Thom Yorke has shared a new track called “Daily Battles”, which will feature in an upcoming film by Edward Norton, Motherless Brooklyn, a film adaption of Jonathan Lethem’s novel of the same name about a detective who suffers from tourettes in 1950s New York.
The song includes instrumentals by Atom for Peace bandmate, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, who plays the bass and horns. According to Rolling Stone, “Daily Battles” features in a somber scene where Norton’s main character returns home to his apartment and – in a state of acute isolation – attempts to dissociate himself from reality by smoking “hash or opium”.
“To have (Yorke) write a song for the movie in response to absorbing what the movie and the character are aiming at is a very different thing,” said Norton. “It’s like Barbra Streisand and ‘Memories’ for The Way We Were; sometimes it can define a thing. Like Lady Gaga, what those guys did with ‘Shallow’ in (A Star Is Born), that’s a stunning song that rises up in the film and out of the film. It rises organically out of the story of the film and it gives you shivers, it’s really a special thing when that happens.”
Two versions of Yorke’s track will appear in Motherless Brooklyn, which will be released in November this year. A jazz arrangement of the song by American trumpeter Wynton Marsalis will also appear in a jazz bar scene in the film, which you can listen to here. A split 7” vinyl of both tracks will also be released in the US this November.
Listen to Yorke’s track below.