Once again I’ve got to cop to bias when it comes to a band I’m writing about: As I detailed in this post, the (one-sided, imaginary) relationship Thom Yorke and I have been in for the past half-decade appears to have reached the point of irreconcilable difference.* The point I was trying to make with that article was largely missed, I think; I’m not angry or enraged or indignant or anything like that. I’m just sad, is all, sad that from now on, every time I hear this band I onced loved so deeply, I’ll be reminded that they think I’m either terminally gullible or irredeemably ruthless. (Both may be true, of course.)
So it was with trepidation that I bought Radiohead’s much-anticipated new disc, the bluntly titled Hail to the Thief. Advance critical reaction, as usual, had consisted of the kind of oddly undescriptive superlatives that indicate that the critic in question a) remembers Lit Crit 101 and b) can’t make heads or tails of the record. It’s a pattern that emerged in some quarters with the electrosoaked Kid A and became pandemic with the even more difficult Amnesiac. Aside from the agreed-upon angry political over/undertones (it depends on which reviewer you’re asking), therefore, I didn’t know what the heck I was getting myself into.
What Hail is, despite the rage that underlies it, is a strangely inert document of a time in which Yorke and his bandmates felt increasingly helpless. This in itself is par for the Radiohead course–since the first line on The Bends, “You can force it but it will not come,” powerlessness has been the band’s stock in trade–but for the first time the music seems to reflect the lyrics, shuffling nervously and never attempting to break free of its largely self-imposed chains. Yorke, who is blessed with the world’s most angelic set of pipes and cursed with the face of the kid from Deliverance, sings every note seemingly until he runs out of air, from long soaring cries to short breathy gasps; it’s as though he’s gunning for the title of World’s Worst Breath Support. His vocals often slide into incoherence, sometimes with the help of electronic de-enhancement, which reflects his increasing desperation but also makes Tori Amos’s diction seem like that of Walter Cronkite. With the exception of the rhythmic, sharp-as-a-knife repeated line “I don’t know why I feel so tongue-tied” in “Myxomatosis,” the album lacks the kind of chilling vocal directness that made lines like “This machine will–will not communicate” from The Bends’ “Street Spirit” so disarmingly effective. Moreover, quiet, semi-acoustic numbers like “Sail to the Moon” and “I Will,” despite their Beatlesque titles and optimistic lyrics (“Sail” speaks of a future President knowing right from wrong; “I Will” swears to view the world through “babies’ eyes”), are no respite from the static, claustrophobic gloom. Compared to similar numbers from the band’s past, like “Bullet Proof (I Wish I Was)” or “How to Disappear Completely,” there’s no shelter here.
Indeed, in that regard Hail closely resembles its immediate predecessor, Amnesiac. On both records, the gloriously soaring, cathartic moments of the bands’ earlier efforts, be they quiet and heartrending or loud and mindblowing, are nowhere to be found. There’s no attempt to ruuuuuuun (“Creep”), no aching guitar pile-up (“Blowout”), no ironically triumphant claim that everything is broken (“Planet Telex”), no flying like Peter Pan (“Bones”), no saving of lives (“Airbag”), no everlasting peace (“Exit Music (For a Film)”), no glacial majesty (“Treefingers”), no spinning round and round and round and round and round (“Morning Bell”). It’s when you put Radiohead up against their own catalog that you realize what a monumentally tough act they are to follow, even when it’s them doing the following.
The album achieves its greatest success when it makes its few genuine attempts at forward motion. The acoustic-strumming strive of “Go to Sleep” evinces the same heady blend of musical optimism and lyrical cynicism that distinguished Jethro Tull at their best (which only an idiot would believe isn’t a hell of a compliment). The album’s best tracks utilize R&B rhythms and techniques, as in the defiantly groove-oriented first single “There There” (which, if it had first appeared on The Bends, would have blown people’s minds), or the pissed-off but subtle strut of “A Punchup at a Wedding” (probably the album’s best song, it simultaneously evokes DJ Shadow’s “Building Steam with a Grain of Salt,” Isaac Hayes’s “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic,” and Neil Young’s “Southern Man”). The aforementioned ode to communicable rabbit disease, “Myxomatosis,” features a pulverizing synthbass riff so propulsive it’s frightening, as it should be given the song’s violent content.
Hail to the Thief ends with “A Wolf at the Door,” Yorke’s account of the threatening phone calls he receives from the Big Bad lupine entity of lore. Singing quite convincingly like a frightened child, it’s probably Yorke’s best moment on the record, but you can’t help but wish that at some point during the album he’d have bit the bullet and let the wolf in.
All of which makes the Deftones’ eponymous new album all the more refreshing. Their last album, White Pony, was what Kid A would have sounded like if after OK Computer Radiohead had listend to less Aphex Twin and more Black Sabbath. Sonically expansive and thrillingly experimental for the work of a band that got its start touring with Limp Bizkit, White Pony‘s highly textural and emotional epics were easily the most intelligent and rewarding metal songs this side of Tool.
Deftones takes the process of morphing its musicians from rapping nu-metalheads to bold experimentalists gloriously further. The first minute of its opening track, “Hexagram,” contains more visceral joy, rage and energy that practically all of Hail to the Thief put together. “Worship, play, play, worship,” chants lead singer Chino Moreno frantically, as though he himself can’t decide which to do. “Minerva,” with its ascending chords and gutwrenching screams of “God bless you all for the song you sang,” is the most emotionally affecting postmodern power ballad since the title track of Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile, and “Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event,” with vocals emerging from a lonely, watery place and a toy piano tinkling melancholically throughout, conjures up the bittersweetest adolescent memories you’d care to relive. And then, of course, there are wall-to-wall catharsisfests, like “When Girls Telephone Boys,” The overall product is one of intense emotional power, even at the album’s quietest.
Unfortunately, it’s an intensity too few music fans will experience. The Deftones have been largely ignored precisely by the kind of people who’d most enjoy them, primarily because of their long-time association with the baggy-pants crowd (Korn, Bizkit), their own frequent sporting of said pants, and the simple fact that they aren’t British. But the band has always admitted to musical influences that’d get booed right off the Summer Sanitarium stage, from Violator-era Depeche Mode to Pinkerton-era Weezer. Radiohead at their best also clearly shaped the band into its current brilliant form. With any luck, Thom will pick up Deftones on his next swing through the States, and the favor will be returned. It won’t be a moment too soon.
* (To digress for a minute, in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Thom suggested that as bad as Saddam Hussein is, the weakening of the UN precipitated by the US and UK is worse. If I could I’d point out to him that the UN always did whatever the US (or, in its day, the USSR) wanted to do anyway, and that though it might now appear to be a counterbalance to the US’s power, perhaps an organization that puts Libya in charge of the Human Rights commission isn’t much of a moral arbiter. He also explained that the whole album stems from the sinking feeling he got while hearing the BBC report that Bush stole the 2000 election. I wasn’t thrilled about that at the time by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ll just say that if I were to record a politically-charged album between late 2001 and early 2003, I’d probably be focusing on a certain even that took place eleven months after that election. But that’s enough of that.)