The tradition of an album's first single being an
appetiser for the main course has been broken for the much-anticipated Hail
To The Thief - all 16 tracks are already bootlegs available on the internet.
But that broken tradition is not so bad as hopefully There There is an
unrepresentative taste of the upcoming album, or the whole thing's going to
be hard to swallow.
Dark-night chord changes populate a close-fitting
soundscape dominated by bass, tom-tom hits, and lo-fi rhythm guitar. Thom
holds it together with haunting long-noted melodies high above, but the
unimpressive claustrophobic arrangement leaves no real space for his voice
and the excellent lyrics.
All of which means that There There is a tuneful and
interesting enough song, but fails to measure up to previous Radiohead
single releases.
more