Download Two New Radiohead Songs: “Harry Patch” & “These Are My Twisted Words”

On Weds. August 5, 2009, Radiohead released the song “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” I love Radiohead, so I immediately stopped what I was doing when I heard on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic that they’d just received a new song. It took my breath away.

The video above offers a slideshow of images, mostly from Harry Patch’s life, interspersed with his words which inspired the song and which Thom Yorke sings. The video below uses paintings to illustrate the song.

I’m not surprised that the song, available as a free download on the Radiohead site, inspired so many video responses. I waded through quite a few of them before choosing the three here. Unfortunately, many of them capitalize on Radiohead’s popularity and the song’s powerful impact by imposing on viewers obnoxious ads.

On the Radiohead blog “Dead Air Space,” Thom Yorke put up this post August 5:

Harry Patch (In Memory Of)

“i am the only one that got through
the others died where ever they fell
it was an ambush
they came up from all sides
give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
i’ve seen devils coming up from the ground
i’ve seen hell upon this earth
the next will be chemical but they will never learn”

Recently the last remaining UK veteran of the 1st world war Harry Patch died at the age of 111.
I had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4.
The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me.
It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.
It was done live in an abbey. The strings were arranged by Jonny.
I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor.

It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us.
I hope we do not forget.

As Harry himself said
“Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims”.

This morning the Today program played the song for the first time and now it is available to download from our website.

Please click here to download.

The proceeds of this song will go to the British Legion.

To peace and understanding.

Thom

Thom and Jonny in the Abbey

Above is another version of “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)”; this sobering video uploaded by TRINCIBUTZAR uses vintage film footage to illustrate the song.

On Friday Aug 7, the L.A. Times published this article on the front page: Britain says goodbye to Harry Patch, the last of its World War I soldiers: The tribute to Patch, who died two weeks ago at age 111, reflects the emotional grip that the ‘war to end all wars’ still holds on the nation.

In other Radiohead news, yesterday they posted the following plus another new song to download from their blog:

So here’s a new song, called ‘These Are My Twisted Words’.

We’ve been recording for a while, and this was one of the first we finished.
We’re pretty proud of it.

There’s other stuff in various states of completion, but this is one we’ve been practicing, and which we’ll probably play at this summer’s concerts. Hope you like it.

Download the audio here or torrent here.

Jonny

Here are two more posts about Radiohead with some of my favorite videos:

Radiohead’s “House of Cards” video: make one yourself
MUSIC: Springsteen! Radiohead “Weird Fishes” Animated Video! Coachella 2009 Line-up!

PS I dare you to listen and watch all three Harry Patch videos at the same time…it works for me–does it work for you?