Radiohead's Philip Selway Stretches Out on Solo Debut

When Spinner recently chatted with Radiohead drummer Philip Selway about 'Familial,' his sparse collection of folk songs, we had a few theories we ran by him. First off: that he learned a whole bunch over the years from watching Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke do his thing. Interestingly enough, that isn't the case.

"It's the same as watching anybody in the band, how they've just kind of honed their own particular take on what they're playing," Selway tells Spinner. "There are very strong voices that come through that and finding out what's appropriate to you. It took a while though, a lot of trial and error, and some horrendous moments of hearing it back for the first time, just not how I heard it in my head."

In describing 'Familial' as a "warm" record, Selway argues that even though he and his Radiohead cohorts have been working on their own projects more and more over the last few years, those breaks actually feed into their collective work as a band.

"It's certainly stretched me musically in terms of actually trying to pull the whole thing together," he says. "Anything that any of us in Radiohead do outside of the band, there's this feeling that actually that's an important part of the larger picture because all of that stuff feeds back into in various ways to how we go forward. So yeah, all those experiences, all the excitement and trepidation, it's stretching me."

That said, Selway had a chance this time around to assemble his own cast to support him. Most notably, he wrangled Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche to provide the soft, textual rhythmic elements that are scattered throughout the album. Again, we thought that in this instance, Selway would be rather ho-hum, since he certainly knows his way around a drum kit-but not so.

"Glenn has that ability to kind of work on all dynamic levels, but at that very low level we are playing at, he finds all these fascinating sounds and shifting textures and shifting rhythms," he explains. "It's at the heart of what's going on and really gives a depth to it. It has a feel of being programmed or processed in some way, but that's what he's doing in real time. To get this real flow to the playing is very unusual, and I don't know anybody else that can do that."

'Familial' is out now on Nonesuch.