Thom Yorke on BBC Front Row

John Wilson talks to Thom Yorke for Radio 4's Front Row about Hail to the Thief, out on 9 June. The words often come out of the sounds the band are making, and the album's opening line is one he would have rubbed out given more time. A children's story thread runs through the record, from Grimm's fairy tales and from reading innocent stories to his little boy while a lot of heavy things were going on elsewhere, and it let him get at bleak things without it being too much. “Sail to the Moon” is the hope a parent pins on a new life, “yikes, that sounds so cliché”. He finds a lot of the record very sexy.

After touring Amnesiac they took a break. With a tour booked to play the songs before recording them, and two weeks to record, there was no time to analyse anything, and typing up the words at the end he thought, what have we done? All good pop music is difficult, he says, and gives Prince's “When Doves Cry” as the example.