(Originally posted at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat.)

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.