Hail To The Thief

3 years ago, my brother told me how jealous he was of the position I was in. I was about to listen to Hail To The Thief for the first time. I can’t blame him. I listened to it every day for the next 6 months.

Apart from their insignificant debut album, every Radiohead album that followed is sublime and each in it’s own way. However, and as is certainly the case with Hail To The Thief, it may take you a while to realise it. Some appreciate this album as a return to ‘rock’ and ‘guitar music’ (I mention these terms lightly as it’s hard to label anything Radiohead have done into any particular style or genre) after both Kid A and Amnesiac established a well-appraised, obscure electronic new sound for the band. For me, it’s a mixture of the two that makes this album such a masterpiece. With anthems such as 2 + 2 = 5 and There There grabbing the highlights for most people, and probably rightly so, it’s the equally exceptional ambiguous tracks such as The Gloaming and Sit Down. Stand Up that get me. Thom’s voice sooths you calmly, yet at times, haunts around and above you as if he has taken control of you, but you love it and can’t get enough (a bit like rum). The rest of the band, deliver sounds throughout the 56 minutes and 35 seconds that make you to wander to a place not even Wayne Coyne on acid has been to, yet you remain frozen to the spot as you recognize, probably after about the twentieth listen, the completeness and delicacy of this perfect album.

What I have briefly described may not make a lot of sense if you do not share the same passion for this album, but the best I can say is that the days of dancing and meandering around the room, singing and pretending I’m on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury as Thom Yorke are not over, and they never will be.

JP