Ed O’Brien Steps Outside Radiohead’s Frame With the Prog-Tinged ‘Blue Morpho’

Ed O’Brien has released his first solo album under his own name. Blue Morpho arrived with little ceremony but makes a clear statement: this is music Radiohead would never make. The record lands after O’Brien regrouped with his band for a legacy tour, yet its seven tracks point in an entirely different direction.

The album pulls from the more melodic, theatrical side of progressive rock. Genesis and Yes feel closer to these arrangements than anything approaching Radiohead’s atmospheric restraint. Three of the seven tracks stretch past typical radio lengths, with closer “Obrigado” reaching nine minutes. Paul Epworth, best known as a co-writer for Paul McCartney, produced the record and kept O’Brien anchored to vocal melody whenever instrumental wanderlust crept in.

Epworth’s presence is felt throughout. On “Sweet Spot,” Phil Selway adds light, precise drumming beneath a gentle guitar line. “Teachers” pivots into a bass-heavy samba built from crisp percussion and power chords. There is no hiding the Brazilian influence either. O’Brien lived there with his family, and that warmth soaks into “Obrigado,” a dreamlike excursion that ends with a jagged, backwards guitar solo.

O’Brien does not try to match Thom Yorke as a vocalist. He sidesteps that entirely, opting for a delivery that sits somewhere between Peter Gabriel and a softer folk cadence. “Thin Places” uses fragile flute and lingering piano, echoing early Genesis without feeling like a throwback. “Solfeggio” is an instrumental built on droning keyboards, no lyrics, just a single idea pushed forward.

The solo move shows an artist carving out space he never had before. Radiohead’s catalog is vast, but it never made room for this kind of direct emotion or structural looseness. Blue Morpho is not a downbeat record in the vein of The Bends or The King of Limbs. It wears its melancholy lightly, with a Brendan Behan-like grin tucked inside each unhappy turn. O’Brien has always been vital to Radiohead’s architecture. Now it is clear he can build something of his own.