Word: hail
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Thank you for the article on the band Radiohead and its new album, Hail to the Thief [MUSIC, June 9]. When rock groups record music for the sole purpose of making money, much of the creativity is lost, and it all seems to sound the same. The beauty that music can possess as an art form is missing from most of mainstream pop. But it is wonderful to hear Radiohead's originality and to be moved by the group's talent and artistry. I choose the music I listen to based not on what the musicians look like...
...almost existential problem. In the past, Yorke and his bandmates tried to solve it by radically changing their sound on every album, until the albums got very dark and very weird. But the fans not only refused to be shaken off, they multiplied. So on Radiohead's new album, Hail to the Thief, Yorke finally reached the inevitable conclusion that the only original and obstreperous thing left was to stop trying so hard to be original and obstreperous. "Before we started this album, I was thinking, 'We're gonna have to make some huge sonic leap again, keep changing, keep...
Thus we have Hail to the Thief, the most relaxed and diverse album in the career of rock's most analytical control freaks. "We've made some cold records in the past," says drummer Phil Selway. "This, to me, is the first thing we've put down that doesn't sound like a white-knuckle riot. I can listen to this." Hail to the Thief is still a Radiohead album--brooding in places, soaring in others, with a slight undertone of apocalypse all around--but the songs are shorter and tighter, and there are several uninterrupted patches of actual warmth...
Radiohead got two albums out of the sessions--Kid A and the equally dystopian Amnesiac, but when the group reconvened to discuss plans for Hail to the Thief in early 2002, it was decided that the creative process had to change. The other members of Radiohead--Selway, guitarists Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood and bassist Colin Greenwood--grew up with Yorke in Oxford. They loved him as a friend and admired him as a songwriter. But they wanted to make a record in time to catch the next Olympics. "On Kid A and Amnesiac we had far too much...
...worked. By the end of the campaign's first week, at least seven real press vehicles had to brave a hail of bullets. Then, as journalists began to report on the mounting military atrocities against civilians, several reporters-Indonesian and foreign-were interrogated by the police or army, and at least three received death threats. The 54 Indonesian journalists "embedded" with various T.N.I. units fared no better. They arrived in Aceh frightened, partly because they wore military uniforms and were indistinguishable from the troops and partly because their military keepers had told them GAM knew all of their names...