962. Radiohead - Hail To The Thief (2003)

Track Listing

1. 2 + 2 =5
2. Sit Down. Stand Up
3. Sail to the Moon
4. Backdrifts
5. Go to Sleep
6. Where I End and You Begin
7. We Suck Young Blood
8. The Gloaming
9. There There
10. I Will
11. A Punch-up at a Wedding
12. Myxamatosis
13. Scatterbrain
14. A Wolf at the Door

Review

Radiohead are back for the last time in this list. So it is a sad goodbye here, because they bring us another perfectly crafted album which is fully representative of their career progression.

After the birth pangs of the sub-standard Pablo Honey and the two experimental po-rock albums of The Bends and OK Computer they took the only logical course of exploring full experimentalism with Kid A and Amnesiac. Now they take the again logical step back.

Taking this step back they link together the Bends/OK Computer pop sensibilities with the sounds developed in Kid A and Amnesiac bringing us a synthetic and accessible album in Hail to the Thief. This album taken as a corollary of their 4 grown up albums takes a whole new level of meaning. Great stuff yet again with some of their scariest and most attractive tracks.

Track Highlights

1. There There
2. We Suck Young Blood
3. A Wolf at the Door
4. The Gloaming

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

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.

Great Video for There, There: