Word: radioheads
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...world presents an 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...
...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 in the vocals. "I was enjoying singing again," says Yorke. "I just didn't like the sound...
Naturally, Yorke believes this was largely the fault of a whacked-out world. After the release of 1997's OK Computer (voted best album of the 20th century by the slightly presentist readers of England's Q magazine), Radiohead appeared to become the band--and the brand--of a certain kind of contrarian chic. If you were smart, cool and worried about the world, nothing broadcast it quicker than some casually scattered Radiohead discs. Yorke blames the forces of commerce for making him feel like a cartoon. "Ultimately you get to a point--Coldplay's a good example right...
...hear, and those that did make it through were not about sunshine and lollipops. The process of making Kid A, by Yorke's admission, was as disturbing as the material. Three hundred hours were spent on the construction of a single song, and Yorke, who had always been Radiohead's main lyricist and melody writer, seized control of some of the instrumental parts from his bandmates. He summed up the band dynamic at the time: "We're like the U.N. And I'm America...
...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...