" but ultimately forgettable. It's an album of transition, of an artist making his way back to music and polishing off some skills that have collected dust. Fans of Unbelievable Truth will be rewarded with an addition to their collection they thought might never come. Others will find a promising, but not yet overwhelmingly so, singer-songwriter talent with a mixed bag of tunes.
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