Blue Morpho

Ed O’Brien — 2026

“Ed O’Brien lets patience, texture, and atmosphere carry Blue Morpho into its own space.”

Ed O’Brien has spent nearly four decades as the tall figure stage left in Radiohead, a band whose history and critical success would make any side project feel like a footnote before it even arrives. Blue Morpho ignores that idea or simply does not care. It also marks his first release under his own name, almost as if O’Brien wants to draw a line between this record and his 2020 EOB debut. The album also comes from a different creative well as it was made in the wake of a long depression that pinned him down through the late lockdown stretch, and you can hear it across these seven tracks. Each song sounds like a guitarist writing from the ground up with nobody else in mind for a finished product. That doesn’t mean he didn’t pull in some talent as you will hear Estonia’s Tallinn Chamber Orchestra adding strings arranged by Tõnu Kõrvits alongside contributors that include Dave Okumu on guitar, Shabaka Hutchings on flute, and Philip Selway behind the kit on a couple of cuts. The mix of personnel could once again become a distraction to the end result but the playing is too patient for that. These songs breathe in long, deliberate arcs.

What I like most is how unhurried Blue Morpho is willing to be. With an average track length close to 6 minutes, you know that O’Brien has a well mapped out plan. He sings about faith found in damp Welsh woodland, about gratitude as a survival tactic, about the spiritual mileage in just sitting with the worst of yourself, and the music moves with his thoughts with hypnotic guitar layers, deep low-end pulses, and stretches of near silence where you can hear the room. This is not a record built around hooks but the best of it lands with the quiet authority of an artist who trusts his own instincts, separate from the band that until now has defined him.

“Incantations” opens the record with almost eight minutes of psych folk that keeps shifting underfoot, O’Brien’s voice low in the mix while Okumu’s guitar shimmers, creating a beautifully fluid drift. “Teachers” hits you with a fantastic queasy trip hop groove and several warped vocals while the bass lurches just enough to keep you off balance and ESKA’s harmonies pull hard against the rhythm rather than smoothing it out. “Obrigado” closes everything across nearly ten minutes, a slow building prayer of thanks that finally cracks open into Selway’s loose drums and a guitar that almost drones out the rest of the track. Such a cool finish to the record and I really could just keep hitting repeat on that track alone.

If you came up on the spacier corners of Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden or Laughing Stock, Blue Morpho has a similar vibe in patience and texture over song shape. There is also a connection to Bon Iver’s 22, A Million in the way O’Brien blurs voice and the instruments into one continuous sound. Phil Selway’s own solo records, especially Strange Dance (2023), share the same direction with his use of orchestral chamber pop. I also kept thinking about David Sylvian’s solo work and especially Secrets Of The Beehive (1987) where spiritual thoughts and patience drive the whole project. A highly recommended album to put some headphones on and hit play.

Ed O’Brien will never escape the Radiohead machine he helped create but this album finds a small niche that feels much more personal to him. The shape of what comes next for him as a solo artist will be of interest to me but regardless what that turns out to be Blue Morpho is a record that stands perfectly on its own regardless of anyone’s résumé.