With occasional reflection on the perpetual absurdity/intrigue of life and society in general.

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

The Optical Files #45: Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (2003)


I've been waiting for this to pop up, because it was the album that inspired me to do this series. For some reason, I found myself drawn to revisit it late last year, & when I dug out the CD & popped it into my home stereo, I suddenly felt, simultaneously, more aware of the past & more aware of the present. The sounds transported me back to the summer I first heard the album, while my ears interpreted the sounds in new ways, aged & sharpened over the intervening 19 years. In the aesthetic discourse with my younger self, I heard things I'd never heard before, & I also realized that Hail to the Thief is a better album than I gave it credit for.

Hail to the Thief came out on my final day of high school. I worshiped at the altar of Radiohead's Bends - Amnesiac run, so it was a no-brainer that I'd cop this on release day. I saw Radiohead in concert that summer after graduating, on tour to promote this album. It's safe to say that this album lives in my music-appreciation bones. The critical narrative at the time was that Hail was Radiohead's "return to rock," but the reality is a bit more complicated. True, this is their most guitar-based album since OK Computer, but then again, with the band so interested in processing & experimenting with filters & other tools to stretch sounds out of shape, you can't always tell what's a guitar. (A great example is Kid A's "Treefingers," which sounds like an ambient synth track but was really Ed O'Brien's guitar chords.) What Hail really sounds like is yet another quality Radiohead album, with their trademark angular chord patterns & plaintive melodies, & an extra dash of sinister vocal harmonies (Ed & Thom? Or multi-tracked Thom? Not sure.) The 2nd single "Go to Sleep" is a good example: it's a rock/pop song with a more conventional progression, but processed vocals & rusty lead guitar lines creep into the mix as the song goes on, culminating in a closing solo that sounds like a dying robot.

For the first time, however, cracks are starting to appear & Radiohead seem to be re-plowing the same ground, a sin they'd never before been guilty of. "Sail to the Moon" features gorgeous piano playing by Thom but is still clearly the "Pyramid Song" of this album. By the same token, "We Suck Young Blood" with its funeral jazz feel harkens back to "Life in a Glasshouse" from Amnesiac. But at least that one has tons of personality. "The Gloaming"--coming in between such a distinctive song & the lead single "There There"--is a bit too familiar Radiohead territory & thus feels like filler.

As usual, Radiohead's secret weapons on this album are the unofficial 6th member, producer Nigel Godrich, who conjures up soundscapes that are always unusual & occasionally jaw-dropping; & bassist Colin Greenwood, whose playing is rock-solid & trickier than it seems. Where the 2 work together, we get massive tracks like the bass-led "Where I End and You Begin" (which owes a lot to drum'n'bass) & especially "Myxomatosis." It is driven by Colin's hugely distorted bass, & I had never before, nor ever since, heard a bass guitar, or anything else for that matter, make that sound. It's like Colin & Nigel got together, looked at the song's lyrics, & set out to create a bass sound that "screw[s] [you] in a vise" & makes you feel "tongue-tied" & "skinned alive," & what they came up with gets my vote for the album's best song.

I liked Hail to the Thief back in that "celebrated summer," & listened to it plenty, but I always held it as a step below the Bends - Amnesiac run. Today, I see it as part of that classic run, albeit the dry end of it that's just starting to get stale. 
Wait, does that mean with a few more listens, I'll even learn to like In Rainbows?
Probably not.

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