In 1999, when they may well have been the world’s biggest band, Radiohead released the documentary Meeting People Is Easy. Whenever an interviewer suggested the band’s music was depressing, singer Thom Yorke reacted like a recalcitrant 14-year-old asked to clear the table. It was difficult viewing, but the film made its point: Radiohead loathed promoting their records. For Kid A they refused to pose for pictures, release a single or make a video and gave hardly any interviews. Recently, however, Radiohead have been talking up their seventh album, Hail to the Thief (EMI), as ”OK Computer 2”. The video for the single There There was broadcast on Times Square. Planes flew over California with Hail to the Thief banners. By their standards it’s a promotional blitzkrieg. They have done everything short of parading down central London’s Oxford Street on an elephant. However, Hail to the Thief bears little comparison to the epic OK Computer and a distinct resemblance to the more recherché Amnesiac. Synthesised rhythms clatter; electronic noises blurp; pianos and guitars play serpentine patterns. Several tracks sound like good ideas rather than good songs: Mixomatosis‘s monstrous electronic riff, Sit Down Stand Up‘s build from ambient pattering to thunderous crescendo. It seems less impressive than Amnesiac, because the sound is familiar — partly because of Radiohead’s vast influence. Their mournful, pounding ballads are everywhere these days, copied by Coldplay and Aqualung. But it’s partly because Hail to the Thief is their third album to draw on the same glitch techno and free jazz influences. Hail to the Thief‘s drawback has more to do with the sense that Radiohead’s gloominess is becoming self-parodic. Its bleakness — found in fragmentary, elliptical lyrics — holds the album back. It is hard to fathom what songs such as I Will and The Gloaming are so cheesed off about. As a result, the prevalent mood is a vague, grumpy dissatisfaction. The painfully slow We Suck Young Blood is a case in point. It’s lethargic, whiny, the band sounding defeated.Hail to the Thief’s great moments arrive when chinks of light become visible through its grim facade. Sail to the Moon is a woozy, lovely song about Yorke’s infant son. A Punchup at a Wedding is even better, a funky bassline with bitter, witty lyrics.You could never describe Hail to the Thief as a bad record, but in light of its contents, the charm offensive surrounding it makes sense. It’s a band trying to rustle up interest in an album that’s not startlingly different and fresh or packed with the anthemic songs that once made them the world’s biggest band. Yorke recently said Radiohead will sound ”unrecognisable in two years’ time”. That makes their future seem more intriguing and far brighter than Hail to the Thief suggests. — Â