Radiohead -- Hail to the Thief

9/10

Almost every band I feel a strong emotional connection to has an album that I unfairly malign upon its release, only to come back to and love later. Hail to the Thief didn't really have a chance with me in 2003. I could feel myself becoming more politically agitated as the year wore on, and an album which focused on all the stuff I was already angry about didn't really seem appealing to me. I wanted to escape from all that stuff. Plus, four-minute alternative rock songs instead of the vast experimentation of the last two albums? No thanks! Hail to the Thief also seemed like a big downer at a time when I was already...on a downer. I purchased this right about the time I began an anxiety-fueled migraine that lasted nine months--if you haven't figured it out by this point, The Nicsperiment is not a normal person.
Thus, Hail to the Thief was relegated to my CD shelf never to return again... Just kidding, it did return five years later. I won't spoil my upcoming review of Radiohead's 2007 release, In Rainbows...I will simply state that it restored my love for the band, and inspired me to ride out to Houston with a van-load of friends and family to catch Radiohead on their In Rainbows tour. On the way there, I had a long talk about life with my cousin Jessica, who always seems to offer a perspective I haven't yet considered. She vastly disagreed with my opinion of Hail to the Thief, and suggested I give it another listen on its own merits, free from my own expectations.
Later that night, at the incredible show, one of the most overwhelmingly powerful live performances by a live band I have ever seen, something strange happened: my favorite moments were from Hail to the Thief. "Where I End and You Begin," a song I had barely even noticed before, reduced me to tears, even as it sent my body into strange writhing motions that can only be described as "The Nicsperiment dancing." "There There," which I admittedly did enjoy before, became stratospheric. "The Gloaming" went from gloomy bore to fun.
Jessica was right. Time to reevaluate.
Radiohead are a complicated band, and Hail to the Thief, composed of 14 tracks, and running nearly an hour, is a complicated album. In the face of a war begun under false pretenses, a highly controversial presidential election, and a post-9/11 malaise that felt it would never end, Hail to the Thief is a defeated album, even for Radiohead. At the same time, if your head is in the right space, it's a lot of fun. Radiohead have never haphazardly recorded and released music like this before or since. In this one instance, they forced themselves to work quickly and send to market what they had created before they had time to overthink anything. Because of this, Hail to the Thief is at once too long, with songs piled up without winnowing, and incomplete. For instance, that previously mentioned live performance of "The Gloaming" featured a rocking, triumphant outro the band hadn't conceived of back in 2003, when Hail to the Thief was released. On the album, the song just sort of ends.
On the other hand, it's nice to hear the band acting on the fly without second guessing themselves. There is a certain livewire, firecracker feeling to Hail to the Thief that the band's other work lacks. You can see them throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, even if they aren't necessarily concerning themselves with what sticks where. The slow, b-movie horror stomp of "We suck Young Blood" is likely meant to be tongue in cheek, but placing it after the sky-scraping emotional power of "Where I End and You Begin," relegates it to camp. The minimalist, dark balladry of "I Will" is fine, but it slows the momentum of "There, There" heading into the fun, funky "A Punchup at a Wedding." This can make the album a bit of a slog, particularly when vocalist, Thom Yorke, already seems so beaten. The album's closing lyrics are:

I keep the wolf from the door
But he calls me up
Calls me on the phone
Tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up
Steal all my children if I don't pay the ransom
And I'll never see them again if I squeal to the cops
So I'm you just gonna...

Well, maybe "squealing" is the victory. Whatever the case, Hail to the Thief is flawed, but I can't deny its immediate power. The band wield despair here like never before. Tell me this performance of "Where I End and You Begin," which matches the album version's power, doesn't give you the chills.

"Where I End and You Begin" takes lessons the band learned from their experimental period, but puts them into a more immediate setting--instead of sweating over electronic manipulation for months, the band throw on-the-fly electronics into a more traditional alternative rock sound to create something more intense than anything they've ever made. The tension between the two is quite palpable and electric. The band experiences enough hits throughout the album by doing this that Hail to the Thief's strengths, over time, inexorably crush its flaws.
Fourteen years later, outside of dredging them up for this review, the flaws can't touch the album's highs. At the same time, the tension in the album created by everything I've already mentioned is an excellent encapsulation of the time it was made--I don't think Hail to the Thief could have been created in any year other than 2003--the year that gave me the nine-month migraine from hell. Removed from that year, "There There," and all of Hail to the Thief's wandering, aimless walk through these dangerous musical woods is more timeless than ever.


2003 Parlophone/Capitol
1. 2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm.) 3:19
2. Sit down. Stand up. (Snakes & Ladders.) 4:19
3. Sail to the Moon. (Brush the Cobwebs out of the Sky.) 4:18
4. Backdrifts. (Honeymoon is Over.) 5:22
5. Go to Sleep. (Little Man being Erased.) 3:21
6. Where I End and You Begin. (The Sky is Falling in.) 4:29
7. We suck Young Blood. (Your Time is up.) 4:56
8. The Gloaming. (Softly Open our Mouths in the Cold.) 3:32
9. There there. (The Boney King of Nowhere.) 5:25
10. I Will. (No man's Land.) 1:59
11. A Punchup at a Wedding. (No no no no no no no no.) 4:57
12. Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.) 3:52
13. Scatterbrain. (As Dead as Leaves.) 3:21
14. A Wolf at the Door. (It Girl. Rag Doll.) 3:21