Hail to the Thief by Radiohead

Belvedere Jehosophat - Monday, 16 June, 2003 - Print Version

As you may have noticed from the postscript to my Dr. Strangelove article/review I had recently received a copy of St. Anger.
This CD was recently exchanged for Hail to the Thief by Radiohead.

That CD was recently reviewed for The Wax Conspiracy.

There are a few types of Radiohead fans - those who think they’re ok; those who think that everything before Kid A was good; those who only like OK Computer; those who hate them; and those who think that they are gods.

I fall into the category of only liking OK Computer.
OK Computer was an angsty album, I recognise that. However, it was, I guess, honest angst; not that solipsistic alienation of youth, and not angry jock rot metal, driven more by the market than by a desire to create.

Both Kid A and Amnesiac were very electronic albums. Jimmy and I used to joke at the time that the guitarists and drummers were probably sitting around in the studio with eager looks on their faces, saying “are we gonna play something today? Huh? Can we?,” and then Thom Yorke would tell them to go fetch coffee or something. These two particular albums were very boring, and I didn't really like them.

Hail to the Thief lies, musically, somewhere between the album that I like and the two that I don’t. There’s a lot more guitar on this album, and a whole bunch of drumming that could have been drummed by human hands.*
However, it is still a heavily electronic album; some songs break into quick break beats, and some songs have, as their percussive backdrop, ambient-esque beats.
Essentially, Radiohead are trying to placate their old fans (OKand before) while still remaining faithful to the experimentation that netted them new fans (post-OK).
A lot of the songs are piano driven which is a nice change. I don’t have a lot of piano driven music save what is sampled and used in hip hop.
There are parts of the album where Radiohead rock out pretty hard. Keep in mind, however, that were talking rocking out in a prog-rock kind of a way, so don’t expect the kind of balls to the wall rock that would be found on, say, St. Anger by Metallica.
The lyrics are still sung as if Thom Yorke hasn’t yet learned to fully open his mouth, parts of it being slurred and hard to understand. Some people are put off by his style of singing but I personally like it.

However, while I was listening to this album, I couldn't stop thinking about how much he sounded, both vocally and in terms of his disposition, like Strong Sad from Homestar Runner. It is quite eerie.
The reason I bought the album, however, wasn’t as much for the music as it was for Thom Yorke’s lyrics. Thom Yorke would have to be one of my favourite lyricists.
I’m not too sure what a lot of his songs are about, much as I’m not too sure what some of the poetry I read is about. I was discussing just this with Weasel, who had picked up some of Brautigan’s poetry, and he mentioned that he didn’t know what Brautigan was writing about but that that was alright because he liked how the words sounded when put together.
That’s exactly the way it is with Thom’s lyrics; I don’t know what they mean but they always read great.

I’ve listened to the album four or five times now and it’s pretty good. I like it, and that’s gotta mean something from a person that only really enjoyed OK Computer.

I hope that what I have written will be of some assistance.

My postscripts are getting to be larger than my reviews:
*The sentence that the asterisk references caused a red light to go off in the Microsoft Word grammar check. Their suggestion:
“There have human hands drummed a lot more guitar on this album, and a whole bunch of drumming that could have.”

Well, if I’ve encroached upon the sanctity of the English language then I tell you this, the spellchecker on Word is attempting usurp it by way of an illegitimate birth.

Incidentally, the CD comes with a Copy Control system that could only have been designed by Nazis, fascist and/or otherwise.

It prevented me from playing the CD on my computer; it played one song and then froze everything – and I mean everything. I panicked when Word froze and I thought that I had lost this here review.

Well, I buy all of my CDs, I even order expensive imports that I already have a copy of just to own the actual CD and out of deference to the artists who made the music.
I do make copies of music for people, but only if I’m convinced that they would a) never discover the artist for themselves, or b) never would have bought the album in the first place. In short, I don’t make CDs for people if I think that they are going to buy the CD for themselves.
This shit, however, takes the cake. I can’t play a CD that I bought (thanks, Arfy) with my hard earned cash (thanks, Australian government) on my computer? What the fuck?

I am now going to buy a pack of blank tapes and then copy this album onto them and then hand the tapes out indiscriminately. Take that you greedy fucking pigs, I hope you fucking choke!