Radiohead “Hail to the Thief”
Capitol
This is the most fun record the world’s current best band
has ever made.
It catches Radiohead at a crossroads in its career. The band has
finally, at least momentarily, reached a place where all of the
members seem happy to be making the music they’re making. And
here we see the boys, instead of trying to obliterate everything
they’ve done before, building directly from it. They’ve
made a great rock “˜n’ roll record in the process.
For you short-sighted souls, however, very little on this album
sounds directly like anything they’ve done before. Contrary
to what you may want to believe, this is not a Radiohead greatest
hits effort. The best moments are, for the most part, the ones that
sound least like the past catalogue.
Two of the absolute standout tracks on the record, “We
Suck Young Blood” and “Wolf at the Door,”
cultivate a dark electric ““ dare I say it ““ almost
baroque moodiness that is thrilling to listen to.
“Backdrifts” is one of the poppiest tracks
Radiohead’s ever done (it should be a single if the record
company had any guts) and its red electronica, complete with video
game-y sounds and wailing, following an electromagnetic pull into
some bottomless cavern. The more familiar “Sail to the
Moon” is flat out the prettiest song the band has ever done;
a beautiful vocal melody over spacy, bright guitars and piano.
The record is not perfect however. Outside of “Kid
A,” frontman Thom Yorke’s lyrics have rarely been more
than attempts to create syllables to round out the band’s
sound, and here, while catchier and appropriately moody,
they’re still often not emotionally compelling in and of
themselves. Yorke’s voice, however, has never sounded better.
His performance on this record is his best ever, often laying
overdubbed double and triple harmonies on himself. He’s never
sounded more human and rocking.
This will be in my stereo more than anything else this year.
-Anthony Bromberg