If you’re familiar with the stranger electronic songs on Radiohead’s brilliant 2000 release, Kid A, you should have a pretty good idea of what the songs on Thom Yorke’s solo debut, The Eraser, sound like.

Let’s do a quick refresher. After releasing the enormously successful O.K. Computer in 1997, Radiohead had the difficult task of deciding how to follow it up.  So they threw the rulebook (and largely, the guitars) out the window and came up with the bizarre Kid A, a wonderful disc full of electronics, weird beats, whacked-out brass instruments and, did I mention electronics?

The Eraser follows this pattern pretty closely. But unlike Kid A, something is seriously missing (namely, the other four members of Radiohead), and I think it illustrates perfectly just how much those four contribute to Radiohead’s overall success.

The electronics and beats, along with Yorke’s distinctive vocals, are present on The Eraser. But the overall arrangements are somehow lacking – some of the tunes just sort of drone on. In Radiohead, you can almost always count on multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood to come up with some weird instrumentation to carry a song along, or for guitarist Ed O’Brien to throw in some strange effects. Here, it’s mostly just the beats and strange blips.

That’s not to say that The Eraser doesn’t have its moments. “Harrowdown Hill” is a flat-out creepy tune with a great vocal and some dark string sounds set against the ever-present electronic beats. “Black Swan” is another standout, a tune that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Radiohead’s last release, Hail To The Thief.

Still, I’m left wondering how much better the songs would have been had the other members of Radiohead been involved in their creation. Greenwood does make an appearance playing piano on the opening title track, but other than that, everything is played by Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich.

All this said, this should be a good enough disc to tide Radiohead fans over until the release of their next album, hopefully sometime next year (they’ve toured earlier this year with a bunch of potential new songs for that disc).

Special mention must be made to Stanley Donwood who came up with The Eraser’s packaging – some of the more unique I’ve seen in quite some time.