Three of Radiohead confirm “Go to Sleep” as the next single on Xfm

Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway were Zoë Ball's guests on Xfm on Wednesday 28 May, without Thom Yorke or Jonny Greenwood, and confirmed that “Go to Sleep” will be the next single from Hail to the Thief.

The album began, O'Brien says, with three CDs that Yorke sent the band, everything from purely electronic pieces to acoustic guitar and piano versions of songs they had known for three years. They lived with the CDs for two months, then met to pick the songs everyone liked. Then we started rehearsing them, which is when they stop being Thom Yorke songs and become Radiohead songs.²

They rehearsed the songs properly, played them in live and then recorded quickly and very simply, just as they had planned. Selway says they went into the sessions at Ocean Way, the Los Angeles studio where they worked with Nigel Godrich last September, more confident than before.

Xfm played both B-sides of “There There”, “Paperbag Writer” and “Where Bluebirds Fly”. Colin says Yorke made “Paperbag Writer” in Los Angeles and the band added the drums in London. Two friends have songs to remix, he says, Cristian Vogel and Kieran Hebden of Four Tet, who is doing “Scatterbrain”.

The worst question of this campaign, O'Brien says, is whether calling the album Hail to the Thief makes them anti-American.

The setlists are decided over lunch at that day. Basically what you feel like doing that evening. It keeps everyone on their toes.

Ed O'Brien¹