Countdown to IN RAINBOWS Pt. 6 — HAIL TO THE THIEF

Continued from here. (Also, this is not the final post in the countdown.)

—

It is late spring 2003.

I’ve been invited to contribute to a writing project. I don’t recall exactly when, but what happened is that Sean at the eyebrow-raisingly named TangMonkey.com has invited me to write 50 words on Hail to the Thief. I like the idea of it — not a review per se, simply 50 words about the album. It will be part of a larger feature collecting similarly short reflections from a number of other writers.

Over the past few years I’ve grown more used to a smaller format for writing, thanks to my work for the All Music Guide. It’s not that they don’t allow for longer reviews there as needed, but I’ve found that I appreciate what I call the art of miniatures when it comes to reviews for them, at 300 words each or so. Often I find that’s more than enough room to say something about an album, because there’s no point in going further than that, or even up to there. Fellow writers talk eloquently and understandably about how the shrinking of review space allows for little detailed thought and reflection in many markets, and how while there’s often lots of room on blogs or otherwise unmediated space on the Net for those longer pieces, it’s not always easily viable to do so. (If this kind of writing is your life’s work, after all — if you are a writer full-time by choice and inclination, rather than treating it as a separate interest and potential financial benefit on the side, as I do — then committing work to blog space for free on a continual basis makes for a loaded situation.) It’s part of a larger adjustment of the music world, in all its incarnations, to the continual evolution of the Net, and it cannot be ignored.

But this is a different kind of project, a work in miniature not because of lack of ad revenue meaning lack of page space, but out of specific one-off intent. I take up the invitation from Sean and after some time (a few days, maybe more, can’t recall now) I submit my entry, not something I think is meant to be a final word, merely a thought as to where I stand on the album at that point, something shot through with various thoughts on my state of mind and the state of the world at that point, though of course there’s no exact room to say that all:

“I don’t really care about it being a concept album or whatever the hell it is. It doesn’t hang together as such and I don’t really mind that, actually. I just want to think about the way “The Gloaming” sounds like a slow fade into a nightmare. And I will.”

Some time later the full feature runs. In reading through it I’m delighted to see some familiar names among my fellow contributors, like Mike and Anthony; I’m equally delighted to see that their contributions don’t favor the album either. Such a piece needs to have a range of voices and negative thoughts are as important as the positive.

I’m further surprised to note who some of the contributors are, and realize that for the rest of my days — or at least as long as the page remains up somewhere — I’ll be part of a piece that note only features Nathan Lane as a contributor, but Wil Wheaton, now as well known for his regular blog and Net work as anything else in the past. I think back to my late eighties days of obsessive Star Trek: The Next Generation watching and remembering how much I loathed his character on the show, and now here I am with him as a co-author, kinda. Not something I would have guessed at the time.

There are a number of unfamiliar names too, one of which is the member of a band who apparently had recently released their self-titled debut and were going back into the studio to record some follow-up tracks. (Interestingly, his entry is subtitled “The Nightmare.”) It’s nice to hear feedback from folks in other bands in this project, and his comment is a nice example of how to capture an honestly mixed feeling about an album one is unsure about. A couple of years later I idly remember this project and reread the page, and am startled to realize that I am now also forever associated, in this one small corner of the Net, with Win from the Arcade Fire.

If only I liked his band.

—

Backtracking:

2003 so far has been a year of settling and mental review, of establishing new comfort areas after a troubling time. 2002 was no disaster by any means but everything seemed to go slightly wrong towards the end of it, following an absolutely glorious trip to Australia and New Zealand in September, fulfilling a long-held dream to visit both countries. Good things happen after that in spades, certainly — catching the Chameleons, my second-favorite all time band after My Bloody Valentine if there is one, three times in a week is part of it, and that’s just a musical high point. But personal and professional issues dog me, the more so because these result from my own decisions, and I enter December feeling more than a little stressed and concerned. This is heightened by the extreme tension between my two housemates, and more than once one or the other threatens to leave. Then, after a couple of months of ‘will he/won’t he,’ the owner of the house puts it on the market and finds a buyer, giving us notice on December 1. We have until year’s end to leave, and given my plans for a visit home already in place for Christmas, along with a Seattle trip, that means in practical terms I really have only nineteen days.

The blur of activity and insane pressure at that time I’d rather not revisit. At the end of it, however, I have found myself for the first time in an apartment on my own as the New Year starts. I spend most of the first half of the year doing nothing upon coming home but enjoying the calm and peace. There’s just me…just me. Those months feel like a slow but sure detox from the world’s pressures around me. I visit friends in Louisiana at one point, host Jake and fellow tourmates for one night shortly after moving in, reestablish friendships and make new ones, participate in huge all-night group chats with many of them online, all based around the idea that most of the time I can just gently withdraw from it all in my cozy but just-right new place to live.

Combined with this sense of righting myself — fed in part with a new love of good wine, a glass or two a night at points (thankfully nothing more than that — whatever addictive parts of my personality I know I have, it does not extend to food and drink) — is a sense that things are just worse than ever in the wider world. In fall 2001 I state at least once somewhere, probably more, that I mourn not merely those already dead but all those that are going to die as a result, most especially those who would not have been perished but are going to be caught up in inevitable stupidity and ignorance across the map. In spring 2003 another part of that particular deathtrap starts to ratchet up. I regard the start of the invasion with a certain uneasy fear, though a friend wisely says something else: “It’s not that that’s going to be a problem. They won’t know how to win the peace.” He proves to be perfectly correct.

In this state of mind my feelings towards music are conflicted. On the one hand I find myself on more promo lists than before, and combined with Net access to various things I am starting to have more regular access to all sorts of music in general than ever before. My need for spending on it decreases, a useful adjustment and necessary given my move and attendant budgetary shift. I have also been writing a regular column for a UK magazine called Careless Talk Costs Lives, a little feather in the cap, as well as a very occasional piece or two for the Seattle Weekly. At the same time, whether it’s the move, the volume of things to do at work, the number of releases out there or more, I am feeling burnt out more than ever before. At one point I talk briefly with a writer and editor who has long been one of my lodestones about this, and he notes that, based on his experience and those of others he knows, that music obsessives — maybe any obsessives — seem to go through a phase around my age where they either hit autopilot, give up and redirect interests elsewhere, or take a mental break only to come back more refreshed but also more confident in their particular viewpoint, while also able to more readily find balance between that and the rest of life. Whereever my direction goes next, I am not sure, but I find myself only listening to new things in a dull cycle of reviewing for the AMG — otherwise, as I tell friends, I find myself just wanting to retreat to the comfort food of things like hearing Slowdive and Echo and the Bunnymen B-sides over and again, rather than trying to keep track of everything else out there.

More than once, in periods of extreme bitterness, I wonder how it is that everyone else seemingly can do that while otherwise appearing to have extremely content lives — mistaking the Internet hothouse of friends and fellow music obsessives I am part of for the entirety of humanity, and further making the mistake of assuming that everything in their life is going well while mine seems only to be grinding down in ways. It takes a long time to fully get over this to-me new and deeply unpleasant and selfish feeling, and it does not fully disappear even years later, to my own self-irritation. Reminding myself of how good I have it compared to most becomes an important part of my life.

It is in this context that the now-inevitable leak of Hail to the Thief appears. From the relative novelty of three years ago this process is now already established, much as many record labels (and bands, and writers, and more) would try to ignore it in the hopes that it would go away. In this case the first leak is a version of the album that has all the chosen songs, but not all in their final form — as compared to their slightly coy feeling about the leak of Kid A, this time around Radiohead are more than a little annoyed, and talk about how this version is not the final one, how fans should wait, and so forth. Logically this merely heightens the interest in it, and when the final version appears — or, rather, when that itself first leaks before release — then comparing and contrasting becomes the name of the game. Furthermore, having toured the previous year in Spain to road-test many new songs, some fans now have three versions to choose from, and comparing the differences in detail kicks into high.

Radiohead at this point are mental comfort food as well, even if this particular set of songs is new. I play the album regularly, at one stretch almost every day.

—

It is September 2003 and I am again at the Hollywood Bowl, and something is starting to occur to me.

This time I’m with other folks, friends from work that are fellow music lovers, on a different side of the Bowl from last time. It’s another lovely evening in Los Angeles. It does feel a bit like two years ago redux, but not entirely. Something is just different but I haven’t figured it out quite yet.

By this time I am starting to settle a bit in general, starting to step back out into things fully, a bit. It’s still a slow process but my general happy-go-lucky persona that I present most of the time is starting to match how I feel inside more readily. I’m looking forward to a trip the following month to London to celebrate Tom Ewing’s wedding, along with combining with a side trip to Dublin, another place and another country I’ve wanted to visit for some time.

It’s a slow rising up to full strength again but it’s happened as it does, and patience as always is the watchword. Learning this has been a big lesson, and if I relearn it again as needed in the future, it’s always there for me. My mood has never truly but heartbreakingly, desperately black, but it’s verged close at points. Those I have spoken my deepest concerns to over the past year have shown a friendship and warmth that all should be so lucky to experience in times like this; I hope to always be able to do so for the future, though I have to learn (and still am learning) how to balance this out with making sure I do not take the weight of the world on my shoulders. When the moods recur, and they do without fail a couple of times a year, I know both how to look beyond them and how to talk them out, though those days that afflict me can hang heavy nonetheless.

Supergrass opened this time around and I’ve nothing to add to that. Radiohead are clearly and smoothly on top of their game — it’s another winning set, a fantastic performance. (Yes, again, I type this listening to a bootleg of the show.) I tell folks later, “I went into the show thinking “They’ve always been great but is it working anymore and is there too much autohype?” and left thinking, “Fuck it, there’s not ENOUGH autohype goddammit!”" “There There” sounds a heck of a lot stronger, “The Gloaming” gets a monstrous ending drum part that turns the song into something else again, they start with a replication of the album’s one-two punch of “2 + 2 = 5″ and “Sit Down. Stand Up.” that’s better than the studio versions, and so forth. Even an unreleased song for good measure, “Big Ideas.”

Old favorites reappear of course, and now they clearly include the Kid A and Amnesiac numbers, as well as the expected ones from earlier. I get both “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Idioteque,” so I’m content by any measure. The crowd is charged, and at one moment explodes into utter delirium. I just sigh a bit. Frankly, they didn’t have to bring this back, I’m content never to hear the song again. But no, they’re fine with it now, they don’t need to escape its shadow any more (even though most folks who I run into who know the band quite often only refer to it and nothing else, which doesn’t surprise me at all and doubtless surprises the band even less). “Creep” is played, and yes, what the hell am I doing here, I don’t belong here. Give me 2003 not 1993.

The difference is coming clearer. By the time the main set concludes I am positive. It has to do with the stage lighting, and it’s like this:

Anytime the band play a number from OK Computer and older — the ‘classic’ era, the rock years, whatever crazy term one wants to apply to it — the lighting is stark. Nothing but white lights, however used. Everything is, in the broadest possible sense, black and white, dark/not dark. It’s all very absolute.

Whenever it’s something from Kid A and onward, though, the stage often explodes in color. Lighting, screens, all over the place. Not over-the-top splashiness (though that would be an interesting approach — why not?), but all sorts of shadings and hues, the rainbow refracted. Kaleidoscopic.

I leave convinced this was not only intentional, but key. Without having to say it, it was a signal, a sense that the band was saying, in its own way, “We have our past. We have our present. We’re not going to ignore our past but we think we have more to offer now, and we don’t need to spell it out when we can show you.”

I wonder what will happen next.

—

It’s assured.

Hail to the Thief is the kind of album that Radiohead fans would like. Which sounds flippant but also marks it and the band having reached a certain state — with, arguably, nothing immediate left to prove, it basically says, “Yup, we’ve done this, and we’ve done it very well. You’ll probably like it if you like us.” I do, and I do, still.

Summation, recapitulation, overview. New but familiar. Electronic beats at the start, also bursts of chunky feedback. Freneticism. Vocal keening. Nervousness. Stellar performances.

Familiarity.

All of which sounds like damning with faint praise but at a certain point with any performer there’s something of the expected to be found, even if the next step proves to knock everyone sideways (and it very well might, we’ll see in a couple of days). The question over whether certain types of music and certain types of musicians reach a logical endpoint in what is considered their development has been argued and analyzed for decades (centuries?). The question of ‘development’ has been argued etc. (is the preservation of change necessary on an album? if a great leap forward occurs and no tape machine is around to document it, does it make a noise?).

At a certain point the dreaded tag gets stuck on an album — “It’s their best since [insert the really famous one that everyone agrees on].” Then that is reused on every review into the future. Your peak period is decided on and referred back to.

Hail to the Thief, at least, escapes this to an extent, if not entirely.

What stands out to me? Consider “Sit Down. Stand Up.” It’s not exactly like anything the band has done before — maybe “The National Anthem” but not really, it’s this slow rising swell, bigger and bigger and bigger, tones, piano, vocals, other noises, rising, rising, the hyperspeed skittering beats kick in, Thom’s voice purring over it, Phil Selway fully kicks in with the drums, more synth noises, more cascade, higher and higher and stop-into-a-cymbal-crash end. Again, nothing exactly like it before, but it’s now something within the realm of expectation, not as jarring. Hail to the Thief didn’t put people off like Kid A kinda did, like Amnesiac definitely did (or so it seemed). It was a more careful fusion. It felt comfortable. (The band said the recording sessions went far smoothly on this one than on the previous two albums; does that answer it? I wonder.)

I love it, mind you. I love the album precisely because now I was engineered and conditioned to love it. I knew going in I would. I knew a lot of people going in wouldn’t, because now Radiohead at long last had ‘a sound,’ and that it would be seen as on-the-whole wearying, in its extension and recombination of the past pointless. The vaunted warmth that I have always argued is there in Radiohead is actually clear on here, maybe too clear at points. (”Sail to the Moon” is…too welcoming? “Scatterbrain” is…too sweet? Perhaps that’s just my expectations being confounded instead. “Go to Sleep” is…well, it just is. And that’s the problem with it.)

But when it suddenly gets the attention still, just right, just right. The way those soft electronic swirls ricochet smoothly from speaker to speaker at the start of “Backdrifts,” utterly attention grabbing while not being huge about it. The down-shifting growl of “Myxomatosis,” bass like a brutal huge kick (Radiohead as metal touchstone is surely the next step after My Bloody Valentine if they aren’t already, and they probably already are). The low mumble/singing line “I will eat you alive” on “Where I End And You Begin.”

The way “The Gloaming” really does sound like a slide into a nightmare to me still, “Idioteque” after the beat is kicked away and beaten down, the vocals echoed and more withdrawn, a fade to black. (Referring again to an earlier number, yet still not quite the same.)

“There There” was a rhythmically odd yet not too jarring first single. It was a good signpost.

—

It is the end of 2003 and, quite happily and for the first time (after being unable to contribute the previous year despite an invitation, due to the moving chaos and other events), I submit my ballot to the Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll. My choices are even more quixotic than usual in some cases but reflects my fairly focused mood during the year. Hail to the Thief is my number one choice, a choice determined in my case as with the rest of my rankings by an easy scale — how often did I listen to an album from that year? If I willingly listened to a particular album the most, it was by any measure surely my favorite, because I kept coming back to it. Hail to the Thief was clearly that for 2003, so the ranking was easy.

I do not listen to it again, outside of maybe once or twice, for the next four years.

—

Thank you, YouTube:

“2 + 2 = 5″ at Eurockennes, maybe:

“There There” at Glastonbury (the triple drumming part, I honestly admit, totally blew me away at the Hollywood Bowl show):

“Backdrifts” in Camden:

“The Gloaming” at Eurockennes:

“Sit Down. Stand Up.” at Glastonbury:

“Myxomatosis” in Dublin (embedding was being flaky on this one)