Hail to the Thief

Having scaled great heights both commercially and musically It seems incredible that Radiohead, with their fifth album, Hail To The Thief, are able to not only scale similar mountainous heights once again but they are in fact on course to surpass them.

OK Computer, Radiohead’s zenith moment and worthy of all the acclaim it received arrived into our homes with meteoric effect. Astounded by its clear brilliance the world became besotted with the intelligent musicianship of the Oxford collective. Ok Computer’s impact was clearly massive - the crater it created is something than any band would struggle to claw itself out of. The testing but worthwhile Kid A and the even less accessible Amnesiac were clear reactions of a band fearful of plummeting from their self-made position of apogee.

Both Kid A and Amnesiac were careful (and fitfully beautiful) treads in the direction of Hail To The Thief which dutifully avoids the stickier protracted attempts at computer experimentation that beset the two aforementioned albums and puts an emphasis on the band’s supreme song-writing skills and moreover, the enchanting and often haunting voice of Thom Yorke.

Gone will be all those ill-informed Aphex Twin comparisons given the much heavier use of guitars (’Where I End & You Begin’, ’2+2 = 5’, ‘There There‘) than on the last two albums but that isn’t to say that it pays homage in any big way to Radiohead’s breakthrough album The Bends. No, Radiohead are certainly not about to regress and they certainly are in no mood to play the old rock trick of ‘going back to what you know best’. As an exposition of the band themselves, Hail To The Thief is a clear indication that Radiohead are comfortable with where they are now - making symphonic sounds that pierce your soul and endure until the songs themselves become irremovable fixtures in your mind. Radiohead are clearly not interested in the idle fancies of ordinary pop musicians and money-sucking uber-producers yet it is the challenging and brutal yet beautifully melancholic nature of this band and this album that allows tracks to outlive the 3 minute perfection of radio-friendly post-pop.

Whilst eclipsing previous achievements may be an impossible task Radiohead are still gaining plenty from the album-making process and as a result Hail To the Thief has a very polished feel. The vocals of Yorke are beautifully harmonized like never before(’Sail To The Moon‘, ‘I Will‘), the electrical wizardry is measured (’The Gloaming‘) and the pace of the album is carefully programmed so that its shocks then lulls you in emotionally. With your breath taken you are left in a state of truly satisfied reverie.

An astonishing album by an extraordinary band.

Radiohead. British band that made two of the greatest albums in recent musical history, then made two experimental albums to clear all the pressure and expectations they were under from their very own artistical path.

After Kid A and Amnesiac, the Oxford-based five-piece still haven't fulfilled their plan. Quite a lot of people still expect them to come up with a new Ok Computer or The Bends, and if you think you're one of those people you will get quite excited when hearing the opening track from their latest work, Hail To The Thief. 2+2=5 features the band in full three guitar layout, climaxes in true Paranoid Android style. It also sets the theme for the rest of the album: living in a messed up post 9/11, post Iraq war world, how one man's decision can affect thousands of others, and how we are constantly watched and controlled from above. This glimpse of a mid-90s Radiohead is followed by piano over techno beats on Sit Down, Stand Up, a song that finishes in an energetic electro ending. By then it is already clear that on this album the band have chosen for a combination of traditional rock tunes such as There There, Go To Sleep and the opening track, and their 21st century experimental electronics, ranging from drum machines and bass effects on The Gloaming to dirty keyboards on Myxomatosis. This results in a fantastic album full of gems, the only exceptions being We Suck Young Blood and Punchup At A Wedding. These two tracks would have looked ok as b-sides, but look quite out of place on this recording. The album concludes with A Wolf At The Door, a song that shares it's theme with No Surprises, and with a chorus that looks like it's come straight off the sublime Ok Computer.

The only reason why this doesn't get a five star rating is that it might not be suitable for everyone: don't buy this if you're a Bends addict.

Radiohead are not a band to simply churn out a new album. Their work has become increasingly complex and mannered since the relatively carefree days of The Bends, and a new album now equates to quite massive hype. They met it with Kid A, narrowly skimmed it with Amnesiac, but Hail To The Thief met with a reception that was, at best, cautious. Why?

It finds Radiohead at a crossroads. There are two basic extremes in this band's back catalogue: the guitar-led (The Bends, OK Computer) and the more experimental (Kid A, Amnesiac). Both had at this point been explored, some would say definitively, leaving the band with a real issue of where to go next. Hail To The Thief is not the answer - they would manage that with their next record, In Rainbows - but it is a powerful stock-taking before their next big leap.

The first track is the mission statement: 2+2=5 roars through its three-and-a-half minutes, effortlessly switching tracks twice from ghostly vocals over a quick guitar lilt, to a concerned and howling bridge, to a shrieking rock-out finale - which in itself manages to evolve from one thing to another. For a song this complex and exciting to be merely Track 1 is a sign of a great band.

Sit Down. Stand Up. takes the same basic rhythm and goes in a completely separate direction: warbling pianos and twinkling glockenspiels, building to the Radiohead equivalent of a rave. Other slightly electronic elements surface in Backdrifts, an irresistible sample-led number you could dance to; The Gloaming, one of their weirdest tracks, full of eerie noises; and Myxomatosis, where the fuzzy bass and vocals sound like they were fed through a computer before reaching the speakers. These songs are all unusual, moody and brilliant.

Of course, that's just one side of the band. Guitars take a more central role in Go To Sleep (frantic), I Will (haunting) and Scatterbrain (wistful). The whole band roars to life best on There There, the album's awesome centrepiece, and performs a more subdued rock-out on Where I End And You Begin. They also experiment briefly with a kind of lounge-rock on A Punch Up At The Wedding, a song most fans dislike but I rather love. The restrained drum machine and bass backing give it an unusual quality not found elsewhere among Radiohead's work; it has an almost funky gait that works particularly well emerging from the slow fairytale of I Will.

Pianos are the focus of Sail To The Moon and We Suck Young Blood. The former is probably my least favourite Hail song, but it's by no means actually bad: Yorke's ballads are always going to be more unusual and exciting than those of most bands, and Moon builds to a downright gorgeous-yet-unsettling close. We Suck Young Blood is particularly strange by comparison, going from a languid clap-along piano crawl to sudden bursts of fast jazz. The lyrics, concerning the usual vampiric villains Thom Yorke sees everywhere he looks, have an almost comical quality enhanced by the tempo change.

The finale is still the oddest moment, as Thom's verses come out almost as spoken-word. A Wolf At The Door is an original, and ends the album - as it should - with the promise of fresh ideas. The album is a lot to digest, rushing through Radiohead's various styles and abilities with almost frantic indecision, and the strong, oddly upbeat finale keeps it from spilling into mess.

Hail To The Thief can seem incoherent, but that is partly what it's going for: a crossroads, a jumble of things learned and questions unanswered. The artwork makes this clear, piling random words on each other as if this junkheap of ideas is the place where the songs are born. The lyrics are all about indecision, mixed of course with political and world-weary cynicism. Familiar territory for Radiohead and, with the songs all sharing that theme of indecisiveness, a whole is naturally born out of the parts. Whether or not this is the serendipitous result of throwing fourteen songs together, I can't say for sure, but Hail deserves to be thought of as eclectic rather than simply discordant. In hindsight it marked a refreshing break for the band; it holds up well as a time capsule of their abilities, and as a varied rock record in its own right.