AR: Hail to the Thief

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (The Gloaming) (2003)

I was joking about some album with Aaron sometime recently, and I finished the assessment with, "but really, after you listen to it for the 37th time, it really starts to sink in." There's something bizarre to that assessment (right?), the idea that you have to invest more than a day's worth of hours in some piece of music before it starts to become frankly listenable. I only have so many hours on earth, man. I have the sneaking suspicion that you could listen to almost anything 37 times and it would start to sink in, something like "oh, here comes the part where the third castrated cat joins the grinding gears in subtle off-by-1/8th-tone harmonies, juxtaposed nicely by Yoko Ono and Bjork's falsetto beat-boxing. I'm starting to appreciate it." You know, Metal Machine Music notwithstanding.

This is not the album that I was talking about, but it was for a long while entirely off-putting and did require some investment. Thom Yorke's vocals seem far off in a tired way - repeating the inaccessibility of Amnesiac, this album pretty much struck me initially as an exercise in here we go again, off-putting experimentation for its own sake, droning, whoosh-whoosh sound-effect drenched, melody-backdropped music that does not entirely pay off. Hookless. Unintelligible lyrics that give the same impression of dread that RH has churned out since OK Computer, with varying degrees of, er, impression. On listens 1-36 (not in a row), I couldn't get into it.

Far be it from me, die-hard rereader of limit-less jokes, to shy from inaccessibility, though. There's pay-off in the struggle. The main thing I realized, though, on spin 37 (yes, I'm exaggerating), is that this, even moreso than previous RH albums, is just not driving or walking or doing anything else music. It's sit in the dark along and let it wash over you music. Probably shouldn't have taken so long for that to sink in, but there you have it; sometimes I am not hipster enough to catch on. I hate it when reviews focus solely on how inaccessible or difficult something is, btw, but I feel it's 1, fair warning in this case, and 2, worth noting 'cause I'm not stopping there, not simply ha-haing at the heft of the book.* The particular inaccessibility lies in its lack of pace and rare punchy moments; it's all similar and droney enough that piercing the songs for their particularities really requires undivided, accepting attention. And further, it's not that on listen 37 I was awestruck; it's a highly imperfect album with some music that doesn't even attract on iteration i, but if you want to get anything out, you'd better close your eyes and lock in. There's a ton of good stuff here, but its enjoyment hinges on you being in the just-right darnk mood, so you'd better create it as best you can

* - I mean, really, come on, EW.

The highlights: the opener, "2+2=5," is great in both its guitar-plug scratchy opening and its 1984/Notes From dread. "Go to Sleep" is the best Radiohead retread/rip-off of the bunch, and "There There" and "Myxomatosis" are the beating signs that all the experimentation is going somewhere. "Punch-up" is my favorite moment on the album, a piano-driven drone groove that's just straight-forward enough. And the dirge-clapping - sorry to ape Pitchfork's description, but the dirge of that slow-clap beat is self-evident - of "We Suck Young Blood" crushes.

Those are standouts of relative normality amongst an album filled with borderline boring sound effect shimmer. It's very moody and effective if you are locked right into it, but otherwise it melts into a sameness that does not inspire. Even WHEN you take the requisite steps to make this music capture the night, there are still a few clunkers - "Sail to the Moon," "Where I End" and "The Gloaming" - that rely entirely on effects that just aren't that enthralling. Sine waves in absentia do not exciting experimentation make.

I feel I am cheating a bit, describing Radiohead in terms of their Radioheadness. Fair enough; a more accurate description is that it's dark, keyboard- and effect- laden music with a falsetto, dramatic vocalist who does not articulate his sentiments particularly effectively. The album's at its best when it mixes in the remnants of rock this band will still stoop to with the far off clinical hypothesis-driven theories on what 21st century music should sound like. The apocalypse is evident in the overall presentation, but in a way that is starting to get tired for me. Don't get me wrong; it's "interesting sounding" in a way that only these guys can be, but for me it's something like the reverse career development of Sonic Youth in the early '80s - to succeed, the experiment must occur over the chasm between melody and noise, and this one treads to noise-side for my tastes. "Noise" isn't right; it's really more "texture" with an over-buried melodic forefront. While repeated listens will reward with a atmospheric spook-lonely meditation, this just isn't the best set of "songs" they have to offer. I don't know whether some of Radiohead's tricks have gone stale - there are a number of songs on this album that call to mind better versions of the same motifs / techniques - but apparently I am not hearing quite the same consistency of exciting experimentalism that others are.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "A Punch-Up At The Wedding (No No No No No No No No)"

P.S. And as some kind of proof that I'm not entirely a Pitchforkian drone - what is up with the 9.3 this album got? The review notes the multiple low points of the album, the same-ishness, the running in place, even acknowledges that this will "fade into their catalog as a slight placeholder," and then awards a rarefied 9.3? Makes no sense!!!