In part one of my track-by-track revisiting of Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, things got pretty dystopian pretty quickly. This is an album about dread, after all, and its opening tracks leave little room for the real-life hope that has reared its head in the face of the new administration. We’ve seen record protests, spiking newspaper subscriptions, confrontational Republican town halls, jammed Congressional phone lines, and a sense of activation among concerned citizens that I have never witnessed before. Pressure from the people and the press is yielding tangible results. This is encouraging.

But.

When I stick this disk into my CD player, I’m not looking to feel more optimistic about the state of the world; Radiohead’s music is perfect for wallowing in its darkness and articulating its myriad anxieties. So let’s go deeper into the thicket and see what we find. Read more…

Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief will always be seen as an anti-Bush album. Released in 2003 right around the start of the Iraq war, the album turned the paranoia of the War on Terror back onto the administration driving it, and even its kleptocratic title is an unsubtle reference to George W. Bush’s election victory despite losing the popular vote. Add in anxious lines about “the loonies taking over,” and a father-to-son passing of the torch moment like “maybe you’ll be president,” and it’s clear that Yorke had the 43rd president in mind when he penned at least some of these lyrics, despite some of them being written before the war in Iraq even started.

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