Music
Hail to the Thief features less digital manipulation and more conventional rock instrumentation than Radiohead's previous two albums, making use of live drums, guitar and piano, but retains the use of electronic elements such as synthesisers, drum machines and sampling. Jonny Greenwood and Yorke are both credited with playing "laptop" on the album and Greenwood continued to employ the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument he first used on Kid A and Amnesiac; Jeanne Loriod, a celebrated player of the instrument who died before the album's release, is thanked in the liner notes. In an interview with XFM London, Yorke described the album as "very acoustic", containing significantly fewer overdubs than its predecessors. O'Brien felt it captured a new "swaggering" sound, saying "there's space and sunshine and energy in the songs." Despite its dark themes, Radiohead saw Hail to the Thief as a "sparkly, shiny pop record. Clear and pretty."
At nearly an hour in length, Hail to the Thief is Radiohead's longest album; nonetheless, the band tried to keep the songs short, influenced by the Beatles' ability to write songs shorter than they felt. O'Brien said: "We wanted to relearn the art of putting out shorter songs. Keeping it succinct instead of taking the listener on a journey."
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