by LORRAINE CARPENTER

"We were signed at the beginning of 1992, but we formed the band in 1985, almost 20 years ago. God, that makes me sound like an old fart!"

It really has been that long for Colin Greenwood and his partners in Radiohead, the tightly knit quintet whose cathartic noise and wondrous sounds have rung out from stages and stereos all over the world. They've been Britain's answer to grunge, world-renowned, neo-prog rockers and ambitious techno tinkerers, and all along, Radiohead have relentlessly travelled the sonic spectrum, not to mention countless kilometres of road. This week, they arrived in Montreal to grace us with their eighth gig in a decade, but the Mirror spoke to Greenwood when the band popped by for promotional duties in June.

Mirror: The advance buzz on Hail to the Thief was that it combined elements from all your previous records, but there was no mention of Pablo Honey. How do you feel about that album a decade later?

Colin Greenwood: It was juvenalia in that we were shaped by the producers in a way we'd never been before - and certainly haven't been since. We only had two and a half weeks to record, and it was our first time in a proper studio, so we didn't know. From then on, we knew. The drummer, Phil [Selway], would say that we were a very different band, a sort of thrashy, English, garage punk band. There are some great songs from that time, but it took us making that album to realize what we were all about and what we didn't want to be.

M: A lot was made of you guys going electronic with Kid A, probably because you started as such a straight-up rock band. Now it seems you've moved past experimentation and you're negotiating electronic and rock sounds more naturally.

CG: We've just got a more relaxed attitude to the equipment we're using, whether it's an electric guitar or a computer. We'd never plan on making a record that's all programs and samples or all electric guitars. The way sounds are made and recorded is secondary to the quality of the songwriting, so we've been lucky 'cause we've got such a good songwriter with Thom [Yorke]. That's the important thing, really, and luckily people are less genre fascistic now than ever before.

Fear and gloaming

M: Why did you decide to list alternate titles for the album and all the songs?

CG: Well, Stanley Donwood's artwork reminds me of the playbills from Victorian music halls or a rickety theatre troupe travelling across the land. There'd be such and such a title followed by, "A tale of daring doom and misadventure, featuring young Lady Priscilla Chattsworth, fresh from her engagements in the provinces," and that sort of endless addendum in brackets after the title. And you can hint at all sorts of other interpretations by adding other titles, to make people aware that it's not necessarily just about one thing. Thom was very keen on calling the record The Gloaming but we felt it sounded too much like The Hurting or The Crying.

M: Like a Nine Inch Nails album title?

CG: Ugh, The Groaning. It also sounded a bit progressive, so we were like, "Um, please don't call it that." We chose Hail to the Thief because it was one of Thom's lyrics, and when we saw the colours that Donwood had done on the record - the road maps and all these harassing, bright things coming at you, driving in the dark - we liked the idea of a title that's all about facing your fears rather than running away or hiding in a bunker and waiting for them to disappear. [singing] "Hello darkness my old friend…"

M: Well, most people think "hail to the thief" is an attack on Dubya, at least in part, but would you say the album is more about facing fears than voicing protest?

CG: There are elements of complaint and protest in the lyrics, but rather than being a literal protest record, it's about the question of how to protest, the feeling of being paralyzed by fear, of not knowing how to articulate dissent or dissatisfaction. Just the act of going to a show with loads of people is political. It's great, and it's healthy in times when everyone's increasingly separated and isolated by technology. But I suppose any great record is about the struggle to engage and communicate with the world.

All ages show with Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Friday, Aug. 15, 6:30pm (doors open at 4:30pm), $47.50

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