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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
8/10. Hail!, 3 Jul 2007
It can take a few years to properly appraise an album by a band as great as Radiohead. It is important to shake off the initial impressions - distorted as they are by the weight of expectation - and allow the album time to grow on you. A band that has so consistently produced the best music of our generation deserves that. Radiohead are many different things for many different people - some fans will contest my choice of Kid A as the band's finest hour. But for me, 'Hail to the Thief' just doesn't hold together as well as that record. While the album includes some of their best songs yet (for me, 'Where I End and You Begin', 'A Wolf at the Door'), some of electronic experimentation is less successfully integrated into the songwriting as on 'Kid A'. While the album incapsulates all of their sonic concerns, the mood is jarringly uneven, and I never listen to it as a whole. Whereas there are also weak moments on 'Amnesiac', somehow the overall atmosphere of the record holds the songs together. That said, Radiohead reach the sublime on numerous occasions here, remaining one of the best bands around.
'2 + 2 = 5' breaks out of its ominous, 'Amnesiac'-esque opening into something as raw and passionate as their Bends-era material. A revitalising shock to the system, it sets a volatile tone for the rest of the album and provides a counterweight to some of the more dirge-like and ponderous tracks. 'Sit Down. Stand Up' just doesn't work for me, an arsenal of electronic effects deployed to no great consequence, over a non-song. For me, the subtlety of the sonic embellishment of Kid A is missing here: just special effects for their own sake. 'Sail to the Moon', in significant contrast, is a sublime, image-rich ballad in the mold of 'How to Diappear Completely' and 'Pyramid Song'.
The minimal electro of 'Backdrifts' has an echo of 'Idiotech' and 'Like Spinning Plates' but is less malevolent than the former and more melodic than the latter, successfully combining the machine-made with a pop sensibility. 'Go to Sleep' recalls some of the looser, guitar based tracks from Amnesiac, but is less oppressive than, say, Knives Out, revolving around an unusually groovy sequence of guitar notes in an odd time-signature. 'Where I End and You Begin', for me the album highlight, was gob-smackingly dismissed by Pitchfork as 'a U2 song'. Whereas the fast-paced rythmn and scratchy guitars bear a passing resemblance to 'Sundy Bloody Sunday', this is where the similarity ends. An apocalyptic epic, eerie keyboard drones compete with backwards guitar licks before building to a jaw-dropping climax, with Thom Yorke intoning "I will eat you alive" in a distinctly un-Bono-like manner.
After this peak it is easy to lose patience with the impossibly dreary 'We Suck Young Blood', a veritable funeral march. This in turn makes a poor match with the glitchy subsequent track, The Gloaming, which comes across as an unfinished idea. 'There There', apparently their most successful single since 'Karma Police', builds from a sweetly sung beginning into a deafening finale. A much-liked track, and more conventionally guitar-orientated than much of their recent material, it doesn't do much for me. 'I will' is a sweet, sad snippet of a ballad, that might have been fleshed out into something great, while 'A Punch-up at a Wedding' is almost unrecognisable for Radiohead in its rythmn and lyrical concerns, despite Thom's vocals. The monstrous rave synths of 'Myxamatosis' leave me a bit cold, while 'Scatterbrain' recalls songs as bittersweet as 'Fake Plastic Trees'. However, the final track 'A Wolf at the Door', is something else entirely, tapping into Yorke's anxiety at being a father, about having the strength to protect his children. It is entirely tangible and honest, and sung in a totally different range to his normal vocals, giving respite to some of his more fey moments. Varying the style of vocals in the future could produce similarly unexpected and brilliant results. It's not their finest album then, but can only be criticised in comparison to their own very high standards. Still leagues ahead of the rest.
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31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Album of the year?, 6 May 2003
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.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cheering and waving, twitching and salivating at HTTT, 19 Mar 2005
Hmmm... what can I say. This is a typically brilliant album from one of the best bands ever (although sadly I doubt this will be acknowledged when we looking back in a couple of decades) and quite simply represents a group who have their own unique style and can put tremendous variety into their work, as well as add thought-provoking lyrics and leave the rest of recent popular music in a light much worse than you've ever seen before, simply because you've discovered the greatest band of the last 20 years.Admittedly, it will take a few listens to get into this album, as has been stated before, but patience will pay dividends and at the 20th listen you will be brainwashed into knowing who are the greatest artists of this era. Instead of liking inferior dross you will be marvelling at the wonderful evocative wails of Thom Yorke and the guitars in songs like "2+2=5" and "There There"; the piano that leads superb songs like "Sail To The Moon" (which takes a "Say 'No' to time signatures" stance) and the evil "We Suck Young Blood" (which any self-respecting vampire would have as his signature tune) as well as the bittersweet "Punch Up At A Wedding"; the riff-heavy and political (yeah Green Day, you don't have to be as subtle as a cow's arse in Antarctica to be political) "Go To Sleep"; the electronica-mad yet compelling "Myxomatosis" (spell that will you!); and finishing with "A Wolf At The Door" which - had it been released as a single - would have left mainstream nobody rappers like 50 Cent/Eminem looking like the chav at the back of the class with just his ego for a friend. If you don't like any of Radiohead's work, be it The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A or HTTT, then you're not human.... who needs slapped*. Which reminds me, I need to slap somebody.... *The author of the above review does not advocate the use of violence against human or non-human species, although would encourage any readers to buy the above product or any products related to the band "Radiohead" from this website as a kind gesture to the hosts of this review and to your lacklustre record collection.
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