Pitchfork

When reviews of Radiohead's magnificent, much-discussed In Rainbows have mentioned Thom Yorke's tepidly received 2006 solo album, The Eraser, at all, it's typically been by way of contrast. Bell, a New York-based band led by Russian-born, Alaska-raised songstress Olga Bell, explore some of the instrumental and thematic similarities between the two very differently appraised works in a live studio recording for PRI's show "Fair Game" (which, full disclosure, recently had this writer on as a guest). Happily, Bell's medley of In Rainbows closer "Videotape" and The Eraser's title track is more than just a clever pun on videotapes and, um, erasing them.

Impressionistic piano chords and thwacking, off-kilter drums at first hew closely to the In Rainbows track's halting melancholy, but where Radiohead's version drifts into somber atmospherics, Bell put the emphasis on their eponymous frontwoman's conservatory-trained vocals. At once ethereal and firmly emotional, Bell's singing makes it clear why PRI says she's been compared to Björk and Feist, among others. The Eraser gets talked about so often as a glitchy bedroom electronic album that it's easy to forget the song of the same name is built around another set of disembodied piano chords; Bell enlivens this cover with colorful runs down the keyboard and expressive moans. The full show is streaming over at "Fair Game", and some of the band's original music is streaming on their MySpace.

MP3:> Bell: "Videotape / The Eraser"
[originally self-released, In Rainbows is out now on ATO/TBD in the U.S., MapleMusic in Canada, XL in the UK, and Hostess Entertainment in Japan; The Eraser is out now on XL]