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RADIOHEAD TRIES TO END THE CONFUSION WITH ‘THIEF’
Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood knows exactly when and where the band’s creative process got confused. “I was in so many dance-record shops, seeing people listen to two seconds of all these records and then choosing them on that basis,” he said in the Denver Post, recalling a time prior to Radiohead’s North American tour.
“That started to get to me, judging five minutes of music on the quality of the sound and the rhythm that’s in them. I found myself doing it, walking up to the turntable and plowing through a pile of vinyl. I started to get the fear that Radiohead was just going to go down the route of generating new sounds for the sake of it, and thereby lose something musical.”
Radiohead’s recording process was intentionally short when the group made Hail to the Thief. Most of the record was cut in 2 1/2 weeks in Los Angeles with longtime producer Nigel Godrich. “It was spontaneous when the tape was rolling, but that’s to ignore the three months of daily rehearsals that we recorded and listened to at home every night. There was still a process of writing and preparing,” Greenwood explained. Radiohead devotees have devoured the lyric sheet, as Yorke’s wail obscures his edgy Orwell-lite themes on routine, paranoia and alienation. The title of Hail to the Thief, in honor of George W. Bush’s election, suggests virulent commentary, but the record’s politics are deliberately murky.
No longer feeling the pressure of being the cherished pioneers of modern rock, Radiohead is finally at ease allowing more focus on compositions that move and build on themselves, not just fantastic textures and effects.
“It’s a balance, trying to temper my enthusiasm for finding new sounds and colors and keep the other hand on musical ideas,” Greenwood said. “We’re finally appreciating what it is to be in a group of five people. We’re all still obsessed with doing this. None of us has gotten into collecting cars or supermodels or whatever the traditional distractions are. You wake up and realize how lucky you are to have that. It sounds hokey, but we aren’t bored yet. We’re thankful for that.” [full article]
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