Hail to the Thief is the sixth studio album by English
alternative rock band
Radiohead, released on 9 June 2003. It debuted at number one in the United Kingdom and at number three in the United States, where it sold a greater number of copies in its first week than any of Radiohead's albums to date. The album's singles were "
There There", "
Go to Sleep" and "
2 + 2 = 5".
After two Radiohead albums that featured heavily processed vocals, less
guitar, and strong influence from experimental
electronica and
jazz,
Hail to the Thief was seen as a slight return to the band's older alternative rock influences, drawing its sound from every era of the band's existence. Recorded relatively quickly in Los Angeles, the album was described by band members as an attempt to find a more "swaggering" sound and a relaxed recording process, in contrast to their tense sessions for
Kid A and
Amnesiac several years earlier.
At nearly an hour in length,
Hail to the Thief is the band's longest album, although many of its songs are within the three minute range, shorter than the band's average.
Thom Yorke said he was inspired by
Beatles songs of that length. Yorke said his songwriting on the album had been much affected by current events, but he denied having a strictly political intent.
Hail to the Thief received mixed, though largely positive, reviews from critics.
Production and release
Album history
Hail to the Thief was recorded in autumn 2002. The band performed 12 out of its 14 songs at concerts in July and August 2002, with only "Backdrifts" and "The Gloaming" absent from the sets. Several of the songs, like "I Will" and "Sit Down. Stand Up.", date from the 1990s, and the band originally worked on "
A Wolf at the Door" during sessions for
Kid A, according to an Internet studio diary kept by
Ed O'Brien. Some of the lyrics of "Myxomatosis" were taken from the chorus of the B-side song "
Cuttooth", and other lyrics first appeared in the artwork by Yorke and
Stanley Donwood for the "
High and Dry" single in 1995.
Most of the tracks were recorded in two weeks in a Los Angeles studio, the shortest studio sessions for Radiohead since
Pablo Honey.
A few additional sessions, along with months of mixing work, were later done in Oxford. The album's quick recording process was a compromise so that band members could spend more time with their families (most members had children by this time) and also helped protect against the tension of previous recording sessions. In an interview with
Yahoo!, O'Brien said, "This is the first album where, at the end of making it, we haven't wanted to kill each other."
Commenting on the relatively short sessions, Yorke said in 2006, "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."
An unmastered version of the album was
leaked onto the Internet several months before it was officially released. Although producer
Nigel Godrich posted a message on the official Radiohead message board expressing disappointment over the leak because he felt the band's work was being heard in an incomplete form,
Jonny Greenwood said: "Shame it's not a package with the artwork and all, but there you go. I feel bemused, though, not annoyed. I'm glad people like it, most of all. It's a
little earlier than we'd expected, but there it is." Those that had heard both versions noted only certain differences when the final CD appeared (for example, "The Gloaming" was one minute shorter in the final version, and there was no acoustic guitar introduction to "I Will"). Regardless of the leak,
Hail to the Thief sold more copies in its first week than its predecessors,
Kid A and
Amnesiac, though its overall sales to date have not matched those of
Kid A.
Album title and alternative titles
The title of the album is considered by some to be a reference to an anti-
Bush chant (itself a play on "
Hail to the Chief", a
march played to announce the arrival of the
President of the United States) that was used by activists during the controversy surrounding the
2000 U.S. presidential election. However, the band has emphasised the wider political context of the slogan, citing its use during the
1888 election. In the June 2003 issue of
Spin Magazine, Thom Yorke was quoted as saying "If the motivation for naming our album had been based solely on the [recent] U.S. election, I'd find that to be pretty shallow." The album's subtitle was also explained by Yorke: "[The
Gloaming] is the imminent sense of moving into the
Dark Ages again."
Each song on
Hail to the Thief has an official alternative title or subtitle, which is listed in smaller print on the back of the album artwork. Some of the alternative titles are references to lyrics within the song, while others are phrases taken from elsewhere. The entire album has the alternative title
The Gloaming, also the name of one of the songs. Yorke said he was considering calling the album itself
The Gloaming, but was overruled by other band members for being too "
prog rock." The album title, the titles of songs on it, and the alternative titles are all listed with full stops after them (for example,
Hail to the Thief., "There There." and "Sit Down. Stand Up."). Within the lyrics booklet, each song's alternative title or subtitle is the one that appears in the heading above its lyrics, instead of the main title. However, the alternative titles are rarely used otherwise, and even the band's setlists use the songs' main titles.
Artwork and special editions
The album cover is an example of
Lettrism.
The album artwork is in the style of a
road map, with words and phrases in place of buildings. Many of the phrases relate to the album itself or reference lyrics (for example, "Punchup", "We Can Wipe You Out", and "Are You Fresh?"). Although Radiohead are a British band, many of the words are
Americanisms or use
American spellings (such as "Color" and "Xing"). Graphic artist
Stanley Donwood created the artwork in collaboration with Tchock (Thom Yorke). Donwood cited the landscape of
Los Angeles, where most of the album was recorded, as the primary inspiration on the album cover which is, in fact, a painting called "Pacific Coast". Donwood said other "maps" in the art refer to the street plans of cities such as
London,
Grozny, and
Baghdad.
As with
Kid A and
Amnesiac the album was also released in a "special edition" version. This version has exactly the same music but features slightly different cover art by Donwood and Tchock, and a large fold-out "map" or poster containing artwork similar to the cover. The poster was called a "roadmap", a reference by the band to the
Bush Administration's ill-fated
2003 plan for
peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It also contains colour-coded poems and other writings.
Hail to the Thief, like previous Radiohead albums, was also issued on 12"
vinyl.
Musical style
Hail to the Thief featured more conventional use of guitar than the band's previous two albums, and more
piano than any Radiohead album to date, but also continued to make use of
electronic beats and samples. Band members
Thom Yorke and
Jonny Greenwood, in addition to guitar and vocals, are both credited with playing "laptop" on the album, a reference to their sonic manipulations with software programs such as
Cubase,
Max/MSP, and
Pro Tools. In addition, Greenwood continued to employ the
ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument he first used on
Kid A and
Amnesiac.
In interviews, Radiohead members described their attempts to record in a "live" style on
Hail to the Thief, not so much to capture the sound of their live concerts, but to achieve more energy and spontaneity with fewer
overdubs. They explained that the electronics heard in songs such as "Sit Down. Stand Up." were not added later, but mostly performed in the same room at the same time as the piano, guitar and vocal parts. "On tour in 2001 in America, I think we learned to swagger as a band,"
Ed O'Brien said in an interview with Yahoo!. "We wanted to capture that on record. We also didn't want to spend too long in the studio."
Yorke said, "The last two studio records [
Kid A and
Amnesiac] were a real headache. We had spent so much time looking at computers and grids, we were like, 'That's enough. We can't do that anymore.' This time, we used computers, but they had to actually be in the room with all the gear."
Another example of the album's musical blend can be found in its first song and final single, "
2 + 2 = 5", which begins with a
drum machine rhythm and progresses to a loud rock climax.
Highlighting Radiohead's continuing assimilation of different musical styles, the album liner notes contain thanks from Jonny Greenwood to
Jeanne Loriod, a celebrated player of the
ondes Martenot who died shortly before the album came out. Greenwood, inspired by the music of French composer
Olivier Messiaen, picked up the Ondes during the
Kid A period, and played it on
Hail songs such as "Where I End and You Begin" and "We Suck Young Blood". Ed O'Brien mentioned
The Rolling Stones as an influence on Radiohead's attempts at greater spontaneity, while
The Beatles are cited in the songs "A Wolf at the Door" and "I Will".
Neil Young was one of Yorke's largest influences during the period, according to interviews, while Yorke said the Krautrock band
Can had directly inspired "
There There", and Jonny Greenwood mentioned the influence of
Siouxsie & the Banshees on its guitar sound.
Describing influences on his lyrics at the time, Yorke cited
Dante and
Thomas Pynchon, while "2 + 2 = 5" is an allusion to
George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yorke described his songwriting process on
Hail to the Thief as only unintentionally political, saying that he did not seek to make a statement but could not help being influenced by current events. Yorke said he had been listening to the radio frequently in late 2001, after
September 11, the
War on Terrorism and the
war in Afghanistan, and noting down common phrases he heard, which went into his lyrics: "I was cutting these things out, and deliberately taking them out of context, so they're like wallpaper. Then, when I needed words for songs I'd be taking them out of this wallpaper, and they were out of any political context at all." Yorke said the song "Sail to the Moon" was written for his son Noah, born in 2001; the song ends with the lyrics, "maybe you'll be president, but know right from wrong / or in the flood you'll build an ark / and sail us to the moon." Yorke said having children increased his responsibility and commitment to speaking out against what he viewed as injustices that could affect the lives of future generations. Yorke has also said that the lyrics of several songs on the record, such as "There There", were influenced by children's
fairy tales.
Reception
Given the polarising nature of Radiohead's post-
OK Computer work, the album received a comparatively unenthusiastic reaction from some fans and critics, although the overall response was generally positive. Of the reviews collected from notable publications by popular review aggregator website
Metacritic, the album holds an overall approval rating of 85%. Neil McCormick, writing in
The Daily Telegraph, called it "Radiohead firing on all cylinders, a major work by major artists at the height of their powers", and the record performed typically well in magazines' end-of-year lists, especially in the United States. It was the fifth straight Radiohead release to be nominated for a
Grammy for Best Alternative Album. Unswayed, the
NMEs James Oldham saw it as "a good rather than great record" and
Alexis Petridis of
The Guardian called it "neither startlingly different and fresh nor packed with the sort of
anthemic songs that once made them the world's biggest band." In 2004, coproducer Nigel Godrich and engineer Darrell Thorp were honoured with
Grammy Awards for their work on
Hail to the Thief.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead.
- "Sit down. Stand up. (Snakes & Ladders.)" – 4:19
- "Sail to the Moon. (Brush the Cobwebs out of the Sky.)" – 4:18
- "Backdrifts. (Honeymoon is Over.)" – 5:22
- "Where I End and You Begin. (The Sky is Falling in.)" – 4:29
- "We suck Young Blood. (Your Time is up.)" – 4:56
- "The Gloaming. (Softly Open our Mouths in the Cold.)" – 3:32
- "I will. (No man's Land.)" – 1:59
- "A Punchup at a Wedding. (No no no no no no no no.)" – 4:57
- "Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.)" – 3:52
- "Scatterbrain. (As Dead as Leaves.)" – 3:21
- "A Wolf at the Door. (It Girl. Rag Doll.)" – 3:23
Collector's edition bonus CD
- "Remyxomatosis (Cristian Vogel RMX)"
- "There There (First Demo)"
- "Skttrbrain (Four Tet RMX)"
- "I Will (Los Angeles Version)"
- "Remyxomatosis" is taken from the Com Lag EP, as evidenced by the applause at the very beginning. (The original B-side did not have any applause at the fade-in.)
- What is listed as "I Will (Los Angeles Version)" is actually an unedited, previously unreleased mix of the album version and not the track that was released as a B-side of "2+2=5".
Special collector's edition DVD
- "Go to Sleep" (Later... with Jools Holland 27 May 2003)
- "2 + 2 = 5" (Later... with Jools Holland 27 May 2003)
- "Where I End and You Begin" (Later... with Jools Holland 27 May 2003)
Personnel
