Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Radiohead ‎– Hail To The Thief

 

Radiohead ‎– Hail To The Thief

By

Jesse E. Mullen

 


You’ve been hailed as the second coming of Pink Floyd. You’ve made three albums which are in anyone’s list of the top 200 of all time. You’ve written songs about trying to disappear, and others about being reborn. Where do you go from here?

That was the question upon Radiohead in early 2003. The Oxford quintet had just emerged from a highly prolific, but highly contentious period. While two excellent albums came out of it – the genre-defying Kid A and the slightly more subdued Amnesiac – the conflict which arose nearly destroyed the band.

In the wake of the smash success of OK Computer, Radiohead completely reinvented their working methods. No longer recording live-to-tape with loud guitars and numerous effects pedals, the band set about recording their parts separately. Entire songs would be recorded without a recognizable guitar, drum, or bass part.

Instead, singer Thom Yorke would loop his piano, while guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien – as well as producer Nigel Godrich – would sample and manipulate Yorke’s voice. While this left certain group members marginalized – not every member was on every song – it brought Radiohead to new creative heights.

So, when Radiohead decided to blend these influences with their previous “rocking out” style, it was met with a certain degree of skepticism. Had they run out of ideas? Were Radiohead about to become just another band? However, there was one new element which gave Radiohead an edge.

A lot had changed in the world since the last time Radiohead made an album. But all of it influenced Yorke’s lyrics when the band entered LA’s Ocean Way studios in the fall of 2002. The United States response to the September 11th attacks had been milked completely.

Two wars received bipartisan support from congress. One was with an uninvolved country and enacted without any hard evidence. To make matters worse, British Prime Minister Tony Blair – a member of the social democratic Labour Party – decided to join the ultraconservative President Bush as an ally in the wars, angering his base.

Blending music and politics has always been a messy subject. There will be those who applaud the addition of political themes to lyrics, while others perceive them to be dogmatic and getting in the way of entertainment. To their credit, Radiohead never let the political themes of the album obscure its greatest asset – melodic hooks.

One possible source of these breezy melodies would be the band’s aforementioned trip to LA. No longer confined to the gloomy scene of the converted fruit farm in the English countryside, Radiohead opted for the sunshine of Oceanway Studios.

Los Angeles is a fascinating city aesthetically. It is bright and warm, but also plastic and superficial. Radiohead previously wrote a song about the commercialization of Canary Wharf in London. Now they were making a record in that environment. So how would this change affect the band? Strap in and find out.

The album opens with the sprightly “2+2=5.” Electronic drums tick and burble, as a double tracked Yorke sings in haunted tones about the end of the world. It is clearly a metaphor for the political climate of the day, with leaders such as George W. Bush and Tony Blair joining hands in bipartisan, war criminal activity.

As the track continues to build, so does the tension. When the crescendo hits towards the end, it is a blast of catharsis. The guitars wail as Yorke accuses those around him – and by extension, the listener – of not paying attention. A falsetto command to “go and tell the king that the sky is falling in when it’s not” ends the track in dramatic fashion.

“Sit Down, Stand Up” is propelled by a slow but steady blip of electronic drums and grand piano. Yorke is now singing from the point of view of an oppressive dictator, saying “we can wipe you out anytime.” Much like “2+2=5,” “Sit Down, Stand Up” builds into a hypnotic crescendo of the band jamming and Yorke singing “the raindrops” ad infinity.

On “Sail To The Moon,” Yorke imagines his young son as president. A sparse piano ballad, which builds into a spacy ambiance, it is an absolutely gorgeous track. The insertion of minor key seventh chords into an otherwise major key track gives the song a “trouble in paradise” vibe.

“Backdrifts” is a return to Kid A-styled electronic territory, with nary a guitar to be found. A glitchy, syncopated beat predicts what the band would later do on “15 Step,” while Yorke sings about “rotting fruit” and “damaged goods.”

The track has no explicit political references until Yorke sings that “all evidence has been buried” and “all tapes have been erased.” He seems to be describing a political cover up and subsequent scandal.

With “Where I End and You Begin,” Radiohead – and guitarist Jonny Greenwood – reintroduce one of the most famous elements of their early 2000s sound. The Ondes Martinot. An early 1900s electronic instrument, Greenwood took a liking to it during the Kid A sessions.

Here, Greenwood shapes the siren-like wail into a sound resembling a Moog synthesizer. He wraps musical figures around Ed O’Brien’s e-bow guitar and Yorke’s frantic rhythm guitar. The lyrics, while initially having no discernable literal meaning, borrow a line from Kid A’s “Optimistic.”

That line, “the dinosaurs roam the earth,” could deal with the end of our world through environmental decay – which would make sense and give the title an ascribed meaning. Yorke previously touched on the apocalyptic effects of climate change on Kid A’s “Idiotique.” So, it makes sense that a lyric which draws from that period would have a similar theme.

Things slow down momentarily for the creepy, Halloween-esque piano ballad “We Suck Young Blood.” Yorke sings from the point of view of a vampire, as hands clap in 12/8 time like a zombie on valium. Midway through, the tempo and volume increase rapidly, as if the monster was woken up by an episode of sleep apnea.

Lyrically, the track seems to be a metaphor for how major labels use predatory contracts to “suck” the life out of young bands. Radiohead were about to end their relationship with musical giant EMI/Parlophone, so the timing of such a track is fitting.

Common practices in the industry have included: not paying the bands for record sales until the recording bill is “covered” by said sales, owning the recordings “in perpetuity” (forever), and refusing to release entire albums of material. However, none of these were issues for the group.

The rights to their back catalog reverted from EMI back to the band in 2016. And EMI stuck by the group and their unconventional Kid A era, whereas American band Wilco had trouble with their label when they went experimental a year later. So, the origin of the song is puzzling.

The pounding krautrock anthem “There, There” has built up quite a reputation live, often being used as a show opener on the 2006 tour. It had it’s debut in a skeletal arrangement on a Radiohead webcast in February 2000. But here is where it first gained its spark.

Guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien join drummer Phil Selway on kits of the own, pounding out primal rhythms to the gods. Yorke, usually a rhythm guitarist, churns out a feedback heavy lead on semi-hollow body guitar. Midway through, Greenwood joins him, and the tempo shifts towards a swirling finish.

Described by Yorke as “the angriest song [he’d] ever written,” “I Will” is a slow, Beatles-esque ballad which deals the evils of Western foreign policy. The line where Yorke sings “little babies’ eyes” refers to a bombing during the Gulf War where the victim’s faces were imprinted on the walls of the concrete shelter they occupied.

While it wasn’t finished until September 2002, the track actually has its origins during the OK Computer era. Yorke can be seen performing it acoustically at a 1998 soundcheck in the film Meeting People Is Easy. As the events detailed in the song go back to the early 90’s, it’s possible the track is even older.

On the penultimate track “Scatterbrain,” the band seem to be at peace, with Greenwood playing a gentle electric part, and Selway ticking the rims of his snare and tom in twos. Yorke sings about a force ten gale, “yesterday’s people,” and headlines being “blown by the wind.”

He could be talking about the way sensationalism and propaganda have infiltrated the news media. Or maybe he’s referring to what Noam Chomsky once called “the bewildered herd,” meaning people who are only used by politicians during election cycles, and then discarded like trash. Either way, it’s a compelling song.

The early 2000s were not easy on anyone. The cultural changes and ill-advised combat were reflected in music and art. As the world changed around them, so did Radiohead. While Kid A remains their high watermark, Hail To The Thief showed the group could match their sound with a message and heart.

EMI/2003