Philip Selway

Philip Selway embarked on a solo path in 2010 with Familial, echoing the independent moves already made by his Radiohead colleagues Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. Long recognized for his work on drums, drum programming, and occasional backing vocals, he shifted without difficulty into the role of songwriter while picking up the guitar. Following the arrival of Weatherhouse in 2014, he broadened his activities into film scoring, supplying the music for the 2017 release Let Me Go; those cinematic sensibilities later surfaced on the 2023 album Strange Dance.

His solo beginnings traced back to participation in Neil Finn’s 2001 series of all-star shows known as 7 Worlds Collide. The project eventually coalesced into a band that issued The Sun Came Out in 2009. Alongside percussion and acoustic guitar duties, Selway contributed two quiet, folk-tinged pieces—“The Ties That Bind Us” and “The Witching Hour”—and handled lead vocals on each. Re-recordings of those tracks became the core of Familial, which drew additional support from fellow 7 Worlds Collide participants Lisa Germano, Soul Coughing’s Sebastian Steinberg, and Wilco’s Glenn Kotche and Jeff Tweedy. The album appeared in August 2010 on Bella Union in the U.K. and Nonesuch in the U.S.

Selway’s second solo album, Weatherhouse, surfaced in 2014. More intricate and expansive than the largely acoustic debut, and featuring a wider instrumental range, it carried echoes of later Radiohead or Yorke’s solo output yet carried an elusive melodic character drawn from the ’80s and ’90s.

After Radiohead issued A Moon Shaped Pool in 2016, Selway devoted himself to scoring Polly Steele’s film Let Me Go, with the soundtrack emerging in October 2017. Following a lengthy break from solo work, he returned with Strange Dance in February 2023. Working with drummer Valentina Magaletti, producer Marta Salogni, and Portishead’s Adrian Utley, the album folded understated experimental textures into its restrained pop settings.