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Rating:
Sometimes, when a new album from a band you like comes out, you expect it to surprise you. Which, if you think about it, is a logical contradiction.
Yet, certain bands are capable of doing so.
So I am about to try Hail To The Thief, and I expect certain things from Radiohead.
I expect clean, descending arpeggios, Thom singing sometimes in a plaintive and sometimes erratic manner, certain loops suggesting emotions to the most die-hard electronic fans.
But I also expect Radiohead to surprise me and therefore, in a sense, to surpass these stylistic motifs.
I listen to it and feel that they replicate their style; I should have expected it, yet they surprise me nonetheless. Why, who knows, ask the electrical impulses that regulate emotions in our brain.
Yet, when I listen to 2+2=5 (The Lukewarm) I feel Radiohead's hysteria rewritten in a way I couldn't have imagined. When I listen to A Wolf At The Door (It Girl. Rag Doll) - the most beautiful song of the album, if not of their history, in my humble opinion - I hear those arpeggios and falsettos but also a strange driving vocal melody and a chorus that escapes from itself.
When I listen to We Suck Young Blood (Your Time Is Up) I hear that slow drum and Thom's high/low wails but also new haunting atmospheres.
Of course, some wish for the always melodic Radiohead of The Bends and OK Computer, and others want to follow them in every kind of electronic, jazz, and whatever else contamination.
I find that this album is a truly remarkable outcome for those like the Oxford quintet who first invented a style, and then, when everyone followed them, went where no one would have ever expected.
I feel indebted for the beauty they give us.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm.) (03:19)
Are you such a dreamer
To put the world to rights?
I stay home forever
Where two and two always makes a five
I'll lay down the tracks
Sandbag and hide
January has April's showers
And two and two always makes a five
It's the devil's way now
There is no way out
You can scream and you can shout
It is too late now
Because
You have not been
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Yeah, I'm not feeling it
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Yeah, I need it
I needed attention
I needed attention
I needed attention
I needed attention
Yeah, I love it, the attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
I try to sing along
I get it all wrong
Cause I’m not
Cause I’m not
I swat them like flies
But like flies the buggers
Keep coming back
But I’m not
Oh, hail to the thief
Oh, hail to the thief
But I'm not
But I'm not
But I'm not
But I'm not
Don't question my authority or put me in the box
Cause I'm not
Cause I'm not
Oh, go and tell the king that the sky is falling in
But it's not
But it's not
But it's not
Maybe not
Maybe not
09 There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.) (05:24)
In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape.
Broken branches trip me as I speak.
Just 'cause you feel it doesnt mean its there.
Just 'cause you feel it doesnt mean its there.
There's always a siren
Singing you to shipwreck
(Don't reach out, don't reach out
Don't reach out, don't reach out)
Steer away from these rocks
We'd be a walking disaster
(Don't reach out, don't reach out
Don't reach out, don't reach out)
Just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean its there.
(theres someone on your shoulder)
(theres someone on your shoulder)
Just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean its there.
(theres someone on your shoulder)
(theres someone on your shoulder)
There there!
Why so green and lonely?
And lonely
And lonely
Heaven sent you to me
To me
To me
We are accidents
Waiting waiting to happen.
We are accidents
Waiting waiting to happen
10 I Will. (No Man's Land.) (01:59)
I will, lay me down
In a bunker underground
I won't let this happen to my children
Meet the real world coming out of your shell
With white elephants, sitting ducks
I will rise up
Little babies' eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies' eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies' eyes, eyes, eyes
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Other reviews
By 2+2=5
Have you ever woken up with the absolute conviction that you had a beautiful dream?
This is Music. ...don’t come to talk to me about intellectualism for its own sake or excessive experimentation, because the dream is mine.
By massimo1
The album seems simply FANTASTIC to me (perhaps because of the anticipation?)
To close, I would just like to emphasize how I liked this CD on the first listen, unlike the previous ones
By dado
"It's incredible how in a three-and-a-half-minute track like 2+2=5, the band manages to incorporate three radical tempo changes without clashing."
"The lyrics, even if incomprehensible in parts, show Thom’s talent as a writer, depicting a world that seems a symbiosis of our own and Orwellian dystopia."
By Bleak
"The album blends the psychedelic and expansive atmospheres of 'OK Computer' with the less linear and more electronic ones of 'Kid A'."
"I’m faced with a complete work, rich in emotions, ideas, implications, and capable of provoking thoughts and reflections."
By Blackdog
A meeting point between the anguished melody of 'Ok Computer' and the 'cryptic' experimentalism of 'Kid A'.
A resolute and utopian rebellion against the current state of affairs, against the mystification of reality operated by politicians and mass media.
