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Hail to the Thief, the
title of Radiohead's new album, is not a direct reference to George W.
Bush, the band has insisted in interviews.
Okay. Right. If it's not about
"W", then it's about men of his ilk... the controlling "Big Brother"
world powers who gloss over questionable and sometimes awful behavior
with romantic ideology. It's about death and poverty happening
everywhere while the rich and powerful carry on the business of their
own private axis of evil. In other words, Radiohead is back in business
as doomsayers of the darkest most despairing order.
They're also playing
rock-and-roll again.
In my reviews of previous Radiohead albums, I spent
a lot of time and energy digging into the lyrics in hopes of finding
some rhyme and reason in Thom Yorke’s cryptic, aggressive, abstract
lyrics. I believe I found plenty of method in the madness, and came away
assured that Yorke is troubled by the arrogance, greed, and the abuse of
power he sees in the governments, most especially America. He is also
disgusted by the neglect of the poor, by the
manipulation of the masses by the media, and by his inability to live
his life freely without being monitored or
misunderstood.
Hail to the Thief shows that nothing has
changed. Smoke is still curling from Yorke’s ears as he
rants about a world he
would rather not live in. His songs still
rumble with peripheral voices making terrible threats. If anything, the
songs have become more immediate and urgent--the prophecies of collapse
and violent rebellion no longer feel like prophecies, but like the day's
headlines.
But when it comes to music, quite a bit has
changed. Hail to the Thief shows Radiohead having come back down
from the mountain they discovered in OK Computer.
They climbed to its lonely and cold peak in Kid A, and
then descended into its
dark, haunted, echo-filled crevasses in Amnesiac. Their
electronically invigorated expedition has finally led them back
to level ground, back to their home territory,
where they are still glowing with their sonic discoveries.
At long last, they pull out the drum set, the bass,
the guitars, and the piano, and they play like a band of
earthlings again.
But this is not a new beginning.
If anything, it's a wrap-up, a fusion of what they've learned. Some
critics are calling the album uninspired and redundant. I think it
boasts plenty of new ideas and strikes an excellent balance between
their tripped-out sci-fi sound and the peerless rock frenzies of The
Bends. It begins with the sound of Johnny
Greenwood's guitar being plugged into a live amp. “That would be
a good start,” someone says. And with that, they’re off.
THE SONGS
Like a Moses of the Future, Yorke storms off the
mountain with his tablets of what must be done, and points accusingly at
the masses who have been playing along to the devil’s tune. Basically,
he’s asking for volunteers. Who has the guts to act on their dreams? Who
has the courage to stand up against the screwed-up system?
Are you such a dreamer
To put the world to rights?
I’ll stay home forever
Where 2 and 2 always makes up 5.
The world’s all wrong. There are April showers in
January. And Yorke’s chorus may be a game of devil’s advocate, jarring
us into action by telling us time is up. Or he may mean it. It may be a
cry of despair that there really is no hope left at all.
It’s the devil’s way
now
There is no way out
You can scream and you can shout
It is too late now
…and then he lays on the blame, wringing
the words until
they’re unrecognizable:
…because
You have not been paying attention!!
Paying attention!
Paying attention!
You have not been paying attention!!
At the same time, Radiohead launches into the most
electrifying “live” sound we’ve heard from
them since The Bends. The rock and roll is back in the Radiohead,
and they remain the weeping prophets, the despairing soothsayers,
wrapping things up appropriately with a reference to Chicken Little: “Go
and tell the king that the sky is / falling in, When it’s not / Maybe
not…”
Is the “maybe not” an admission of hope? Or is it
what we tell ourselves in order to dawdle a little longer in our
blissful ignorance?
The rest of the album remains in that sense of
uncertainty, where occasionally Yorke sings of taking action and
resisting, but then always steps back to see the larger picture and
admit that he and his clan of protest are just “sitting ducks.”
There is not a lot of new
perspective on this album to chew on. “Sit Down, Stand Up” drones
in the voice of Authority, controlling the masses with orders that
resemble those given in a worship service, culminating in the
demon-choir reminding us “We can wipe you out… anytime.” In these days
when the rumor of weapons (that are never found) can
inspire a World Power to swoop down on a small
country with “pre-emptive strikes” in the name of
"freedom", it is not hard to figure out who
Yorke has in mind in his damning portrayals of power.
I have no idea what the machine-gunning repetition of "The raindrops!"
at the end of the song means, but it makes for an exhilarating finale.
“Sail to the Moon” is the first of two
lullabies that may have been born of necessity. Yorke’s a daddy now.
Both songs sound like things he might have crooned to his kid
after watching a particularly dispiriting episode of television news. If
so, then fatherhood has been good for Yorke. “Sail to the Moon” glides
on keyboard chords as dreamy and gorgeous and sad as its title, and his
falsetto is ethereal and enchanting. It’s not as abstract as “Pyramid
Song”, but it delves into the same dream state. And it also offers the
most direct and hopeful lyrics he’s penned in years: “Maybe you’ll be
president / and know right from wrong / or in the flood build an ark /
and sail to the moon.”
“Backdrifts” is an itchy rock number pulsing
with electronics and strange atmospheric layers, but it’s also
surprising in that it returns Radiohead to
verse-chorus-verse-chorus mode. The lyrics give us a sense of the world
slumping back into barbarism, of lives already rotten and plunging into
the arms of those who can do nothing to save them.
From pessimistic to outright morbidity, we proceed
to “Go to Sleep.” The song startles us with its organic, acoustic
guitar sound… which builds to an electric-guitar tantrum at the end that
will surely send Yorke into a hyperkinetic frenzy during live
performances. With these verses he seems to be wishing us all a nice
death in one imminent catastrophe or another. He seems to be
surrendering himself too, perhaps to the lulling hypnosis of mass media.
“May pretty horses / Come to you / as you sleep,” he barks in a tone
that is anything but well-wishing. “I’m gonna go to sleep / Let this
wash / all over me.”
A ghostly keyboard hum lifts us into a sort of
spiritual realm for one of the album’s strongest anthems, “Where I
End and You Begin.” The song seems to be coming from the other side,
from someone no longer able to act in the material world, mourning the
loss of connection, a victim of superpower violence. It aims to be, and
just might become, one of the great rock songs about dislocation and
alienation.
There’s a gap in between
There’s a gap where we meet
Where I end and you begin
Yorke references an earlier song, “Optimistic”,
which was anything but—he observes once again that “dinosaurs roam the
earth”, but he can only “watch and not take part”.
But who is this speaking to us from the other side?
I am intrigued. The final lines are full of fascinating suggestion of a
Biblical nature: “X marks the place / like parting the waves / like a
house falling into the sea.” A reference to the exodus? Is Yorke
suggesting that some might be saved, and that the oppressor might be
left buried in some sort of purging act? All I know for sure is that the
ending is ominous and exciting: “I will eat you all alive,” says
a fearsome voice, “and there’ll be no more lies.”
This voice is different--a different character. Perhaps it is the voice
of the One who brings the waves back down on the oppressor.
It certainly sounds like at least a suggestion that “This age of
lies… it too shall pass”, even if it ends in a
flood. (And that would be our second ‘flood’ reference so far on the
album, wouldn’t it? See “Sail to the Moon.”)
This is followed by the spookiest, most troubling
song in the Radiohead catalogue, in this listener’s opinion. “We Suck
Young Blood” is the vampyric mission statement of some malevolent
corporation. Interviews with the band have confirmed that this can be
interpreted as a song about the mass media swallowing up talent and
spitting out inspired young hearts. Startling
hand-claps punctuates this minor-key nightmare, sounding like something
from a dream-sequence in Twin Peaks. Frankly, I find the
sentiment a bit obvious and worn out, and would have been quite content
to see them cut this song out for a B-side, but oh well.
“The Gloaming” has both feet in Amnesiac
territory. A percolating R2D2 provides
the crisscrossing out-of-step rhythms.
Yorke lays out lines that echo September 11th,
when the poor and angry terrorist sympathizers in the
Middle East rejoiced and laughed while the towers came down.
Murderers you’re murderers
We are not the same as you
Funny haha funny how
When the walls bend
With your breathing
They will suck you down
To the other side
To the shadows blue and red
Your alarm bells…
They should be ringing.
A clearer summation of the terrorist perspective I
have never heard in a song. It’s troubling, yes, but also a reminder
that there is a reason such violence is unleashed on the world. It is,
in their minds, a desperate answer to things they have suffered
themselves. In their minds, the free world powers are the “murderers.”
In “There There”, the album’s first single
and its most straightforward rock song, Yorke sees us as “accidents
waiting to happen.” When
he looks about he sees the things that will detonate those “accidents.”
So he warns us against the promises that surround us, the seductions of
the world. “There’s always a siren singing you to shipwreck / Steer away
from these rocks / We’d be a walking disaster.” And then he fuels our
mistrust of those seductresses: “Just ‘cause you feel it doesn’t mean
it’s there…” Is he referring to the promises of romantic political
language, or of the empty promises of power-mad religions, or merely the
relentless promises delivered by the media?
In “I Will”, the second and sleepiest
lullaby, Yorke may not see a chance to escape, but he pledges to defend
what it his. He sings it in in the most
delicate and beautiful harmony he’s ever
performed:
I will lay me down
In a bunker underground
I won’t let this happen to my children
Meet the real world coming out of my shell
With white elephants
Sitting ducks
I will rise up.
The reference to “rise up” recalls
the prophecy of violent resistance at the end of “You and Whose Army”
from Amnesiac. But how effective is
rising up when he sees his small subterranean clan as “sitting ducks”?
Who is this lullaby for, the baby or himself?
“Punch-Up at a Wedding” finds the band in
the grooviest groove they’ve ever attempted. It’s a contagious bass line
digging beneath some simple piano chords, and Yorke’s vocals are
up-front and unenhanced. It’s the freshest, and also the most natural,
sound on the album.
What’s the song about? Sounds pretty
straightforward: There’s an important happy function going
on, but someone showed up to spoil it , to
“piss on the parade, to shred our dinner date….” Are these metaphors,
equivalents? I assume so…. They usually are. What was the occasion? And
more to the point—who’s messing things up?
“Hypocrite!” barks Yorke, “Opportunist! Don’t infect me with your
poison / I was there and it wasn’t like that / You came in here just to
start a fight.”
In this chapter of history, it’s hard to avoid
drawing certain conclusions. Describing the antagonist as ignorant and
hostile, a “bully in a china shop”, a “pot” calling “the kettle black”,
it is not hard to guess that this is yet another political tirade. We
have all the pieces… someone going in where they don’t belong, issuing a
challenge, upsetting something fragile, and then changing the fact and
information of their story so they look innocent.
Or... it might just be about a punch-up at a wedding.
“Myxamatosis”, the album’s most aggressive
and obnoxious number, zooms in like a giant angry bumblebee, or like a
drunkard wielding a weedwhacker
in some thick brambles. Yorke
moans about a mongrel cat gnawing on the
remains of a dead diseased animal, and the cat starts testifying about
the effects of the sickness. Perhaps the point
is that the cat should not be surprised at its condition considering its
habits. In view of “We Suck Young Blood”, I can’t help but wonder if
this is the lament of the star who has been ruined by the business of
celebrity, but later lines sound like a fine description of certain
political figures: “He shook hands with the cripples and / He gave them
all milk / He did a few card tricks / For his mafia geeks / but now, “I
don’t know why I feel so tongue-tied.”
“Scatterbrain”, which spins a sprightly
OK Computer-era guitar line, suggests a massive cataclysm, and then
observes how quickly our media culture helps us forget the casualties
and the causes: “Yesterday’s headlines / Blown by the wind / Yeserday’s
people / end up / Scatterbrain…”
In the album's most original and
non-Radiohead-like number, “Wolf at the Door",
Yorke sums it up without even a glimmer of
hope on the horizon. Speaking again as a father, the
speaker chronicles that he is being pressured and threatened by
dangerous powers who will take away his children and punish him if he
“squeals to the cops.” Sounding half mad and rambling with the stress of
it, Yorke retreats into that dreamy croon we heard in “Sail to the
Moon”, as if longing for sleep, or wishing he could fall in a hole and
never come out again. He just wants to be alone and have some privacy, a
sentiment similar to his complaint about being trapped in glass house at
the end of Amnesiac.
STILL MOANING, STILL GROANING
Sickness in the head, pressure from outside, and a
government slowly sacrificing the future of the world to appease its own
greed. Nothing terribly new about these realizations. If anything, Yorke
and Company are showing a renewed energy to fight back and to look for
volunteers who can save us from “the Devil’s Way.”
But I'm not sure. I don't feel a
shred of hope for the world after listening to Hail to the Thief.
It's exciting music... only so long as you don't listen to the words.
This trilogy of records has offered no tangible insight, no glimpse of
the place from whence our help can come. In spite of their brilliant
musical inventions,
they exhaust us with their relentlessly bleak and forbidding visions.
And I think it's hurting their
style. For all of the great "moments" throughout this album (and there
are many), there are only a few that stand up as examples of strong
songwriting. "Where I End and You Begin", "I Will", "Punch-Up at a
Wedding", and "Sail to the Moon" are songs I find myself singing. The
rest are worthy sonic experiments. But it is painful to see such
talented guys offering so few of the minor melodic miracles that packed
The Bends and OK Computer.
If this continues, their
adventuresome musical style will not be enough to keep drawing this
listener back for more. Close the book, guys. You've
given us a good hard look in the darkest of mirrors, and we can't help
but see the troubling darkness of our world reflected there. Time to
open another book. Time to let some light in. Look around. There's
inspiration everywhere.
If Radiohead cannot ever
deign to explore other subjects and acknowledge those
things that are worth saving from the rising tide, then they
increasingly make themselves suspect of merely selling what a certain
audience wants to hear. If that's what they're
doing, then they're just another willing
puppet manipulated by the very machine against which they so
aggressively rage.
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