When I head out to purchase Hail to the Thief during my designated lunch break today-- an allowance Thom Yorke would surely turn into a fatalistic, Orwellian meditation on routine and alienation-- I'll mingle with teenagers and CEOs frantic to walk out with their own copy. Because today, Radiohead are U2, Pink Floyd, and Queen-- and they could have been bigger than The Beatles if the success of "Creep" hadn't agitated an Oxford-bred guilt complex.
....
Which is not to advocate violence, or suggest that any end could justify its employ, but there are tertiary benefits when an artist's perspective is forcibly altered. Listen to Kid A, the most remarkably finessed redesign of an established band's sound since U2 recorded Achtung Baby: A reaction to overexposure, the undermining effects of commodification, and the alienation of celebrity, the record hasn't aged a day.
...
He believes radical change is the best option in all cases, and only feels pride in doing something "new" (quotes here, since Eno had ample reason to bristle at Kid A). Yorke can't see that Hail to the Thief is nothing to apologize for, that Radiohead are a band, and that, after a fashion, bands are defined by their music. Much as U2's Zooropa still sounded like U2, anything Radiohead does from here on out will sound like Radiohead.
...
This worrisome middling leads into "Where I End and You Begin", which is the only real low point on the album, as aside from Yorke's vocals, it's simply a U2 song. Shuffling snare rolls usher along an admittedly succulent liquid bassline, but these are only drawn out from their terrestrial locus by a hard-panned pair of keyboard tracks, which, for their simplicity, rescue an otherwise unsalvageable track.