Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [77]
But, at the very same time, other band members explicitly denied that Hail to the Thief is a direct response to current politics. Jonny Greenwood, for one, stated that, “We’d never name a record after one political event like Bush’s election. The record’s bigger than that.” Yorke, too, stepped back, saying that Hail to the Thief is “trying to express . . . the absurdity of everything. Not just a single Administration.” And he continues from another source that “the whole thing about it being political is a bit far-fetched. I keep reading stuff about how this album is all about politics and anti-America . . . just because of the title and one or two quotes I gave.”
Some of the band’s defensive tone here is no doubt due to the current unfashionableness of political music, a contemporary trend also reflected in some of the critical reception of the record, such as Ethan Brown’s review in New York magazine. Brown, who frets that “the album promises a lefty monotone,” celebrates the album’s many musical (that is, specifically not lyrical) joys and writes:
Radiohead obsessives won’t hear the album this way: Like the devotees of eighties bands like the Smiths and the Cure, they’ll devour the lyric sheet for Hail to the Thief as though it were Hammurabi’s code. But for everyone else, Hail to the Thief will likely be listened to with the lights out and the speakers turned up loud. It’s not going to start the revolution—great art never does. (Ethan Brown, “Radioheadline,” New York, June 9th, 2003)
I’ll admit to the charge of sweaty obsessiveness. Just note, though, how Brown portrays a political interpretation of Hail to the Thief as not only ineffective but profoundly embarrassing. Making a political record, in Brown’s opinion, is no more noble than drowning in melodramatic goth angst. And indeed, straightforward protest music these days seems quaint and uncool (think “aging hippies”), a relic of past politics and past musical trends and tastes. The flip side of “great art never starts the revolution” is that bad art is that which attempts to. More importantly, protest music in contemporary American culture seems ineffective and, even worse, easily co-opted by brand-oriented multinational capitalism (here, the use by Nike of Minor Threat’s album cover or the bombastic career trajectory of U2 comes to mind).
White People for Peace
Yet despite all their distancing comments concerning the political nature of Hail to the Thief, members of Radiohead have often aligned themselves with left-leaning anti-global capitalism causes such as Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’ movement. This does not somehow subvert what members of the band have said about Hail to the Thief’s politics, but it does open up a space for us to think of Hail to the Thief as somehow concerned with the problems inherent in a political use of art. If the heyday of protest music has justifiably passed, then new strategies that recognize the inefficacy of politics in music must be seen as a part of the responsibility of socially conscious bands.
One such strategy very different from Radiohead’s can be found in Against Me!’s song “White People for Peace,” from their 2007 album New Wave. The chorus goes, “the people sang protest songs in response to military aggression, / protest songs to try to stop the soldier’s gun . . . / but the battle raged on.” This song recognizes the ultimate inefficacy of political music while at the same time functioning very much like a protest song (the verses illustrate the senselessness of war and the venal motivations that drive it). “White People for Peace” clearly is a politically charged song but at the same time seeks to step back from the protest so as to be a “meta” comment on protest music. In other words, it wants to have it both ways, telling the listener that yes, we can protest the war, while at the same time being a knowing statement about protest music. This ironic stance implies a real lament for the