Radiohead.fr

sortie : août 2001
durée : 5 minutes 23
se trouve sur : knives out CD1

On a longtemps parlé de la chanson avant de l’ avoir entendue.
Le journal d’Ed la mentionnait depuis quelques temps déjà, et des rumeurs courraient sur le net... On l’appelait alors ’Tongue Tied’, en s’appuyant sur quelques bribes de paroles...
Cette chanson fut entendue pour la première fois dans l’émission sur France Inter de Bernard Lenoir, en mai 2001. Au moment de l’émission, il la désigna comme s’appelant ’hunting bears’. La chanson était en effet prévue pour se trouver sur Amnesiac et le disque promo qu’il possédait était une des premières versions...

Commentaires :

Par rapport aux autres chansons de cette époque, celle-ci a étonné par sa consonance un peu vieillotte, assez différente de ce que le groupe fait actuellement. Interrogé à ce sujet, voici ce qu’a répondu Max-K (rappelons le, webmaster d’un site sur le groupe, devenu très proche de Thom), sur le board officiel, le 20 mai 2001.. « je viens juste de recevoir un email à ce sujet. C’est une vieille chanson qui a été enregistrée à la fin de l’an dernier, mais qui fut écrite il y a des lustres. Elle sera une des faces B pour Knives out, mais elle est vieille, ce qui explique pourquoi elle ne sonne pas comme une nouvelle chanson. »

Ed dans son journal :
tuesday august3 1999
[...] anyhow move onto a new song ’cuttooth’ - its got a ’neu’ thing about it - long and hypnotic.... [...] tuesday august31 1999 kick off with ’cuttooth’, the song with little structure and the only certainty is a bass riff. it makes you wonder how ’neu’ did their thing - it always sounds spontaneous on those 12 minute epics, but did they have to rehearse intensely ? did it require a degree of editing ? [...]

wednesday sept1 1999
[...] run through ’optimistic’, cuttooth’, and ’up on the ladder’ for nige, who’s down for the day to do some wiring and ’studio arranging’.

friday sept3 1999
[...] we spend almost the entire rehearsal working on ’cuttooth’ (the song with no arrangements up until now) and surprise, surprise, it already sounds a lot better. when you have a song that does not have the usual distinction between verse/chorus/middle eight, there need to be other markers that define the way the song progresses. and we’re getting there.

7/12/99
spent an hour playing around with cuttooth. came in and heard phil on drums and thom on rhodes going through it. it’s one of those moments when you hear something being played and all you want to do is pick up a guitar and join in. so i did......it’s only three chords so not too taxing even on my very limited music theory. [...]

8/12/99
started by playing ’cuttooth’ again - the song needs stamina - sounding better than yesterday....just have to keep playing it. one of those days when it doesn’t feel as though we’ve done much. maybe it’s because everyone’s tired. [...]

21/2/00
[...] nigel wants to get his teeth stuck into mixing, so we decided to set up and record ’cuttooth’. this at eight and a half minutes (by the end) is the long one - did five or six takes of which a couple are pretty good.[...]

23/2/00
listen to ’cuttooth’ and it sounds fucking great.[...]

24/2/00
more work on ’cuttooth’...........jonny did his guitar thing...feedback,backwards guitar.......it was good to hear. it sometimes seems as though not much guitar has been played so far, which is probably bollocks. there has been a fair amount, but in the quest for different sounds we haven’t first turned to the trusted and tried six-string. thom did some work on a track upstairs, which sounded great. lots of editing on the computer to make the track in question more coherent. am i sounding boring ?....apologies, just tired that’s all....on to thursday...

25/2/00
more good things added to ’cuttooth’........sounds. its one of those classic situations where the temptation is to continually embellish whats on there and it’s one of those songs that you could get away with it. but in doing that, you often lose the essence of what was great about it in the first place. i guess the trick is to be absolutely ruthless on what is added................so at five in the morning having not savagely edited some of these overdubs the track sounded too overcooked..............

28/2/00
 [...] nigel was sidetracked last week by ’cuttooth’ so he really really wants to do some mixing this week. [...]