Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
345 of 376 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thom & Co. Ace Their Final Exams, June 12, 2003
Thom Yorke has said in recent interviews that Hail to the Thief will be the last album from Radiohead as you know them. Two years from now, he predicted, Radiohead will reemerge completely unrecognizable. Given that Radiohead could release a blank CD and have the world salivate over it, the possibilities of Yorke's prophecy inspire both wonder and fear. Funny that the band's new CD, Hail to the Thief, should do the exact same thing. Here it is, Radiohead fans - the final cumulative effort from the most original rock band in decades. Thief sounds nothing like The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, or Amnesiac. Thief sounds everything like The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, or Amnesiac. It is warm. It is cold. It is accessible. It is inscrutable. It is gorgeous. It is terrifying. It is immediate. It is distant. And, above all else, it is fascinating. For the people (okay, everybody) hoping Radiohead might warm up after their Kid A/Amnesiac double dose of nihilism, Thief does just that. But it does even more. Thief isn't another OK Computer. If you want that, you may want to listen to... OK Computer (that is why it exists in the first place). Instead, Thief is a cohesive mishmash of The Bends' immediacy, OK's layered guitar wails, and Kid A/Amnesiac's electronic gurgling. The critical thing is that Radiohead, as a band, have improved in all those musical approaches, and the result is their most sonically diverse album yet. Looking for proof? Just consult "2+2=5", a slow brooding echo chamber that, midway through, blasts into an electric-guitar fury that sounds like, of all things, a Pearl Jam song. Or try "Sit Down. Stand Up.", a forbidding piano haunter that slowly and sickeningly crescendos into an electronic hailstorm. Those two songs encapsulate all the power and dread Radiohead can generate, and that's only the first eight minutes of the album. It speaks volumes of Radiohead that Thief is considered a "sunny" album, given that its mood falls just somewhere short of Suicidal. But after the stark minimalism of Kid A/Amnesiac (two records so bleak you practically expected them to create a black hole in the universe), the trace of humanity Radiohead injects into Thief makes all the difference. There's - gasp! - an acoustic song ("Go to Sleep"). And Thief's best song, "A Punch-Up at a Wedding", even dabbles in piano-tinged soul. What keeps all of Thief's pieces together is Yorke's one-of-a-kind voice. Yorke has always sounded like a ghost from the netherworld, returning to warn you about the evils of mankind. But Kid A and Amnesiac distorted his voice even further, depriving it of its immediacy without adding to its eerie qualities (except on Kid A's title track, the only Radiohead song I personally can't stand). Here, Yorke's voice is more or less left alone, and it accents the texture of both the guitars and the electronic blips and quirks, particularly on companion pieces "The Gloaming" & "Backdrifts". The band is also allowed to flex their muscles. Freakouts likes "2+2=5" are accompanied by slow crunchers like "There There," the lead single, and elegantly personal songs like "Where I End and You Begin" and "Scatterbrain". There's no lack of experimentation - "Myxomatosis" sounds like an orchestra of giant zippers, and "Wolf at the Door" is Radiohead's first Dylan homage - but all of it is exciting and never off-putting. One could argue that Thief doesn't contain a signature moment of brilliance, such as "Paranoid Android" or "Pyramid Song". But it's the kind of album that reveals itself to you in new ways every time you listen to it. Overall, it accomplishes the impossible - resurrecting the best of the old while refining the new. And regardless of where they go from here, the one guarantee is that Radiohead will continue to go in directions that inspire surprise and amazement.
|
|
|
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Gloaming Has Begun, June 10, 2003
Radiohead have come a long way from their simple beginnings as just another pop-rock sensation with hit singles and videos played regularly on MTV. Yes, that alone could've been said at the release of their previous album, Kid A, a few years ago. But now they have truly found their place in music history with Hail To The Thief. They mix ideas and sounds ranging from their more recent electronic/abstract experimentations as well as their back-log of prog-rock based epic compositions and pop-rock subtlties. But HTTT is anything but subtle. Approaching angst over political and social topics in a poetic, cryptic, metaphorical way is what Radiohead have always been strong at and with this release they are even more adept than ever before at focussing their attention on the world around them (and in some cases, who controls that world) from an artistic perspective. Singer Thom Yorke is as desperate and somber as he's always been here with what feels like new found comfort in his role as the lone voice over all the confusion that Radiohead's music can be (and sometimes provoking the listener into even more complexity with his choice of words and expressions). Overall, this has got to be, in my opinion, the best album to have come out so far this year. As far as competition goes, although, Radiohead towers above the norm and has peers only in the likes of Tool and Bjork in the mainstream. Compared to Radiohead's last 2 albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, Radiohead have "come back down to earth" in a sense from their more experimental phase but retain many of the good qualities explored on those albums, and HTTT stands on its own as a fantastic piece of work.
|
|
|
67 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's too bad Radiohead had to be the band to release this.., May 16, 2005
Why the title? Because had any other band released this album, it would have been lauded as complete genious, a breakthrough in popular music. But instead, Radiohead released it, and as such it draws comparison to the titans OK Computer, Kid A, and even to an extent, The Bends and Amnesiac. Is Hail to the Thief as good as these albums? In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. I will go in to as much detail as I can comfortably muster...
First, a major complaint is the album's cohesiveness. Or more like its lack thereof. It is true that the album stalls and restarts in spots. For instance, while "2+2=5" is like a punch to the face from one fist and "Sit Down. Stand Up" a follow up from the other hand, leaving you dazed and half-conscious during the beautiful, astral scenery of "Sail to the Moon", "Backdrifts" sort of stutters. "Backdrifts" itself is a pretty good song, and fits just fine after "Sail to the Moon." However, it doesn't seem to provide an adequete enough bridge between the first portion of the record and "Go to Sleep." In fact, the problem here may not be "Backdrifts," but "Go to Sleep." It just doesn't fit on the album that well. I love the song but it divides the record up.
"Where I End and You Begin" and "We Suck Young Blood" pick up the album again after "Go to Sleep" drops it, indulging in creepy lyricism and emotionally-over-the-top music. "The Gloaming" is conceptually a high point of the album but musically a weak point. Still, it serves the album just fine where it is, and even manages to segway into "There There" effectively. There's a sort of "gloaming" in the album, everything before this track being the dusk and everything after it the night. This fits with the oftentimes political preoccupation of the album fairly nicely.
"I Will" is a beautiful song, but the start of a scattered, unorganized part of the album. My biggest problems with the consistancy of this album mostly take place in this part. "Punchup at a Wedding" is a groovey, but under-written, song that fits poorly among the other songs. Perhaps if they had given it more time to age, it would have turned out a little better. Not a bad song by any means, but a low point in the album. "Myxomatosis" is a fantastic, adrenaline-driven thrill ride on the wave of surging distorted bass synth and Phil's mind-boggling swung drum beat. As good as this song is, it still doesn't feel as though it contributes to the flow of the album as much as it should.
"Scatterbrain" brings the album back on track, with a crooning melody and guitars that hint back to the beginning of the record. It then flows seemlessly into "Wolf at the Door" which is one of my personal favorites on the album and a brilliant, unique album closer.
The other common complaint is the "straightforward," more live-production style. Radiohead fans have grown accustomed to studio-trickery and songs that are almost identical to their live versions (both in instrumentation and just general sound) was an alien idea to many. While I miss the spaced out, rich production of OK Computer, I have come to appreciate Hail to the Thief as a different album and a different bag of tricks altogether.
While initially I was disappointed in some ways, I have grown to love this album. It contains many of my favorite individual Radiohead songs (2+2=5, Sail to the Moon, Where I End and You Begin, We Suck Young Blood, There There, Wolf at the Door.) It may not work as a full album quite as well as Kid A or OK Computer, but once you stop expecting Radiohead to keep topping themselves, you may realize that Hail to the Thief is a fantastic album. It's a "low point" in Radiohead's discography because it's not genre-redefining, but in the greater scheme of popular music, it is flat out amazing. Its diversity, while breaking up the flow of the album, is also part of what makes the album so charming.
Overall, as a Radiohead album it gets four stars. But held up against the rest of the music world, it gets a five, easily.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Radiohead 
