Last month, Radiohead’s guitarist Ed O’Brien called to talk about his debut solo record, Earth, but like everyone else in the world, he had other things on his mind. I asked how he was. “I’ve been better,” he said. “I’ve definitely got the virus.” Though he technically couldn’t know that for sure—he hadn’t gotten a test, he said, thinking the short supply was better used on someone more vulnerable than a member of Radiohead—he had been holed up in self-isolation in Wales with flu-like symptoms for just over a week.

Without missing a beat, though, O’Brien rebounded optimistically. “Hopefully I’ll have built up some kind of immunity to it and once I’m better I can go out and be a helpful citizen to the local community, maybe do deliveries and stuff like that. Because if you get it first, you’re in the initial wave and then you can then get back out and help.” He noted there’s a silver lining to any crisis like this, because “that human spirit of compassion, empathy, and kindness comes to the fore.”

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A month later, O’Brien has fully recovered from whatever had been ailing him, just in time for the release of Earth, out tomorrow. Even though Earth has been in the oven for several years, it feels especially suited for our present moment: the spirit of optimism from our conversation runs through the record in many ways. For starters, O’Brien is plowing ahead with putting it out at a time when many artists are pushing their release dates to a (hopefully) more receptive music-consuming market many months down the line. More importantly, Earth is warm and open; it’s a summer-weather record coming out at a time when we’re stuck indoors. Where Radiohead often pulls you to dark and esoteric corners of our modern dystopia, Earth takes you by the hand and brings you outside into the sun.

A lot of that has to do with where O’Brien started working on the album. At the end of 2012, he fulfilled a lifelong dream: he stepped away from his band, picked up his family, and moved to a remote village in Brazil. “I realized I had all these incredible adventures with Radiohead, but what I wanted to do was have a proper full-on adventure with my wife and kids,” he says. The transformative experience became ground zero for Earth, which he wrote and recorded over the next six years (with a break built in for Radiohead’s 2016 album, A Moon Shaped Pool).

These self-isolating days, the thought of abruptly moving to a different country seems impossible, even for rock stars. So we asked O’Brien to reflect on what he learned when he uprooted his life and moved halfway around the world, and how that experience shaped his new album.

Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve

Why Brazil?

We had a deep love of all things South America, and we'd been to Brazil a lot. It felt really important to go to a culture like Brazil. I love Britain, and it is my home, but it’s quite an emotionally restrained place. I definitely wanted to go to a culture that was open-hearted, that was warm, that wears its heart on its sleeve, that is affectionate, because that makes me happy.

Did that culture rub off on you?

Definitely. I say things now rather than keep them in. If I love something and I appreciate it, I'll say it, and I wear my heart on my sleeve. In a way, what's good about it is I'm able to access my truth. My truth comes out. Whereas, sometimes Britain is the land of passive aggression. People don't say what they think. It also helped me, too, creatively, because creativity is about your truth. By going somewhere like Brazil, it really helped me to not be ashamed of my truth.

How did that impact your songwriting? Did it make things easier?

It was interesting because it comes in waves. You have the initial, "Oh this is my truth, and this is the way the song is coming out," and then the next thing you get back to Britain and you fall into old habits. For me, the fascinating part of the whole process was about halfway through the project of the recording, it wasn't sounding very good. It wasn't how I wanted it to be. I realized that I wasn't singing and speaking my truth fully. I didn't want to mask the record in irony or make it at all vague. I wanted it to be colorful, bright and direct. This is a record from the heart, and I wanted to make it perfect. If you are in any way at all embarrassed or you don't go there in the song, you can feel it. You have to go there. You have to be brave. I think I used the word love and feel. It's all over the record.

Did any of this impact the way you worked with Radiohead when you went back in to record A Moon Shaped Pool?

I think it literally had to. I think it definitely impacts the way I felt. I mean there's a band dynamic and you know it's locking back in my job in Radiohead is as a musician and as a person. And then Radiohead is the music and it's the songs that Thom has written. So, I had to very much lid on my feelings. You know, the empire is carved up. There’s not room to take in the things that I’ve learned. And Radiohead has got old roots, it’s formed from school. So there are patterns of behavior that you’re locked into.

Be Self-Reliant

What’s different about an adventure with Radiohead and an adventure with your family?

Well, the biggest thing is that when you go on an adventure with Radiohead, it's not really an adventure because you're looked after. You've always got a tour manager. What was great about going on an adventure with the family was that it was really down to me and my wife, and shit happens. Stuff happens and you have to deal with it. We felt on the edge because we were living very rurally, so it was about being self-reliant.

It's no wonder that musicians get back off tour, big bands like Radiohead, and they have problems adjusting to normal life because everything is done for them. The beauty of having a family is that everything is about the children and the family. It's not about you. Also, when you travel with children, the world opens up and people say hello. Doors open, there’s more love, there’s more warmth. The adventures you can have with children and a family feel like there’s much more of a heart.

Did your children’s experience inform your own in any way?

Massively. My son and daughter turned 9 and 7 when they were out there. They’d go to the Brazilian village school, where no one spoke English. They had to learn Portuguese the way kids do, through laughter and play. Honestly I think the trip wouldn’t have been 80% as rich if it weren’t for the kids, seeing them flourish and bloom. They’re city kids, but within a month or two they were riding horses.

Truly Unplug

When you were living in Brazil, how far removed were you from everyday life?

We were 20 minutes away from a place where we could pick up email. You might go pick up emails every four, five days. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but: you fucking don’t miss it. Then you realize how addictive email and phones are; it’s like crack or something. But it’s like anything, once you get over the withdrawal, which is probably two or three days. Once you’re free of that it’s so liberating. Life got reduced to these core constituents: family, food, and for me, music. It was the first time I’d ever got off the hamster wheel.

I look back at that time and it was beautiful. We didn’t have television, we didn’t have internet. We took a load of DVDs, and every Saturday, my wife and I, we’d watch. An Italian friend gave us 12 of her favorite DVDs, so we’d just watch Fellini and all these amazing films. It was such a rich time because you’d start noticing nature a lot more, the color of things.

Take Care of the Planet

Why did you choose to call the album Earth?

The working title for the record was The Pale Blue Dot [after Carl Sagan]. We've been given this incredible planet and she's such a gift and she's the most beautiful planet in our solar system. And in terms of life-giving properties, she's the only one we know of that at the moment. And yet we seem to go about our business as if we are this mighty species and the planet owes us a living and she's just to be drawn upon as an endless resource. The words of Carl Sagan, those were like, they implore us to get our shit together. When people asked what kind of record I was making, I would say jokingly that I was making an existential dance record. There is truth in there as well.

I didn’t call it The Pale Blue Dot because I rethink the film was coming out, and there might have been problems with the estate anyway. Then I was just like, “well what is it about it?” The Pale Blue Dot is the Earth.

Courtesy of Capitol