Have been listening to and liking "Hail to the Thief" a bit more of late, but there's something in it that really bothers me. It's whenever Thom says the name of the song, especially preceded by "it's" or "this is." Examples:

"this is the gloaming"

"it's a drunken punchup at a wedding"

"I got myxomatosis, myxomatosis, got myxomatosis..." etc.

At first it sounded on at least half the songs like he was just mumbling for a while and then saying the title. The effect is lessened as I start to hear more of the words, but I still can't shake the feeling he's actually announcing what song it is. The real problem is when the melody isn't very strong, and the words don't have any context. That's why it doesn't bother me so much on "where I end and you begin" or "scatterbrain" which is great, or, well, almost all the other songs.

Also, what's with the alternate titles? They just kinda got pasted on there. Radiohead started the whole thing (well probably not, but I'm just a kid, I don't know history) of making every aspect of the album creative, by having these words and phrases everywhere. And in the OK Computer days, it seemed like they were part of the grand message. But these, eh. In fact, what they should have done was make those alternate titles the primary ones, and put the phrase he says prominently in the song in parentheses.

One more thing...the ending of "Sit down. Stand up." It's supposed to be really crazy and out of hand, but it just isn't. And the sudden stopping thing worked very well in live performances of "Idioteque," but there are so many other things they could have done here, that would have been better. This is part of a larger theory I have that the band are sufficiently afraid of being called bombastic again that they don't try anything really crazy, or let a song take a completely unexpected twist, and their sound has gotten thin where it once was thunderous.

Whew, perhaps I should have made a category purely for complaining. But this is the last one I have in mind for a while.

Singer Miles of Beulah, tonight at Bowery Ballroom, after turning on the house lights: "Interpol don't turn on the lights, do they? They're too busy checking their crease."
So take that!