# 997 Radiohead “A Wolf at the Door” [Capitol, 2003]

Suddenly, four years later, I may have to apologize to Radiohead for my incessant shafting of Hail to the Thief. Upon its release, was nonplussed; the reversion to rawk, not-so-much-with-the electronica action was inevitable enough, but it seemed to be that Thom and the boyz (a) needed to trim the bloated tracklist by, say, 3 or 4 songs and (b) allowed the least memorable numbers to meander on waaay too long (seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to sit through the whole thing without hitting “skip” a couple times; also, how can any critic honestly claim to care about “Punchup at a Wedding”? Come on). I still sorta feel that way, but in those songs I glommed onto initially – “I Will,” “There There,” “We Suck Young Blood,” “A Wolf at the Door,” “Myxomatosis,” “2 + 2 = 5,” “Thr Gloaming” – I now detect an overarching theme that I missed at the time but picked up on en route to Abingdon several Mondays ago: a sense of outrage and horror at how cruel and heartless the world at large often is, and concern at how one’s children will weather it’s darkening storm (as opposed to the default “eff the WTO/globalization/Bushco/The Mang/etc” framework I slotted it into before, along with everything else Radiohead/Yorke have accomplished this decade excepting Johnny Greenwood’s avant-garde solo jawns). I blame (if that’s the word) this dawning realization on the altered mindset parenthood brings about and knowing that a couple good friends are about to become parents or about to try to become parents.

I’ll get to some of the other songs eventually, but right now let’s examine “A Wolf at the Door,” already scary to your humble blogger in 2003 but downright apocalyptic today. The gloomy, musky atmosphere is pierced somewhat by a sashaying organ motif that brings to mind an evil carnival of sorts before Yorke even opens his mouth; after that, strings, vocal blobs, and all kinds of other sinister sonic detritus swarms the airspace as if to mirror lyrical worries. “A Wolf at the Door” was inspired by a real-life mugging and the singer’s subsequent sense of helplessness, that sinking feeling that one isn’t even slightly in control of the flow of events. Nothing can be controlled; the world-at-large is a vampire with no compunctions about destroying you and everything you care about. I like to imagine that Yorke’s character is dining with a friend, describing an unshakable, post-mugging nightmare: “Drag him out your window/Dragging out the dead/Singing I miss you/Snakes and ladders flip the lid/Out pops the cracker/Smacks you in the head/Knifes you in the neck/Kicks you in the teeth,” and so on. As he goes on about this, however, he becomes increasingly paranoid and delusional, unable to distinguish between reality and nightmare and believing that he’s caught at the center of some conspiracy or blackmail plot designed to ruin his life and/or drive him mad. Eventually he’s banging on the table, freaking out the other patrons, foaming at the mouth: “Walking like giant cranes/And with my X-ray eyes I strip you naked in a tight little worldand are you on the list?/Stepford wives who are we to complain?/Investments and dealers/Investments and dealers/Cold wives and mistresses/Cold wives and Sunday papers/City boys in First Class don't know we're born little/Someone else is gonna come and clean it up.” By the end, he’s convinced the friend is himself a spy, a turncoat, an informant: “I wish you'd get up get over get up, get over and turn your tape off!” The dread is active, pervasive, palpable, vicarious, as though listener and narrator alike could be detained indefinitely (precient shades of “black sites”) or assasinated (shades of Aeon Flux) at any moment, struck down by a heartless omnipresence that isn’t God but might as well be for all the power it wields.

We all know that Yorke is probably overdramatizing an experience that really happened, but alter a few details and this song could viewed from the perspective of just about anyone: me, you, a celebrity hiding out from stalkers or paparazzi, the homeless lady from that Crystal Waters hit single, Perez Hilton, Marc Rich in the 1990s. We’ve all felt the wolf’s metaphorical breath at our necks once or twice; sometimes its teeth were real, sometimes not.