DL makes the case he's been building for 20 years: Radiohead's Hail to the Thief is not just underrated — it's their best album.
Released in 2003, Hail to the Thief arrived after Kid A and Amnesiac pushed Radiohead to abandon the guitar entirely. What happened when Jonny Greenwood picked it back up? He came back to the instrument with a completely new harmonic vocabulary — modal, ambiguous, non-resolving — and the result is the synthesis that makes this album extraordinary.
DL breaks down what makes this 14-track, 46-minute record a perfect listen: the political fury of "2+2=5" (an Orwell reference recorded in two weeks at Hensall Studios LA), the unsettling harmonic stasis of "Myxomatosis," the warmth buried inside the Kid A-style production of "Backdrifts," and why Thom Yorke writing "Sail to the Moon" for his infant son while watching the Iraq War unfold is one of the most devastating things in Radiohead's catalog.
Plus: the Nigel Godrich production approach, why the leak three weeks before release didn't matter, why critics were wrong about it being overstuffed, a full track-by-track ranking, and a 10/10 score.
Part of Verse Chorus Verse's complete Radiohead album-by-album series. Previous episodes covered Pablo Honey, The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac.
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction to Hail to the Thief
- 11:53 The Context of Hail to the Thief
- 22:56 The Argument for Hail to the Thief
- 28:27 The Guitar in Hail to the Thief
- 38:23 The Directness of Hail to the Thief
- 44:18 The Accumulation of Emotion
- 55:26 The Influence and Canonical Credit
- 01:15:02 The Synthesis and Importance of the Album
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