There There
(EMI)

The tradition of an album's first single being an appetiser for the main course has been broken for the much-anticipated Hail To The Thief - all 16 tracks are already bootlegs available on the internet. But that broken tradition is not so bad as hopefully "There There" is an unrepresentative taste of the upcoming album, or the whole thing's going to be hard to swallow.

Dark-night chord changes populate a close-fitting soundscape dominated by bass, tom-tom hits, and lo-fi rhythm guitar. Thom holds it together with haunting long-noted melodies high above, but the unimpressive claustrophobic arrangement leaves no real space for his voice and the excellent lyrics.

All of which means that "There There" is a tuneful and interesting enough song, but fails to measure up to previous Radiohead single releases.

Alexis Kirke

MusicOMH