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‘There There’ in Pitchfork’s singles list
Pitchfork Media named ‘There There’ the 13th best singles of 2003: “With tunnel echo magnifying fluctuating drum sounds and lackadaisical zigzagging guitars layered over a mercurial bassline, Radiohead’s opening mission statement of 2003 made a case for two directions: a clear affinity for the comfortable past of their traditional rock background and the natural progression of a maturing stadium rock giant. Thom Yorke shuttles his fragile voice between fretting regret and ambivalent disdain, along with trademark esoteric lyrics. An example of accessible rock that’s not only forward-thinking and powerful, but altogether gorgeous.”.
Pitchfork slotted HTTT as the 4th best album of 2003.
Hot damn, them epochal Brits done trucked over to Hollywood and dropped another compelling puzzle-piece on the stunted grad student in us all! This episode’s secret word is “aphasia,” as our fave quintet plods exquisitely through a batch of literate and almost standoffish anti-pop anti-anthems about the failure of utterance, as if channeling Reagan’s delirium. The booklet’s phrase-map artwork, the album’s four titles, and the songs’ double-namedness initiate a thematic bombardment that quickens throughout the 1984-referencing “2 + 2 = 5″, the tongue-tied “Myxomatosis”, and the hallucinatory “Scatterbrain”. Thom Yorke alludes to the Bible, Homer, fairy tales, and The Stepford Wives, but this disc’s closest hardbound kin is Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, the protagonist of which mumbles at reel-to-reel recordings of himself in his fallout hut. See Hail’s pro-bunker stance, its spliced dialogue songs, its schizophrenic chants (THE RAINDROPS THE RAINDROPS and little babies’ eyes eyes eyes), its line about erasing all tapes, and its final line before the album ends with seven seconds of silence: “Turn this tape off.”
Beckett’s Krapp was alone, but Hail’s wailer has children to be paranoid about. Caught up in the old trick of how some things are worth worry, while worry remains worthless, Yorke sounds as deflated as a teat ransacked by its oblivious litter. When the band’s not consigned to lurch through nullabies that evoke offloaded Les Paul DNA, they meticulously rollick like fingerpainting automatons, or, during the squall of “There There”, as if submitting a soundtrack for Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ in… ‘Shaft’. The breakdown from The Beatles’ “I Want You” is wrung neurotic to supply the backing for “A Wolf at the Door”’s taxman-citing panic-rant about calling the cops (consult Go Home Productions’ mash-up of “Karma Police” and “A Day in the Life”). “We Suck Young Blood” is seasoned with off-time zombie handclaps: a Down With People hymn for the dawn of brand-name pill organizers. The production is Howard Hughes hermetic; just as early Springsteen seems the perfect warmth for vinyl, Radiohead match the coldness of CDs and the even more abstract MP3. Still, a new sentimentality and reliance on cliche have emerged: Kid A is growing up, and Yorke has begun to care about the lil’ motherscratcher. Thus his band is becoming our ham-fistedly intricate Pink Floyd.” [thanks Doug]
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Radiohead News on this day in...
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2002: Webcast with two brand new tracks! — Radiohead [...]
