Radiohead Week: Hail To The Thief

[Jiminy Cricket]

 

 

 

 

The Album: Hail To The Thief (The Gloaming)

 

The Release Date: June 9th, 2003

The Tracklist:

 

01. 2 + 2 = 5. (The Lukewarm.)

02. Sit Down. Stand Up. (Snakes & Ladders.)

03. Sail to the Moon. (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky.)

04. Backdrifts. (Honeymoon is Over.)

05. Go to Sleep. (Little Man Being Erased.)

06. Where I End and You Begin. (The Sky is Falling In.)

07. We Suck Young Blood. (Your Time is Up.)

08. The Gloaming. (Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold.)

09. There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.)

10. I Will. (No Man's Land.)

11. A Punchup at a Wedding. (No No No No No No No No.)

12. Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.)

13. Scatterbrain. (As Dead as Leaves.)

14. A Wolf at the Door. (It Girl. Rag Doll.)

 

The question on every Radiohead fan's lips as 2002 rolled around surely must have been, "What in the HELL are they going to do next?"

With arguably their two darkest albums behind them, namely 2000's stunning Kid A and its companion album, 2001's disjointed, but, in my opinion, no less impressive Amnesiac, the world waited to see where they would go next. Rather astonishingly, the album was nearly finished by the time the band's summer Iberian tour finished.

Twelve of the songs that would make it onto the band's sixth studio album were played on that tour - only Backdrifts and The Gloaming were kept under wraps.

An unmastered version of the album leaked in early 2003. It is a much more cohesive effort than Amnesiac was, despite containing many different styles of songs, from the frenetic (2+2=5, There There), to the menacing (Myxomatosis, The Gloaming) and devastating (Wolf At The Door).

It received a mixed reception from fans and critics alike, and even the band themselves expressed a level of disappointment with the finished product, with Thom saying that, due to the studio sessions lasting only two weeks (the shortest since Pablo Honey), that "I wish I had another go at [Hail to the Thief]. We wanted to do things quickly, and I think the songs suffered. It was part of the experiment. Every record is part of the experiment."

 

Key Tracks: 2+2=5, Sit Down. Stand Up, Where I End And You Begin, The Gloaming, There There, Myxomatosis, A Wolf At The Door

 

Some quotes about each of the tracks:

 

01. 2 + 2 = 5. (The Lukewarm.)

 

Thom: "The lukewarm is something from Dante. If I remember this rightly, it’s the least nasty bit of hell, just as you walk through the door there’re the ‘Lukewarm’. And the lukewarm hang around and they were never really bothered about, they didn’t believe in anything particularly. They were like, ‘Oh, you know, whatever, there’s nothing I can do about it. No, no, no’. And it’s quite a curious thing that Dante presents you with. All of a sudden you have these people and you think, ‘Well, they haven’t really done anything wrong, they just didn’t do anything’. And so he judges them and puts them there which, I think, is actually a really good way of explaining ‘2+2=5’."

 

(XFM, Spring 2003)

 

02. Sit Down. Stand Up. (Snakes & Ladders.)

 

Thom: "[The lyrics] are very much just absorbing what's going on around. There are two or three old songs in there that never made sense until now, like 'Sit Down. Stand Up.' and 'I Will.' You just absorb. You can't help it, even if you try not to. I tried not to. I desperately tried not to write anything political, anything expressing the deep, profound terror I'm living with day to day. But it's just fucking there, and eventually you have to give it up and let it happen."

 

(Toronto Star, June 8th 2003)

 

03. Sail to the Moon. (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky.)

 

Thom: "That was written in five minutes. That's a love song, I think it's a bit lovely. There's a lot of that- about responsibility. Lots of looking to the future and seeing fuck all. That's probably a very good reason for people not to be interested in this record. If they don't want to hear that atmosphere I think they should go and buy something else. A general fear of the future, that it's being jeopardised, that it's difficult to do very much about, because things have been set in motion that seem unstoppable."

 

(NME, May 10th 2003)

 

04. Backdrifts. (Honeymoon is Over.)

 

Thom: "There's lots and lots of different interpretations. I mean, the lyrics are incredibly ambivalent. Deliberately. But it sort of came from a certain type of light that I saw, a certain type of smell. It's not particularly anything, that... it's sort of basically this pure blind panic, which I kept encountering in various different forms, and that ended up being a song called 'Backdrifts'. It's a sort of fluorescent light. That's probably not very helpful... I can't really explain it. I mean... 'Backdrifts' to me ended up being, I mean if we're talking lyrically, ended up being very much about the slide into... the slide backwards, that's happening everywhere you look, you know. There was a time when everybody sort of felt like maybe the world was progressing and maybe we were getting better, sort of understanding other people, you know, that there was a high level of tolerance and compassion and so on. And then someone literally flicked a switch and the light went on and everybody just scaried for the dark. And that's to me is sort of the best... that's quite a good way of describing the sort of general atmosphere of that song."

 

(Official Hail To The Thief Interview CD, April 2003)

 

05. Go to Sleep. (Little Man Being Erased.)

 

Thom: "With most of the lyrics, like the ones on 'Go To Sleep', I was thinking, 'Well, this is obviously all nonsense, I'll have to rewrite it'. Then there we were in the studio in the day of recording and I hadn't rewritten it yet, so it was, 'Right, that'll have to be it.' And now I look at it, they're the lyrics I'm most proud of. They're involuntary, there was no mandate, no trying to make a statement, but obviously somewhere in the back of my head it was happening."

 

(NME, May 3rd 2003)

 

06. Where I End and You Begin. (The Sky is Falling In.)

 

NME: A beautiful and melancholic song. Seems to reference a monumental event, like that which wiped out the dinosaurs....

 

Thom: "The wiping out of the dinosaurs? I must have been stuck for a line there- I’ve used that one before. That shows what sort of hurry we were in."

 

Jonny: "It’s another love song, isn’t it? You old soppy."

 

Thom: "Let me think about that for a moment. Yes, I guess so. With the last two records, I think you can tell that I had a problem with things being read a certain way, which was born out of the ‘OK Computer’ experience- which was insane. I don’t really have a problem with it now, which is why we chose to print the words on the record, because in a way I enjoy the fact that people all read things differently."

 

(NME, May 10th 2003)

 

07. We Suck Young Blood. (Your Time is Up.)

 

Thom: "We did this thing, I think we’ve had it in London here now as well, where we’re putting up these ads ‘Hungry? Sick? Begging for a break? Ring this number’. Someone I heard on the radio completely missed the point, or sort of did… or maybe they didn’t… where they kind of thought we were running some Radiohead talent show. Which is just genius - that would have been perfect. Sadly not. It’s a good idea, though.

I think it’s called ‘Your Time Is Up’ simply to take the piss out of the fact that we’re basically old gits now and that we need to suck young blood to keep young! It’s all very tied up with Hollywood as well and, you know, the constant desire to stay young and… fleece people, suck their energy. Corporations… Corporate media groups love to do that…blah, blah, blah. It’s not really about the music business as such, definitely much more about the glamorous world of Hollywood."

 

Q: "The music seems to tie in with the lyrical theme…"

 

Thom: "It’s quite sexy as well."

 

Q: "It has this kind of work song, clapping thing, and then this little New Orleans jazz freak-out type…"

 

Thom: "I’ve always wanted to do the slave ship tune. And this is definitely it. Now what film is it… There’s a film where… It always reminds me of being in the bottom of the ship with all the slaves who’re rowing the boats."

 

(XFM, Spring 2003)

 

08. The Gloaming. (Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold.)

 

Jonny: "People have reported feeling unwell and uneasy and unsure listening to it, which is a good rection to get, I think, halfway through a record. I think there's lots of incertainty on the record lyrically, and that's one point where the music goes quite unsettling, I think."

 

Ed: "It was one of those ones that... when Thom brought 'The Gloaming' into the... and we heard it on a CD that he presented us with a load of material, before we even started. But it was one of the few tracks, that came from, you know, essentially a laptop. And we sort of revisited it back in our studio after we'd been in L.A. and after we'd done a lot of live stuff. And it was really refreshing to hear something out of a... you know, we'd done a lot of live stuff, and to hear something that was digital... I remember it was a friday night that we revisited it. It was the end of a session, end of a week, and it another tone, it was another mood. And it was different. It was like 'we've got to make this work in the record', it takes it to another extreme, in a way."

 

Jonny: "And strangely it was actually put together without computers. It's all done from, don't wanna get overly technical, but it was done with pieces of tape. So the rhythms you're hearing are in a way quite mechanical. So that's why it's so unsettling maybe."

 

Thom: "Musically that was born out of an experiment that Jonny started, where he wanted to cut... he did it with tape loop. And he wanted to cut it as... on a record, you know, as a locked groove. You know what a locked groove is... so you put one on and rather than the record going to the middle it just stays where it is. And so he sat down with Graeme Stewart, who is another engineer we work with, and basically figured it out. And they... I don't know what he was gonna use it for, really, but I heard it when he and Colin started working on it, and just thought it was the most amazing thing, that Jonny had ever written. And I just said 'I'll have that'... and took the hard disc away and... used to drive 'round down country roads during dusk, basically, or the gloaming, listening to this thing, and had this melody, that was coming out underneath. And it was very much about imminent sense of darkness and thinking about the future and, I guess, you know... it's got a lot of dread in it, really. And a lot of sort of totally out of control feelings, you know. I mean, my favourite line in the whole record is the 'genie let out of the bottle' thing, 'cause that kind of really sums it up for me. It was during the Afghan War, and I was also thinking a lot about that it was the rise of the right. All that stuff about the right in Europe, and in France and, was it Belgium? I'm not sure, can't remember now. And that sort of general sense of ignorance and intolerance and panic and stupidity, and everybody running for cover, which is also, I guess, in my description of 'Backdrifts' as well."

 

(Official Hail To The Thief Interview CD, April 2003)

 

09. There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.)

 

Thom: "It made me cry when we finished it, actually, I blubbed my eyes out. Don't know why... I went to L.A. and Nigel played me the mix and it just made me cry, I was in tears for ages. I just thought it was the best thing we'd ever done. So, there's something about it, I love the way... what he did with the guitar sound and the way he mixed it and just the way... it's really jubilant to me, that song, in a funny way. And also, it happened to be... I mean, at one time I thought it was a song that we were gonna lose, which I was really upset about, because the melody stayed with me for about 4 months without going away, which for me is really unusual. It doesn't take me long to get bored. And I really never got bored of this song. Any time I went for a walk any way, or whatever, there it was. It tends to be a long sort of process where... the more you... what I'm finding is, the more I think about how I first heard it, the worse it gets. I mean, what I'm sort of saying is, this is what i kind of mean about the 'let it happen' thing. What I discovered, I think, in making this record, is that along the way things form themselves. And the way things sound, it can form itself. And you may have dreamed of how you wanted it to sound. And then one day you walk into the studio and there it is. But you've not been standing there with a hammer and trying to beat it out of the desk or your guitar, it's not necessary. It's just there one day. I think that's why I cried when I heard the mix, 'cause I was so shocked that it was there. You know, I thought we'd lost it or whatever. And it was really important to me and it was right there one day. And that sort of feeling can then sustain me for months, you know. I'm not bothered about anything else for months. Everything else I can just about cope. I think that's why it's the first single as well, really."

 

Ed: "Sound wasn't right in L.A."

 

Jonny: "Yeah, partly. And because the end was just... It's that interesting thing of, on one level it's really great to record a band in a studio, playing together as a band. And sometimes it doesn't work at all, because you haven't got the real volume of a live concert. And it's not the same, and you're trying to capture something, that just doesn't really work coming out of speakers in your front room, as it would have done in a concert. So that's one song, that I think the first recording suffered from that. It just sounded a bit like we were trying to make a worthy 'live band playing together' recording."

 

Ed: "Because we'd been used to it in live... you know, we played it live, and it was one of the ones, that really worked live. And it was augmented by Jonny and myself playing some drums on it. I think we all had images of sort of tribal sort of... and of course, as Jonny says, it doesn't work necessarily in the studio, so it had to become something else. So you have to find out what it becomes. And it took us to get back to England and just approach it again."

 

(Official Hail To The Thief Interview CD, April 2003)

 

10. I Will. (No Man's Land.)

 

Q: "You said it’s the angriest thing you’ve ever written."

 

Thom: "Yes. Well yeah, I guess it is. I mean… It’s quite simple really, I had an extremely unhealthy obsession, that ran through the ‘Kid A’ thing, about the first Gulf War. When they started it up they did that lovely thing of putting the camera on the end of the missile, and you got to see the wonders of modern military technology blow up this bunker. And then sometime afterwards in the back pages it was announced, that that bunker was not full of weapons at all, but women and children. And it was actually a bomb shelter. And so everybody… we all got to witness the wonders of modern technology. And it ran through so much stuff for so long for me. I just could not get it out of my head. It was so sick. And so that’s where the anger comes from.

 

We did the most dreadful version of it. It was all that programmed… just a disaster. But interestingly something good came out, because we turned the tape over and it became ‘Spinning Plates’."

 

(XFM, Spring 2003)

 

11. A Punchup at a Wedding. (No No No No No No No No.)

 

Thom: "That was a song where I was letting it happen. I mean, a lot of the lyrics for that song to me were born out of listening to Radio 4 an aweful lot, like every day, for 6 months - religiously. And just listening to what was happening, and just had this thing in my head about 'this is just like a punch-up at a wedding, nobody knows what's going on, it's just a riot. And someone in the middle is being affected by this, and this is supposed to be the biggest day in their lives, and it's being ruined', or whatever. And it also came out of a... I mean, I basically don't read anything that anybody writes now about us, at all. Cause I just can't anymore. And the main reason for that was, that I happened upon, sort of by accident basically, a review of our Oxford gig [july 7th 2001], which was just like.. I mean, one of the biggest days in my life. Obviously for all of us. And this... whoever this person was, just tore it to shreds. And they couldn't really think of how to tear us to shreds, really, so they just tore the audience to shreds. And just said basically 'who are these people, bunch of students', you know, 'white middle class', which was not the case at all, but what's the point in arguing. But this person managed to totally and utterly ruin that day for me forever. And it really shouldn't have done, and I should be bighead enough to just ignore it. And there was a lesson there, which I have I learned now. But I just didn't understand why... how someone, just because they had access to a keyboard and a typewriter, could just totally write off an event, that meant an aweful lot to an aweful lot of people. And there'd been just no answering back, no nothing, that was it, the end of the story. And obviously that happens all the way through your career... And that was another impetus for the song, really. Because to me it was like... so many people were there and saw something completely different, but yet you're the twat who gets to sort of write it all off. And it's sort of... I don't know, I should be used to it by now."

 

Ed: "If you think of the links between songs, it's kind of a cousin of... a dear old friend of 'Karma Police'."

 

Jonny: "Yeah, I can see that. It's sort of all in the rhythm of the piano, and it's us doing our kind of slow grind kind of funk thing, I suppose. Some of the harmonies in it are quite unsettling as well. So again it's a mixture of quite straight pop thing and all the wailing that Thom's doing at the beginning and the end, it's... you have to hear it, really."

 

(Official Hail To The Thief Interview CD, April 2003)

 

12. Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.)

 

Thom: "A lot of that was experiencing being on the outskirts of the whirling vacuum, which is current politics, really. When you get to the center, or you start to sort of see the center, you know, like a tornado, there's just basically nothing there. And 'Myxomatosis' was really sort of born out of that. Born out of this idea like... well, again I guess, like 'Punch-up' as well, it's like 'well, I was there, and no, it wasn't like that'. But yet... I must be ill, because what I saw and what was reported was a totally different thing. Very specifically provoked by something that happened a few years ago, the 'Drop The Debt' thing, that just stuck with me when we went to Cologne. I mean, I've talked about this before, how all these nice old ladies and quakers and stuff were all there protesting the G7 or 8... I can never remember who they dumped off last. We handed in this petition with millions of signatures, or whatever, to Schröder at this thing in Cologne. And there was a small riot... there's a protest, that turned into a riot, back in London. Reclaim The Streets were involved in all that, I'm quite sure they weren't involved with the rioting. But somehow the British press, obviously the Murdoch papers in particular, because they love this sort of shit, were just writing it up as if all these old ladies and all these nice quakers were somehow anti-capitalist lunatics - and it was all part of the same coordinated protest - which was just nonsense, you know. And the whole thing was just written up so badly and everyone was ignoring the fact, that there was actually millions of people's fixed signatures on this thing. It was... I don't know. It just stuck with me how utterly powerless people are to really represent what goes on, if other people elsewhere see fit... if they see a nicer and more convenient story to be written another way, they can write off the wishes of millions of people in a split second at editorial decision, which I feel is immoral."

 

Jonny: "That's all playing around a lot with the idea of how keyboards used to be, they used to sound frightening, and Tubeway Army style, I suppose, or slightly out of tune. You forget that presumably in the 80s when keyboards were being recorded people would be playing them. And even if a band just had keyboards in it, they'd have to one at a time play keyboards onto tape, which is a really alien concept, because of computers and sequencing and how music is made today. So, that was done like that, pretty much."

 

Ed: "Well, it was a tricky one, because it was... the version, that Thom did on it, it was - he demoed it - it was really sort of... it was very digital, it was very... it was really great, but it was a bit of a different beast, in a way. And we wanted to incorporate the live thing. And the Tubeway Army thing was the perfect thing to do. But again, we had to find an approach to it, and we didn't quite get it in L.A., but we eventually got to loop Phil's drums, and then we did a sort of a live rough in the control room. And then other stuff was added. It's that totally playing something in the spirit of how you think they might have made records in '79, '80, or whatever."

 

Jonny: "And it was one of those occasions where you're recording, and the element you think is the key to the song, the rhythm, actually isn't, and it's in the detail. It's just in the single keyboard lines. And as soon as they became overpowering and took over the song, the song started working. And the rhythm was just a way to lead you through the song, but it wasn't the feature anymore. And suddenly it had this atmosphere attached to it, which is why it works, why it's on the record, really."

 

(Official Hail To The Thief Interview CD, April 2003)

 

13. Scatterbrain. (As Dead as Leaves.)

 

Thom: "It’s a really, really difficult song to describe where it came from, because on the surface it really was just an instant where those things happened. But at the same time there was a lot of other stuff going on that gave it significance. And my favourite type of weather in the whole wide world is extreme winds. I just get really excited. It is a bit dangerous. There was one time where… I have a house in the middle of nowhere and the house next door, the roof blew up and we just watched it and it was exactly like ‘The Wizard of Oz’. It was fantastic. And this was a similar incident in the city. But it’s kind of a love song as well, in a way."

 

(XFM, Spring 2003)

 

14. A Wolf at the Door. (It Girl. Rag Doll.)

 

Thom: "It was quite weird. That song's been kicking around for a while and I not really thought about how violent the images were for ages, until we came to trying to put the record together working out where it went. And I was also typing up the words for Stanley. And suddenly I was like 'wow, this is pretty bitter stuff'. You know, all the stuff about 'cold wives and mistresses, cold wives and sunday papers, city boys in first class', all that stuff. I was like 'bloody hell, that's pretty serious'. I guess it's just very, very angry, cause I couldn't help it, really. A good place to put anger in is in music. I think better than a lot of other places. But again, the crazy thing about it is, I'm only able to put the anger in that song, because the melody itself is so sweet, you know. Jonny wrote this really sweet guitar melody. Where the words came from was just... that's just where they came from. I mean, it wasn't... I wasn't even thinking that I was angry. I mean, I was just feeling like I was going a bit mad. So, I'm used to that now, I go through phases like that. But that was a particularly bad one. But you know, we were kind of reluctant to put it on the record for ages, because it was just so... we end every record with a nice sort of ending. But really, this wasn't... the whole atmosphere and where this whole record comes from, is not that. It would have been false to do that. In the record there's a lot of sort of fairy tale, children's story things going on in it. And then that one at the end... again, it's obviously a wolf at the door and so on, but it's kind of the most sort of ordinary life, realistic place in the whole record. And it's sort of like waking you up at the end, really. And waking you up is something really not that pleasant. Rather than waking you up and it's like 'uhh, it's all been a lovely dream'... no, it's all been a nightmare and you need to go and get a glass of water now. You know, that's kind of what it is."

 

(Official Hail To The Thief Interview CD, April 2003)

 

Now for my two cents. I really think this could have benfitted from some extra time in the studio. It really feels rushed, and I feel that it's a tad too long. The high points here are some of my favourite Radiohead songs though.

The songs that I feel are the low points of the album, it's not that they're bad, just that they haven't clicked with me yet, even after three years.

 

*looks rather pointedly at Sail To The Moon and We Suck Young Blood*

 

Patchwork artwork, patchwork album - I'd call Hail To The Thief Radiohead's most diverse album. If only a little more time had been spent on it. Maybe then it could have become Radiohead's best work. I say this in all honesty: It is their second best album, behind their masterpieces OK Computer and Kid A. Sorely underrated. If there's one thing this album needs, it's time. Be patient with it, and it will reveal itself to you.

 

And now for some video action.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_eBqlFpnNY]There There (Jools Holland)[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdnzB_xkERQ]2+2=5 (Letterman)[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5SZ44pGf9Y]The Gloaming (Glastonbury 2003)[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eoNu_1vp9g]Myxomatosis (Milan, June 17th 2008)[/ame]

 

[Julie]

For some strange reason I just LOVE HTTT :heart:

[ricardo]

yes, it took me a while to get into it, and now I love it; not my favourite album but it's quite good, the only problem was that sometimes songs like scatterbrain, it's awesome, but too ordinary for radiohead's standards (specialy after amnesiac)... but anyway I love this album

[Jiminy Cricket]

Scatterbrain is awesome. I listened to it earlier on, and was like 'why did I dismiss this earlier?'.

 

Those drums, I mean, seriously. Phil for the win.

 

Argh, We Suck Young Blood just won't open up to me. Stubborn jazzy little fucker. I've been trying for years now, honest!

 

I hate it when songs are like that.

[TechnicolorGreenEyes]

Suck Young Blood is amazing

 

I love this album. There There is probably one of my favourite Radiohead songs

[Cirrus Minor]

I Will is very underrated in my opinion. I think the three voices merged together are extremely powerful. It's only 1 guitar, 2 minutes and 3 voices, but what a punch to the face !!

 

And one must remember that LSP is the result of a failed attempt to sketch I Will, which makes it a very important Radiohead song.

 

Besides this, there are so many songs on HTTT thet I love that it's much quicker to say I don't like Go To Bed and Myxomatosis. I dig all the others.

[the_gloaming09]

A great album. To me it seems to be the everything album, because it has a bit of those rock songs (2+2=5, Myxomatosis, There There), The ballad/soft songs (Scatterbrain, Sail to the Moon), and the electronic songs (The Gloaming, backdrifts). Just a really good album, although I must say I would have made it slightly shorter.

 

I loved how you put the descriptions of each song by the band member. I really found The Gloaming interesting just because I like the story of how Thom liked it and also, that all the sounds were just tape loops, which is genious!

 

Personally I think that HTTT might be for me the most depressing album of Radiohead's. It just has a bitter tone, and very upsetting or disturbing lyrics (Myxomatosis, A Wolf at the Door, We Suck Young Blood). Still, I can't help but be captivated by the album itself. This album was difficult to get into, but I'd say that it was the 3rd easiest to get into for me (after The Bends and OK Computer... I don't really count In Rainbows as getting into it because it came out when I was a fan of the band).

 

As I mentioned before about this being an "everything" album, I feel that this album is good in the sense that you can be a fan of a certain type of Radiohead, yet still enjoy at least 1-3 songs.

 

I must say though that I love the artwork for this album. I remember before I got into Radiohead, that I would always see this album cover and think that it looked really cool, yet at the same time it creeped me out as well.

 

I feel that this album does get a bad rap, but when you release groundbreaking albums like OK Computer & Kid A/mnesiac there has to be a point at which you cannot keep being innovative and redefining yourself. I'm not trying to say that Radiohead are no longer innovative, because they are and all albums have a different feel, I just feel that with this album they wanted to take what they learned from the past 3-4 albums and combine it all into one.

 

I'm definitely not disappointed with this album at all compared to some fans. I think that it has some really great songs on it. At the same time it has some songs that I don't really care for either. For me this is an album that constantly changes in my order of favorite Radiohead albums. One day it may be really close to 1, while another day it may be near the bottom. Overall it's a really great album, like all Radiohead albums.

[MrMagpie]

HTTT = too long.

But its still a great album. Just I get lost in it once in while. It's almost like a greatest hits album. A mash up of all kinds of different styles and sounds they've developed over their career.

[miwa]

2+2=5 makes my life complete. I know Thom said that is inspired by Dante's Hell, but it's more by George Orwell's 1984, right? Like the erasing previous events from history and thus making people even more confused, don't know how to explain (January with April showers). and the "2 and 2 always makes a 5" yeah... I love how the track explodes at 2:25.

[the_gloaming09]

i figured i'd post the survey

 

 

Favorite Song- A Wolf at the Door or The Gloaming

Least Favorite Song- Backdrifts

Most Listened to Song (iTunes/Last.fm)-A Wolf at the Door (84)

Least Listened to song (itunes/last.fm)-Backdrifts (8)

Favorite song musically-There There

Favorite song lyrically-Myxomatosis or Scatterbrain

Favorite line of the album-"X will mark the place, like the parting of the waves", "Dance you fucker, Dance you fucker", "The mongrel cat came home, holding half a head"

Most overrated song- 2+2=5

Most underrated song-Sit Down, Stand Up

Current Favorite-Myxomatosis

Favorite when you first listened to the album-Probably There, There

 

What song best exemplifies each of the members off the album

Thom-The Gloaming

Jonny-There, There

Ed-Where I End and You Begin

Phil-Myxomatosis

Colin-Where I End and You Begin

[Myra]

I've been collecting all the physical Radiohead albums recently (had them on my iPod before) and coincidentally Hail To The Thief arrived today! :dance:

 

Favorite song – There There

Least favorite song – Myxomatosis

Most listened to song (iTunes/last.fm) –

Least listened to song (iTunes/last.fm) –

Favorite song musically – There There

Favorite song lyrically – There There

Favorite line of the album – There’s always a siren, singing you to shipwreck.

Most overrated song - Myxomatosis

Most underrated song – Go To Sleep

Current favorite – There There/Backdrifts

Favorite when you first listened to the album – 2+2=5

 

What song best exemplifies each of the members off the album

Thom – Sail To The Moon

Jonny – There There

Ed – 2+2=5

Phil – Where I End And You Begin

Colin – Where I End And You Begin

[MasoKnight]

Someone once said that this album is like a horror film in music form, and I think that's quite accurate. It's uniquely and satisfyingly dark.

[A RUSH OF VIDA]

Favorite Song- A Wolf at the Door or There There,Scatterbrain,2+2=5

Least Favorite Song- The Gloaming

Most Listened to Song (iTunes/Last.fm)-A Wolf at the Door

Least Listened to song (itunes/last.fm)-The Gloaming

Favorite song musically-Scatterbrain

Favorite song lyrically- Scatterbrain

Favorite line of the album-"Get up,Get going",

Most overrated song- The Gloaming

Most underrated song-A Wolf At The Door

Current Favorite- A wolf At A Door

Favorite when you first listened to the album- There, There

 

What song best exemplifies each of the members off the album

Thom-A Wolf At The Door

Jonny-There, There

Ed-

Phil-A Wolf At The Door

Colin-Where I End and You Begin

[MrMagpie]

Favorite Song- Where I End and You Begin

Least Favorite Song- Sail To The Moon

Most Listened to Song (iTunes/Last.fm)- Myxomatosis (30)

Least Listened to song (itunes/last.fm)- A Wolf At The Door (16)

Favorite song musically- Myxomatosis

Favorite song lyrically- Myxomatosis

Favorite line of the album- ""now no one likes a smart arse but we all like stars"

that wasn't my intention, I did it for a reason"

Most overrated song- A Wolf At The Door

Most underrated song- Backdrifting

Current Favorite-Myxomatosis

Favorite when you first listened to the album- 2+2=5

 

What song best exemplifies each of the members off the album

Thom- There There

Jonny- Go To Sleep

Ed- Where I End and You Begin

Phil- Where I End and You Begin

Colin- Where I End and You Begin

[MrMagpie]

Why I love Backdrifts:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvo8q6AE50]YouTube - Radiohead - Backdrifts - 8/3/03[/ame]

[Famous Old Painter]

After a lot of thought this this definitely in my top 2 favourite Radiohead albums, if not my favourite. A couple of tracks didn't need to be there but the really good songs make the whole record really good.

[ricardo]

Favorite Song- There There

Least Favorite Song- Backdrifts

Favorite song musically-There There

Favorite song lyrically-mmm I don't know too many

Favorite line of the album- Heaven sent you to me, we are all accidents waiting to happen... well so many, I really love these agressive lyrics

Most overrated song- ---

Most underrated song- We suck young blood maybe

Current Favorite-Wolf at the door

Favorite when you first listened to the album-There, There

 

What song best exemplifies each of the members off the album

Thom-There there

Jonny-Wolf at the door

Ed- Go to sleep

Phil-Scatterbrain

Colin-Where I end you begin

[the_gloaming09]

i love these performances from "From the Basement"

 

Myxomatosis:

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Where I End and You Begin

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The Gloaming

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJDF0H_IjU4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJDF0H_IjU4[/ame]

 

 

WIEAYB is really tight in this version. I love the extra bass and nastyness of myxomatosis, and of course the gloaming w/ the added drums and bass