Hail To The Thief - Radiohead (2003)

Discog-ology: Going through an artist’s albums, or at least the ones I haven’t written up yet, in order. Hopefully will be about once a week.

I find myself getting a little nostalgic for when George W Bush was the worst thing that could happen to America.

In our modern age of facsists, nutjobs, and circus pitchmen, it seems quaint to think about actual rulers who actually knew how to rule making actual decisions that made (or didn’t make) actual sense.

Be that as it may, Hail To The Thief was a stab at the politics of the war on terror and the Bush administration, at least to the extent that Radiohead albums are about anything.

The band had pretty well committed to being a rock band with a dance track by this point, so nobody batted an eye at the mix of engineering, processing, and live instruments. A lot of the live instrument tracks are from the initial rough mixes that came out of the first stretch of recording in LA. That bumping up against a lot of electronic atmosphere is delightfully jarring.

Discog-ology

Next: In Rainbows

Previous: Amnesiac

Tracks I Liked

Go To Sleep - sounds like a bunch of dudes reconstructing Led Zeppelin from memory

There, There - The case–as if it needed to be made–for ditching the drum machines and just letting Phil Selway rip

A Punch Up At A Wedding - a nice second-side belter