As far back as October 1991 Yorke was demonstrating his singular lyrical vision. In the band's first interview he described how an early song, Nothing Touches Me, was "based on an artist who was imprisoned for abusing children and spent the rest of his life in a cell, painting. But the song is about isolating yourself so much that one day you realise you haven't got any friends." When it was pointed out that the scenario sounded fairly miserable, Yorke replied, "Yeah, I'm just aggressive and sick."
And this bit where he explains The Gloaming:
"I was totally hooked on Radio 4, and it coincided with Noah's times to get up (for feeding). We were staying in our house on the coast, and in the evenings I used to go driving. I'd go into this weird dream state. There was something about the colours of the headlights, the twilight and the animals running into the bushes for cover. It had this ominous nature that stuck with me. It was all wrapped up with the fact that I found it incredibly difficult to come to terms with the fact that maybe we were leaving our children with no future at all. This imminent sense of moving into the dark ages again. The rise of all this right-wing bigotry, stupidity, fear and ignorance."
And another piece on Radiohead from the same Age:
Youth culture's connection to corporate culture is just one of the socially aware angles explored on the album. While past Radiohead lyrics - written by singer Thom Yorke - largely addressed the inner life, Hail to the Thief moves the focus outward. Previous themes of alienation and our relation to modern machinery have taken a backseat to our relation to society's power structures. Though Greenwood feels Yorke's lyrics embrace "sarcasm, wit and ambiguity," there's often a sorrowful or condemning tone. The band's original title for the album was The Gloaming, which, Greenwood explains, "is an old English word for that period of half light before it becomes dark. The world feels a bit like that at the moment."
In fact, all 14 songs on the album have subtitles, making for names as bulky as Sail to the Moon (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky) and Myxomatosis (Judge, Jury & Executioner). That should provide nice ammunition for all those who find this band too intellectual by half. Greenwood explains the idea for the subtitles came from "old Victorian playbills which chronicled the kind of moralistic songs which were played in music halls. That whole theatre culture was wiped out by the development of cinema."