You know, for the fact that Radiohead is often joked about by a section of the rock community as focusing too much on electronics for the second half of their career, I would describe less than half of their discography as being primarily electronica based. Much of that perception must come from the fact that two albums in a row, Kid A and Amnesiac, came with a considerable lack of guitar (and frontman Thom Yorke’s musical interests outside the band seem to be focused outside of six stringed instruments). The next two Radiohead albums of the 21st Century’s first decade would return to the guitar led sound that made them popular. This, however, would not be any kind of abandonment of the moods created in the Kid A sessions, nor would the result be the grungy, nineties alternate rock aesthetic that drove The Bends and even the still electronically inspired OK Computer (though some songs from the Kid A sessions could have fitted on there). Instead the complex textures, rhythms and tones of the former would bleed into the latter, creating a rock sound unlike what the band had done to that point.
Hail to the Thief was the first product of that marriage. It was also, as I mentioned in the Pablo Honey review, when I first listened to the band. Both this and OK Computer were responsible in my initial obsession with Radiohead, and so it will always hold a special place in my heart as a result. When I first could not get into the colder, experimental albums in between the two, these were the ones I would call among my favourite records from the group. It also maintained that way throughout the Bush years, with his and Tony Blair’s policies after 9/11 towards the “axis of evil” clearly influencing the lyrics and tone of the album (a fact that became clearer as I went through my political teen phase). In an era where literally millions could march near Downing Street, and not a single substantial reaction would rise from the band’s home government, it would be near impossible for one not to feel misanthropic about the situation. Although the band are said to be quite different politically, frontman Thom Yorke certainly felt this way, with lyrics ranging from George Orwell to diseases that kill rabbits (I’ve lost two to myxomatosis. It’s not pleasant). But the band also distilled that with lyrics and song titles that bring to mind more a childish folktale, which has the two pronged effect of making the political moments of the album more direct, and yet individual songs more allegorical and applicable to broader situations. Some songs more than others though; I mean 1984 references can only get you so far.
Overtime, however, Hail to the Thief has come to place lower in my estimations (so, you know, still 4-4.5 stars). It’s not to do with that misanthropic political tone; on the contrary I don’t think my opinions and feelings on the subject are that far off Mr. Yorke’s. Neither is it to do with the directness of that intent, typified by the sensory overload of the still always incredible artwork by Stanley Donwood. I think the entire issue with this album is to do with its length. Not wanting to get bogged down in the production process like they had for their last two albums, and wanting to leave the grasp of EMI’s six album contract, Radiohead decided to record Hail to the Thief as quick as possible and not worry too much about the organisation of the record (a tactic that, coincidentally, they also decided to do for Pablo Honey).
Whilst the former reaped positive results for individual songs – the majority being as strong as anything the band have done – the lack of management resulted in a weaker whole. It’s too long, with songs whose lack of inclusions would have strengthened the whole, and the lack of flow can make the prominent electronic tracks clash with guitar led ones. Thom Yorke himself agrees, who in 2008 responded with a “hmm” to a fan’s alternate track listing. There are some issues with that listing (no “A Punch Up at a Wedding”?!), but it is still a tighter and more cohesive final product. As it stands Hail to the Thief is an album of quantity. But still, there’s a metric ton of quality to be found.
It’s found immediately with the opening track, the Orwell influenced “2+2=5”, with the three prong guitar attack that should quell any fan that thought it was lacking in the previous two albums. Opening on an off-kilter 7/8 riff that compliments the song’s manipulated world, lashing out against a place where there is “no way out”. On one side of the coin it displays that aggressive, cynical view that will come to define this album, particularly as the final half kicks into a regular thudding beat with the lines “You have not been paying attention” and the lyric that would form the title of the album. But on the flip side, the song actually opens with a studio flub and sarcasm between band members; it shows that even in album as caustic as this one, they seem to be in a much different headspace that what had come before.
But soon after such a guitar heavy track, Radiohead go in to “Sit Down. Stand Up” with wavy synths dominating the leading guitar rhythm. The electronic components encroach on the song as it progresses, eventually switching rhythm into both a piano and then drum machine breakdown that are among my favourite parts of the whole album. The music fits into “the rain drops”, starting out calming before piling up and almost drowning the listener. It’s a little hard not to think that more than 2:30 minutes of Thom Yorke saying “Stand Up” and “Sit Down” is a little bit overdoing it, though.
But this track does segue beautifully into its closest pairing on the album, and one of Hail to the Thief’s highlights, with “Sail To The Moon”. Though Thom would go on to make his voice rougher on this album, here he is as angelic as he as ever been, singing on from where “Pyramid Song” had left off over a heavenly piano ballad matched my lush electronic orchestral to images of floating against the dark, moonlit sky (though this one also has some incredibly romantic guitar). As well as demonstrating a “maybe you’ll be president but know right from wrong” that shows a tongue in cheek but still more sincere portrayal of American optimism than most, it also has with references to Noah’s Ark one of the most overt religious references in the whole Radiohead catalogue (as indeed does the whole of Hail to the Thief, though the images are all explored in a very secular way).
If “Sail to the Moon” follows on some respect from “Pyramid Song”, “Backdrifts” lyrically is like the cynical cousin to “Electioneering”. Where as that previous song was about the compromise taken between the left and right sides of government, here that has been taken to full on appropriation as a society has becomes more reactionary and fearing as a result of those policies. And all exploration is against a pulsating, spooky beat, even spookier with the piano half way through the track that echoes other horror-like piano playing further on in the album. Although minimal, “Backdrifts” conveys all that angst and disillusionment of being in an environment you can’t escaping, feeling like you yourself are falling backwards, or entering some kind of trance state.
The “trance state” part would certainly make sense for moving into a song called “Go To Sleep”, another classic Radiohead song from Hail to the Thief, that has a rhythm that feels like it is always shifting from one pace to the next. Pretty hard to actually go to sleep in this song though, With Thom, Ed and Jonny all straight up rocking out on all different varieties of guitar, and with an incredible escalating base line from Colin. Lines like “We don’t really want a monster taking over” are the synthesis of the political and the fairytale elements of this album, and “I’m gonna go to sleep/ And let this wash over me” follows on the themes of Backdrifts by presenting someone moving into that position of giving up politically. And then Johnny Greenwood ends the song with an incredible guitar part that I can only describe as like he is playing a solo with an Atari game console. Maybe the loonies did take over after all.
That genre bending is crossed over into the next track, “Where I End and You Begin”, which I with both the funky bass yet soothing synthesiser and choral vocals I want to describe being like 70’s Art Rock crossed with a rave-up as the guitars take over. The title does not refer to that musical transition however, but the compromise of the two previous tracks combined with the hellish overthrow via repetition of “Stand Up, Sit Down”, though here to much greater effect. It’s also one of the most prominent points of Jonny’s obsession with the ondes Martenot, and its wailing as the song reaches climax is the most effecting instance of its use on the whole album.
With the next track, “We Suck Young Blood” The “slave ship” description that the band give this song is appropriate, with the forced, militaristic clapping of the song giving a detached anthem quality, but the theremin-like guitar, and of course the title, is clearly meant to give the vibe of old horror movies Although it could be applied to any political situation where the older “feast” on the talents of the young, Thom would use this metaphor in interviews around the Kid A period in reference to the music industry, which makes me wonder how much of this song could be about the EMI label they were working on and would abandon shortly after this. This is a great song, but it is such a different pace to the whole rest of the album – and that which comes before and after it – that I would describe it as “the greatest Radiohead B-Side that actually made it onto the finished record”.
It’s odd that one of the weaker tracks on the album, “The Gloaming”, was originally going to be the title for the whole album. The apocryphal tale is that the drum machine/bursts of air combination that makes the majority of this song’s sound was the by-product of Thom Yorke replicating a period of starvation he had gone through, but even if that story is probably not true the culmination of sounds is like acid burning the linings of the stomach. The lyrics in turn, with the genie allusions and the repetition of “when the walls bend/ With your breathing”, has that feeling of entrapment (and the latter feels like stomach imagery). I guess my main problem with this song is that it feels like an unfinished concept, but I also think that like “Kid A” the more conceptual tracks rely heavily on their placement in the album, which unfortunately was not a priority here.
Thankfully, one of the weaker songs on the album is followed by a Radiohead top ten classic, “There There”. Another Can inspiration, but taking that into a completely unique sound, Jonny and Ed drop the guitars and grab some toms with Phil for both a tribal and ethereal rhythm, accentuated by the high bass sound from Colin and Thom’s guitar sounds so evocative that you will feel like he’s “walking in your landscape”. It’s also another perfect synthesis of the political and the fairytale – as highlighted by the incredible music video – with images of forests, sirens calling into shipwrecks. And of course the beautiful line “just ‘cause you feel it doesn’t mean its there”, a lyric with both the tone of warning against letting emotions get in the way of the truth, the perils of subjectivity, and the idea of a fantastical spirit that hangs over people.
The longest song on the album is followed immediately by the shortest. Very much akin with the chilling guitar ballads found on Kid A and Amnesiac, the lyrics of “I Will” also carry with it the weight of responsibility to children and future generations, that I wouldn’t be surprised if Thom wrote the lyrics shorty after the birth of his first child (though it is also inspired by footage of the first Gulf War). In such a manner it feels the most personal song on the album, for the most part because I wouldn’t be surprised if Thom was the only person in the studio, doing three different layers of vocal and a single, quiet guitar ringing out ominous chords.
That idea of responsibility is followed up in the next song, “A Punch-Up at a Wedding”, in which the album then targets those they think should be held the most accountable. With a Beatles style piano, and the jazziest rhythm on the entire album – which moves into sparse electronics by the outro – it’s by far the least subtle song in its political intent and is all the better for it. Comparing the policies of the American and British governments to the aforementioned situation at weddings, Thom snarls against the thunder of Jonny and Ed’s guitar in a way that, although lengthy, makes you feel the entire weight of that anger. By the time it gets to the lyrics “hypocrite opportunist/ don’t effect me with your poison”, all that worry of backtracking politically from “Backdrifts” and “Go to Sleep” seems to culminate into the final push, though as the next songs seems to indicate, one that seems to take a tole on the psyche.
That prominent psychological breakdown is typified in, “Myxomatosis”, which also stands as one of the most overlooked songs in the whole band canon. On a cutting 11/4 synth riff, dark and rumbling in its repeating deescalation, the song takes the Radiohead paranoia to an uncomfortable, animalistic zenith as the song depicts animals, adultery, and psychical and psychological pain. Thom Yorke has spoke before about feeling his “pretty” voice has a limited capability (I know, what?), here he gets it to the most wacked-out possible yet still keeping a cracked monotone, helped at the beginning with the fracturing quality of the autotune. The other song title for “Mxyomatosis” is “Judge, Jury and Executioner”; by the end of the song, you’ll almost think it was a mercy killing.
In my view it would have made more sense to move from that to the equally paranoid “Wolf at the Door”, but as such the album moves on to much calmer “Scatterbrain”. The song conveys a similar fractured mindset, so much so that it has been scattered to the wind, but it is backed by quiet guitars and a light, constant tapping of electronic drums. For my money the song would do a lot better near the period of the album around “Go To Sleep”/“Where I End and You Begin”, as its stance as the penultimate track dilutes the harsh mindset coming to the end, but as it stands its a small, almost meditative track that reminds just how angelic Thom’s voice can get when he allows it to.
I say that because Hail to Thief’s final song, “Wolf at the Door”, is along with “Myxomatosis” the most bizarre, unique and “ugly” that Thom has ever allowed his voice to go. With a “Moonlight Sonata” like guitar arpeggio crossed with lyrics as though the protagonist of “Life in a Glasshouse” found themselves in the story of the Three Little Pigs, the nightmare of the scenario is conveyed in a staccato, deranged cadence that eventually breaks into wails in the choruses. The verses are like Bob Dylan style stream-of-conscious, full of fragments of violent imagery, but the beat gives the cadence an almost hip-hop feel. But at its conclusion the words become clearer, more beautiful and yet as the album fades out still all the more horrifying.
Hail to the Thief is an overstuffed album, but that stuffing is a testament to Radiohead’s increasing, genre-bending creativity. With this album they had started to merge the sound of their rock and electronic periods into a sound that could be called uniquely “Radiohead”. But the band still felt there was more to explore, and that it couldn’t be done in the environment they were currently in. After breaking from EMI, which came with a last cash grab Greatest Hits CD, Radiohead decided they would continue to go their own path both artistically and . What resulted was an attention grabbing sales tactic, but more importantly, a masterpiece…
What did you think, though?
Radiohead Album Rankings
- Kid A
- Amnesiac
- OK Computer
- The Bends
- Hail to the Thief
- Pablo Honey