Hail To The Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009)

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As Thom Yorke sat down to type out the lyrics to “A Wolf at the Door”—the near-rap that ends Radiohead’s sixth album, <i>Hail to the Thief</i>—for artist Stanley Donwood, the singer was stunned by the cumulative violence of the images: knives in neck, Stepford wives and clandestine mistresse, dead people dragged through window. But all that danger and anger was in the air as Radiohead plotted and recorded this dark 2003 effort, its title a reference to George W. Bush’s electoral hijink, and its songs written and recorded as the United States began its post-9/11 assault. And on <i>Hail to the Thief</i>, the angst of that era is everywhere: There’s the Orwellian logic of “2 + 2 = 5,” the nuclear fallout of “I Will,” and the plagued race of “Myxomatosi,” named for an especially fatal rabbit pox. Perhaps it was the cumulative effect of early-2000s despair that had inspired Yorke’s bleak lyrics? “Rather than waking you up and it’s like, ‘Uhh, it’s all been a lovely dream,’” the singer later confirmed, “it’s all been a nightmare, and you need to go and get a glass of water now.” Following the creative successes of <i>Kid A</i> and <i>Amnesiac</i>—which found the members of Radiohead rethinking their approach to the studio—the group once again shook things up on <i>Hail to the Thief</i>. In 2002, Yorke and his bandmates decamped to the famed Ocean Way in Los Angeles for two week, recording a song every day. For the first time in year, they had real fun, indulging not only in the sunshine outside but in the studio’s big room, where they worked as a cohesive quintet. While still testing out equipment, the group laid down the track that would become “2 + 2 = 5”—and the song’s incisive riff, falsetto vocal, and rhythmic tricks set the stage for <i>Hail to the Thief</i>’s scope. This is an album that finds Radiohead approaching familiar rock territory, from the momentous strum-and-drum anthem “Go to Sleep” to the chiming notes of “Scatterbrain.” But witness the tape-splice wizardry and big beat of “The Gloaming,” or the whirring circuits and clipped rhythms of “Backdrifts”: This is a band that, having ventured far beyond recognizable comforts after <i>OK Computer</i>, was now moving deliberately and defiantly toward the center—at least for a spell. .

via Apple Music

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