People should listen to the record before they judge any of the other bullshit," declares Radiohead's Thom Yorke, after nearly an hour of explaining and defending the provocative title and guitar-driven foreboding of the band's new album, Hail to the Thief. "The music is the thing," he contends over a cell phone, speaking from a car in England after a long day of promotional action on behalf of the record. "It's a hoary old cliche. But it's true."

On Hail to the Thief, which comes out in North America on June 10th, Yorke -- Radiohead's singer, lyricist and outspoken conscience -- dives headfirst into the dangers and challenges of living in a world run by cowboys, guns and money. The title is an unflattering allusion to George W. Bush's disputed victory in the 2000 presidential election, and songs such as "2+2=5" and "We Suck Young Blood" seem drawn from the latest cable-news dispatches on Iraq and Wall Street. In fact, Hail to the Thief is more prophecy than protest. Yorke, guitarists Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway debuted many of the album's fourteen songs onstage in Europe last summer, long before the crisis in Iraq turned into war. Radiohead then re-created the volume and thrill of those live performances in the studio, during two weeks of sessions last fall in Los Angeles with co-producer Nigel Godrich.

Yorke insists that despite the album's black air of politics and paranoia, Hail to the Thief is not a soundtrack for digging bunkers. The album's dark rhythms and fighting guitars are the surge and clang of engagement, not escape. "The music opened this shit up," says Yorke. "I was trying, hoping, to ignore it. But in the end, it was too obvious to ignore."

"Are you such a dreamer/To put the world to rights?": Those are the first lines on the new album, in "2+2=5." Are you addressing the listener or talking about yourself?

I don't know where those words came from. They were always there -- as the opening of the song. I kept thinking, "Oh, that's terrible. I'll have to change that." All the way through the album, I was trying to avoid getting specific about issues. I was trying to hide away from all that.

I wasn't involved in choosing the order of the songs -- not initially. It was Phil and Ed. Halfway through making the record, they thought it would be a good idea to find out what the running order would be. They picked up on that line, so you have to blame them.

The whole record is about thinly veiled anger -- very thinly veiled. But there was not much analysis going on in writing these songs. Some of them are quite old, too. "I Will" is three or four years old. "Myxomatosis" is three or four years old. But they were the songs that were there. You work with what you have.

When did you first hear the phrase "hail to the thief," and what made it appealing as an album title?

It was a formative moment -- one evening on the radio, way before we were doing the record. The BBC was running stories about how the Florida vote had been rigged and how Bush was being called a thief. That line threw a switch in my head. I couldn't get away from it. And the light -- I was driving that evening with the radio on -- was particularly weird. I had this tremendous feeling of foreboding, quite indescribable, really. To me, all the feelings on the record stem from that moment.

The other possible title was The Gloaming. I wanted that because of the twilight, that night in the car. But that title was too doom-y. And the record is not doom-y. Musically, the record is quite jubilant.

[Excerpt From Issue 925 — June 26, 2003]