Ed O’Brien Announces New Solo Album ‘Blue Morpho,’ Details Radiohead Touring Plans

Rob Moderelli on March 17, 2026

Ed O’Brien, photo by Steve Gullick

Ed O’Brien has announced Blue Morpho, his second solo studio album. Set to release on May 22 via Transgressive Records, the accomplished songwriter and Radiohead guitarist’s sophomore offering captures a period of personal upheaval and artistic reinvention, leading him into uncharted combinations of psychedelic folk and symphonic atmospheres. To preview the project, he’s shared the title track, as well as an interview with Rolling Stone that detailed Radiohead’s future touring plans.

Blue Morpho erupted from a dark night of the soul and a new artistic dawn in the wake of O’Brien’s 2020 solo debut, Earth. Wracked with regret for having waited so long to channel his creativity into a standalone statement and suddenly cast into one of the most challenging periods of his life, the artist found direction in the author and environmentalist Wendell Berry’s adage, “To know the dark, go dark.” Channeling his scattered thoughts into his guitar for hours at a time at his small London studio, a chronicle of transcendence took shape over four years of recordings, drawing on inspiration from his connection to the Welsh countryside, the methods of extreme athlete and breathwork instructor Wim Hof, and early songwriting advice from Thom Yorke, who taught him decades ago that the key to craft was cataloguing ideas as they arise.

O’Brien assembled the final product through close collaboration with producer Paul Epworth and sessions with engineer Riley MacIntyre in Wales. Other esteemed contributors include pioneering avant-jazz wind artist Shabaka Hutchings, who contributed flutes after connecting with O’Brien at Glastonbury, and composer Tõnu Kõrvits, who arranged the powerful string portions performed by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. The album’s release will be accompanied by Blue Morpho: The Three-Act Play, a short film that premiered at SXSW yesterday.

In a feature on his new album and the years of work behind it, O’Brien offered his thoughts on Radiohead’s recent reunion tour and the possibility of more shows in the future. Following the iconic outfit’s 20 electrifying appearances at the end of 2025, the guitarist shared that they planned to take that live format around the world in the coming years, hitting one continent per year (North America, South America and Asia/Oceania, as of now) starting in 2027. “What we’re going to do is, every year we’re going to do a different continent, and we’re going to do 20 shows each year. No more, no less.”

“We want to give absolutely everything each night,” O’Brien said. “We do not ever want it to be like we’re going through the motions or we’re having to run on empty. We’ve got to be able to do it. And you know what? We’re not spring chickens anymore.”

Blue Morpho is available to pre-order and pre-save now. Listen to the title track below, and read on for the album’s full tracklist.