The Radiohead of the early 2000’s was a strange beast. Still emerging from the twin digressions of Kid A and Amnesiac – both given rather more full-blooded treatment in the live arena than on record – Hail To The Thief certainly showcased a return to rockier fare, albeit with elements of the glacial prog that would come to define the albums that followed.
Not that you’d necessarily know it from the promotional activity around the album. A live version of 2 + 2 = 5 that aired regularly on MTV2 appeared to place the album in a similar bracket to the harder-edged material that Muse unveiled in the same period (via Absolution), while the band’s live shows underscored the fact that they remained a guitar driven band at heart. Yet Hail To The Thief was a subtler album than it first appeared, the production skewed more towards atmosphere than aggression and a number of electronic pieces defiantly keeping faith with the eclectic impulses that fired the preceding pair of albums (notably both Backdrifts and A Punchup At A Wedding are awol from this live album, despite having been aired on the tour). However, while the production decisions were understandable and worked for the album as a whole, it did rather mean that the fierier tracks lost the edge that could so easily have been theirs with just a little more blood and thunder in the mix.
It is a point made early on in this new compilation of live recordings from 2003 – 2009, which opens with a visceral take on 2 + 2 = 5. As with many of the tracks, it edges away from its initially sedate beginning to achieve the sort of horns in the air freak out that made The Bends so compelling and there’s no denying the thrill of hearing the band playing on the ledge once again. While it’s a shame that it’s not a complete show from the period – the 2003 / 2004 tour covered a lot of ground – this compilation (which largely echoes the running order of its parent album) is still holy grail for Radiohead fans who have been largely starved of official live material over the years, and it acts as a smart companion piece to the studio album – something which is both a blessing and a curse, as we shall see.
As with 2 + 2 = 5, Sit Down, Stand Up takes its sweet time to build, the band slowly working themselves toward a hulking great crescendo, only to hit the brakes just as it sounds like they are going to truly let loose. In contrast, the airy Sail To The Moon is a piano-led ballad that can be heard swirling around an enthusiastic audience, the liquid guitar sounding altogether huge. While decent enough, paradoxically, it misses the pulsing electronic of Backdrift to complement it. Meanwhile, as might be imagined, it’s the pacier songs that fare best, with Go To Sleep demonstrating a far angstier pulse than its studio counterpart, the band adding layer upon layer of spiky guitar and manipulated vocal to the mix and clearly having a blast in the process. No less expansive is Where I End You Begin, which finds tense percussion driving the guitars into post-rock territory, leaving you to wonder just how many art-rock bands currently treading the boards were watching in awe back in the early 00s.
The pace slows on We Suck Young Blood, a haunted, cinematic piece of music that finds slow hand claps and piano giving way to an extended jazz interlude that appears out of nowhere with blood on its collar and a maniacal glint in its eye. As with a number of tracks here, it reminds us that everyone in the band has multiple roles, including vocals, with each member as integral as another when it comes to creating their remarkably detailed live sound.
Somewhat surprisingly, given the decision to omit two similar tracks, the Kid A pulse of The Gloaming follows. A stuttering, quasi-Aphex track, it takes on a whole new aspect in its live form, as does There There. Always better live than on record, largely thanks to the densely layered percussion that found the band swap their guitars for drum sticks, it sounds absolutely massive here, while the enormous crowd sing every note of the song back to them. It’s the sound of a band owning their live environment and it has lost none of its power to raise the hairs on the back of the neck. It gives way to a slowly shifting I Will. One of the few tracks here that limits itself to a more stripped-down interpretation, I Will is Thom’s moment from start to finish, and his vocal is nothing short of astonishing.
Built around a dense riff and syncopated rhythms, Myxomatosis is closer in aspect to a stoner take on the oft-cited Bitches Brew than anything on OK Computer ever came, and it sounds utterly deranged in this reading (it sounds more like the Flaming Lips on record). That it’s followed by the light-touch Scatterbrain – part Kid A electronica, part OK Computer melody – makes it sound all the more intense, and the pairing also works better here than it does on record. Finally, we come to A Wolf At The Door, which finds Thom’s lyrics tumbling over one another in between desperate gulps for air. A solid album closer, thanks to the understated production, it doesn’t work quite so well as a live finale, and it’s a shame they didn’t include one or two other pieces from the era just to give this pseudo-live set a bit of a lift at its close.
Overall, Hail To The Thief Live Recordings 2003 – 2009 is both a salutary reminder of Radiohead’s live prowess and a slightly frustrating listen that seeks to recast their live show in the light of an album where it was so often the case that the band’s incendiary and transcendental live performances allowed them to recast their albums in the light of their back catalogue. Moreover, this is the second time the band have pulled this trick (the first being I Might Be Wrong), with no sign of a “proper” (read: complete, unedited performance) live album in sight.
If that sounds churlish, it’s not meant to be. This is a solid album and relatively well packaged with lyrics included (but no live shots) but, if we’re honest, this would have been more acceptable as a bonus disc to a reissue of the album (in the same vein as the stunning Glastonbury set included with Pulp’s recent Different Class) rather than as an album in its own right. Ultimately, with official live material from the band in rather short supply, fans will simply be glad to have this, but with a bit more thought, it could have been so much more. 7/10
