Radiohead: Hail to the Thief

It’s been a little too long since my last review. Then again, a lot has happened since then as well. I left my job with Geek Squad and less than one week later I was starting up my role as Customer Experience Manager for the East Coast for Sonos. For those that know me, this is job that I have been hoping and waiting for a while now. It’s a new fresh upstart style company with huge plans ahead of them. I’m glad to be on board.

Now, with his job comes some considerable travel. Because I’m covering the whole East Coast, I have to fly all over the place at first to get my bearings. Last week, Boston. Today, as I type, I’m in the air headed for Orlando.

Now, after I finished up my packing last night, I grabbed a couple Sierra Nevada Torpedo’s from the fridge and threw on some music on my Sonos zone out on my deck. It was a lovely night at just the right temperature. Not too hot to sweat, but hot enough to want to savor the cold beer. As I relaxed, an idea crossed my mind. I’d have all this free time on flights now, why not put it to use by doing some of my album reviews in the air?

So, before I went to bed, I downloaded a few albums from “this site I know” that offers lossless rips of albums that are encoded at a unbelievable high quality. For instance, today I’ll be listening to a album that was ripped to 24bit – 96kHz Flac files from a 180gm vinyl. Not bad.

The album today; Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief. It would have been easy to have reviewed another Radiohead album first. The three discs that preceded Hail to the Thief, OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac are commonly talked about in not only Radiohead circles but the three albums are common put on “greatest of all time” lists. Also, just a note, I’ll be listening to my selection today from seat 11A at 36,000 feet on a set of Shure E4c’s. Alright, enough prologue, time to listen…..

I LOVE the way this album starts!!!!! 2+2=5 is one of my favorite “track ones”. This is maybe only rivaled by Everything in its Right Place, track one of Amnesiac. It’s so simple the way it takes off, and yet, there is so much going on underneath. It took almost 4-5 listens of this track to digest all that is happening. There’s some very faint muted over compressed guitar overtones that arpeggio behind the main melody that add such a great character.

Each track, as it heads towards you, unfolds the direction of the disc more and more. The second track surprises you, starting a little mellower and then ramping up into full “Pro Tools” glory! The third track, Sail to the Moon, is one of my favorite ballads by the group. It has this really heavy “swaying” melody, reminiscent of a Pink Floyd melody. And while each track on this album deserves to be dissected in its own right, one of my favorites the first time I heard it was We Suck Young Blood. The creepy disconnected clap on beat three really sets a uneasy tone for the piece. You feel like you are crawling along a dirty floor, like death. It’s a very grimy piece with haunting melodies that seem to just linger over you in the musical either. That’s not to say that they the group doesn’t surprise you in this piece. About three minutes in, they take an almost double time pace and switch into a more recognizable pop form (for Radiohead). This only lasts 15 seconds though, immediately sinking back down. A really beautiful track!!!

All in all, this is one of my favorite albums of all time. It’s one where every track speaks to me in some way. I think it’s success in my eye’s stems from an album that manages to be very accessible, and completely unattainable at the same time.