American and Canadian critics mostly warm to Hail to the Thief

Hail to the Thief came out on Capitol in the US on 10 June, a day after Britain, and most of the American and Canadian papers like it. Several connect it with the run-up to the war in Iraq, and more than one is glad the guitars are back.

The crackle at the very start of “2+2=5” is Jonny Greenwood plugging his guitar into his amp. Andrew Miller points it out in the East Bay Express, and for him the song's eruption about two minutes in shows the band's Bends-era playing has not withered. The same crackle opens Jason Bracelin's review, which ran in Cleveland Scene and again in the Houston Press (Cleveland printed “There There” as “Here Here”). For Bracelin that guitar, largely missing from Kid A and Amnesiac, sets the tone of the whole record, and the burst of noise midway through “There There” is like nothing the band have done since OK Computer.

Rolling Stone gives it four stars out of five and calls the record a product of the run-up to the Iraq war, which Thom Yorke opposed, with Orwell all through it; “2+2=5” takes its title from 1984. The magazine rates the album more tuneful than the two before it, and “Myxomatosis” the finest song anyone has written about a sick cat.

In Edmonton, Dave Johnston of Vue Weekly calls it their most unified and most inviting record since OK Computer, thinks cheering the guitars misses the point, and wonders whether the title is aimed at George W. Bush.

“A Punch-up at a Wedding” is Humberto Guida's standout in the Miami New Times, a joke at the band's own expense; the Hartford Courant calls it the most accessible song on the album and still too complicated for radio. “We Suck Young Blood” is a funeral march to Francois Marchand in Edmonton's See and a song about Hollywood vampires to Christopher O'Connor in the Phoenix New Times.

The one cool verdict is Joshua Klein's, a short second look in the Chicago Tribune after the paper's full review of 8 June. He calls the album badly sequenced, a few songs too long and rough enough in places to pass for demos.

Marchand, who warns his readers not to expect a second “Paranoid Android”, asks when Radiohead ever made a standard rock album, and tells them to stop complaining and buy it.

The reviews