Radiohead returns with conscience primed and optimism shining through, says bassist Colin Greenwood

Jim Farber
New York Daily
03.06.03

Yes, Radiohead named its new album Hail to the Thief, which echoes the title of a book about George Bush's controversial election win. And, yes, the cover of the CD repaints city maps from around the world with colors from the U.S. highway system.

But bassist Colin Greenwood says the album, which arrives in stores June 10, shouldn't be considered a protest against either the policies or character of the current U.S. administration. "You can't say this song is about invading that country, or this one is about the Republican regime," he explains.

Instead, at various times in the interview Greenwood describes the lyrics as being "about our rights and responsibilities," "about how to take a stand as an individual within a society" and, most broadly, as "a patchwork of articulate responses to living now."

If that sounds like a mouthful, remember this is Radiohead - "the saviors of serious rock," "the last band that really matters" and the inspiration for any number of other burdensome titles bestowed upon them over the last decade by an adoring press. Radiohead's new album, its sixth, is likely to inspire fresh accolades. It pushes the envelope in yet another direction. Not only does Hail to the Thief contain the band's most worldly lyrics, it houses Radiohead's most eventful and animated music since 1997's OK Computer.

The two albums that followed that breakthrough CD - Kid A and Amnesiac - struck listeners as either the most ambitious rock albums since early Pink Floyd, or the most pretentious twaddle released in years.

Thief should lure back some of those who scratched their heads over the band's artier work. While it has plenty of moody and difficult stretches, there's more focused guitar work and brisk beats than we've heard from Radiohead in a while. Greenwood credits this to the music having been road-tested on a European tour last year. "The songs were subject to instant focus groups," he explains. "The audience became a democratic polling process. If they stayed for the end, we knew we should record it."

The experience made for a faster recording process - though the band wound up cutting the album in what for its members is an alien city: sunny L.A. They were brought there by producer Nigel Godrich, who cut two Beck albums in the city. "[Nigel] can get really good sounds out of [that studio]," Greenwood explains. "Also, Nat King Cole used to record there in the '50s, so it's got a good heritage."

Greenwood felt the setting suited the band's age as well. "We're all in our 30s now," he says, "so it's time to smell the flowers and stop recording in concrete bunkers in Scandinavia in the dead of winter."

Not that the Radiohead guys have suddenly become sun-worshipers. Inspired by the Hollywood setting, they titled one new song "Suck the Blood of the Young."

"It's about the whole pool of older people out here - actors, musicians - who vampirically leech the talent of the younger people who come in," Greenwood explains. "Anything that's vital gets loads of money thrown at it until the juice is sucked out." Youth culture's connection to corporate culture is just one of the socially aware angles explored on the album. While past Radiohead lyrics - written by singer Thom Yorke - largely addressed the inner life, Hail to the Thief moves the focus outward. Previous themes of alienation and our relation to modern machinery have taken a backseat to our relation to society's power structures. Though Greenwood feels Yorke's lyrics embrace "sarcasm, wit and ambiguity," there's often a sorrowful or condemning tone. The band's original title for the album was "The Gloaming," which, Greenwood explains, "is an old English word for that period of half light before it becomes dark. The world feels a bit like that at the moment."

The group felt that "The Gloaming" sounded "too prog-rock," however, so that became the album's subtitle. In fact, all 14 songs on the album have subtitles, making for names as bulky as "Sail to the Moon (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky)" and "Myxomatosis (Judge, Jury & Executioner)." That should provide nice ammunition for all those who find this band too intellectual by half. Greenwood explains the idea for the subtitles came from "old Victorian playbills which chronicled the kind of moralistic songs which were played in music halls. That whole theater culture was wiped out by the development of cinema."

Hail to the Thief struck the group members as a "more declamatory" title, and therefore more desirable. The name also refers to the fact that much of the music for the album had been stolen from the studio and spread over the Internet in early April.

"People all over the world had the record before we'd even finished it," Greenwood says. "That fragments and atomizes the whole idea of a produced piece of music."

Banning big business

As an intellectual, it's no surprise that Greenwood describes this experience with as much curiosity and interest as frustration. Accordingly, his high-minded band has two more progressive projects in play.

Next weekend, it'll headline the inaugural Field Day Festival in Calverton, L.I. With the Beastie Boys and Sigur Ros also on the bill, that event may look like just another alterna-rock fest, but Greenwood says it will stand out by banning all corporate or radio network support.

"You can still buy a soft drink," he says, "but you won't be surrounded by video screens of giant Pepsi bottles." The second project is Radiohead's debut dance piece, a collaboration with the Merce Cunningham troupe. The company approached the band with the idea. The result, which has its debut at BAM in October, forces the dancers to make up their moves after hearing new music by the band just once.

For Greenwood, such projects capture Radiohead's openness - and its optimism. He says he and his bandmates are far more optimistic than many observers have given them credit for - even more so since all the members have become family men. "With children you have a responsibility to find some good in the world," Greenwood explains. "You have to find something redeeming. I see that on the new record. For all its darkness, I see bright colors, too."