The likelihood of Oxford ogres Radiohead releasing a below-par record is low. In fact, it is about as likely as an award-winning comeback from Gary Glitter or a sudden career resurgence from Elkie Brooks. Still, I keep my fingers crossed that Elkie one day might return to the professional stage (chairlift or no) and dazzle us all with her brilliance once again. Gary on the other hand, well… the less said about him the better. One word – Vietnam. You know how to Google…

Hail To The Thief was released in 2003 and entered the life of this wearisome reviewer at a time of much flux and furore. George Bush had just been re-elected the most powerful man in the world. The number of toasted cheese snacks on the market had tripled. A few friends went inter-railing through Bosnia without me. Avril Lavigne was voted the most influential woman in American history. It became impossible to find Tunnock’s Tea Cakes in Central Edinburgh. Yes, things were kinda up and down back then.

This album helped lift me. To where remains uncertain. With its eerie late-night melodies and distinctly macabre lyrics about the jaws of hell, wolves at the door and lethargic vampires, I was taken to a place where ghouls stalked the streets; where trees leaned over while you were doing the crossword; and where fear was never more than a semi-quaver away. Which all things considered, sounds rather normal for Radiohead. Hail To The Thief is a fine snapshot of the world at the start of the rockiest millennium since the First Battle of Alton kicked off in 1001AD. Its tunes are timeless and for the most part, all powerful nuggets that shall endure in the Radiohead canon forevermore, forevermore, forevermore…

The Music

2 + 2 = 5 opens the record, an ominous and jittersome rocker evoking the spirit of George Orwell and reminding us all that global oppression is never more than a few skirmishes away. Thom Yorke belts out his “pay attention” bombast here, urging all those to sit up and take notice to the chaos going on around them in this crippled universe. Thanks for that, Thom. Sit Down, Stand Up is an exercise in building gothic tension and creeps along on a woodland piano line and repetitive commands from Yorke. It erupts in a radioactive shower of epileptic synthesiser plonks and drum machines gone berserk as he repeats: “The raindrops, the raindrops!”

Effective? You bet. Sail To The Moon is a melancholic piano lament where Yorke sucks the moon and speaks too soon, dreaming that he can leave this inglorious world and part from this quintessence of dust that is man. Jonny Greenwood contributes another affecting guitar line and the piano helps buffer the strangulated notes of Yorke at his most desolate. His voice circles around the mid-tempo shuffle of the music and chills the listener into a rapt silence. Wonderful.

The musical complexities involved in Backdrifts render this reviewer speechless, but there is a distinct drum machine loop to be found around the wobbling string synths and laptop trickery at play here. The paranoid phrases Yorke wields (to spine-chilling effect) evoke the most excessive conspiratorial rantings of Philip K. Dick, and the late-night forest sound helps add to the sense of imminent alien invasion. When the entire mesmeric ghost-shimmer of this piece ends, a strange chill that G-men are about to kick down the door visits me. They’re not, are they? Please, don’t lie to me…

Go To Sleep scores ten bonus points for finest use of the phrase “over my dead body” within a popular rock song. This piece is a punchier and funkier slice of millennial proto-goth-punk-prog gone all 2028. Note also, readers, the understated uber-solo from Greenwood towards the end which is quite an impressive feat when viewed live. Are you noting it? I don’t see a pen or a pad in your hands…

Where I End & You Begin is my personal favourite on this album. With its growling bass line from Colin Greenwood, its child-like lead melody and its sublime background eeriness created through Jonny and his ondes martenot, it is thee definition of a terrific fourth single. Well… AND a terrific tune in its own right. The ondes martenot is rather like a theremin, for those who care. He nicked it from Portishead. Note here the wonderful slow build in the middle towards the nightmarish final minute when an echo-daubed Yorke repeats over the ghoulish melee of sounds: “I will eat you alive, and there’ll be no more lies.”

We Suck Young Blood is a vampiric dirge which confused me at first since it demonstrated – gasps of horror – the sense of humour in Radiohead! Could there indeed be a sense of self-deprecation in the same band who wrote How To Disappear Completely and Climbing Up The Walls? This tune argues thus. Despite the uncertain slosh of the piano and its self-consciously “ghoulish” harmonies, this tune would appear to be a jest at their reputation as night-crawlers and dark poets of the soul. It all gets a little moth-eaten in the middle for me, but is by no means a dud. Then the joke is over and it just gets spookier…

The Gloaming once more allows drummer Phil Selway to sit out, utilising the ear-splitting crackle of the drum machine and the Halloween spook of those weird synths again. The bass also does frightening things of some note. Perfect for walking through a dark forest unaccompanied after watching The Blair Witch Project.

There There is the behemoth at the centre of this album, a mini-movie inside a rock song with a script from John Wyndham and direction from David Lynch. The primal drumming here adds to the sense of explosive climax which haunts the prog-rock scare of this brilliant centrepiece. A word has to be said for the evocative lyrics and squished electric guitars, set to the “scared as hell” setting, and also the manner in which the group build towards the tumultuous final act. Here all hell does break lose as the guitar screeches into overdrive, the synths cross into the fourth dimension and Yorke belts out the blood-curdling final refrain: “We are accidents waiting to happen!”

It is tough to follow such a staggering song. I Will is the antithesis of this tune – a short and lugubrious piece for guitar and voice. The lyrics suggest a bleak future ahead for our children (should we have any) and it is impossible to ignore the bitter message the band offer us here. One way or another, they whisper, we are all doomed.

A Punchup At A Wedding is less apocalyptic on the whole, and makes use of an infectious beat on drum and piano, twisting itself into a blackly comic dance anthem for all drunk dads to get down to at the weddings of the children they despise. The lyrics are amusing but are delivered in the same mournful falsetto we are used to from Yorke, making this far from another self-deprecating number. Some neat modulations keep it dramatic and engaging throughout and it plonks out shaking it head in a refrain of: “No no no, no no no, no no no, no no no…”

The final triumvirate of songs are excessively resigned, downbeat and plaintive. Which should keep fans happy. Myxomatosis has the most complex drumbeat in the history of music and is a molasses-thick slab of grumpy and paranoid rock. It has little to do with rabbits. Scatterbrain is a welcome tinge of self-pitying gloom and has a guitar line performed as though the end of the world has come and there is but one leaf left on the final tree. Together with Thom we watch it tumble, and pick a hole to fall in…

A Wolf At The Door is a foul-mouthed rant where Thom turns into Mark E. Smith for three minutes. After this one, we feel like slapping Thom for his commitment to desolation and sadness. Then we want to thank him for all the wonderful music.

Hail To The Thief is another beautiful and despairing tome from the finest unit in existence. These fourteen tracks find the band in a position where they managed retain all credibility and power in spite of themselves, and lead us reluctantly by the hand into the new millennium. It is another triumph of an album, which some might argue fails to hang together as a whole, but which I argue is an out-and-out triumph for those willing to last through its hour of hypnotic melancholia until the end. A sublime offering and another essential record from this peerless quintet.

In Rainbows (2007)
Com Lag (2plus2isfive) (2004)

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving