Radiohead Album in the Wrong Place

Radiohead's saying to hell with the thief who leaked tracks from the band's upcoming Hail to the Thief.

Thanks to some mischievous insider, the Grammy-winning British art rockers' first collection of new material in two years has made its way onto the Internet two months before its intended release.

But the band says it's not so much the premature release, as the quality of the recordings, that bugs them. In other words, everything's in its wrong place. Or, as guitarist Johnny Greenwood puts it, the MP3s circulating online are "a stolen copy of early, unmixed edits and roughs."

"We're not angry really," Greenwood said on Radiohead.com Wednesday. "Shame it's not a package with the artwork and all, but there you go."

The 14-track Thief, recorded in Oxfordshire and Los Angeles and produced by Nigel Godrich and Radiohead, hits stores on June 10, with the lead single called "There There."

Greenwood says what's making the rounds now is "work we've not finished, being released in this sloppy way, 10 weeks before the real version is even available. It doesn't even exist as a record yet.

"So yes, we're annoyed," he continues, "the songs are good on the recordings, which you can hear, but we worked on them after this point until we were happy with them. This is why we're pissed off. We didn't give up on them in February (which is what you're hearing) and it's just a shame that, to your ears, we did."

According to Billboard.com, Godrich listened to the tracks floating around the Web and identified them as versions done way back when the group just started mixing. (The band has been previewing several of the tunes in concert since last summer.)

Radiohead's publicist, Ambrosia Healey, could not be reached for comment. But EMI, parent company of Radiohead label Capitol Records, has threatened legal action against Netizens who put the tracks up on their personal Websites and radio stations that play the illicit songs.

Greenwood says he and his mates are taking the theft in stride and don't blame their fans for wanting a listen.

"Of course people will still download them and hear them, I can understand the temptation," Greenwood tells fans. "It's not you lot I'm pissed off about, it's just the situation I guess. It's stolen work."

That's no paranoid android talking, either.

Many high-profile and buzz artists, including Eminem, Oasis and most recently 50 Cent, have seen their upcoming albums undercut by file-sharing online before their scheduled releases, prompting record labels to move up street dates to avoid losing album sales. Sony blamed the poor showing of Korn's Untouchables on Web pilferers. Linkin Park was so paranoid that the band locked down the recording studio, limited access to the master digital files, refused to send out review copies and destroyed CDs with rough cuts of songs by nuking them in a microwave. When the band's Meteora opened at number one this week with huge sales, Warners execs pointed to the drastic antipiracy measures as a big reason.

Indeed, Radiohead is known for shrouding its albums in secrecy. Instead of sending out traditional CD review copies for 1997's OK Computer, the band sent out a specially jiggered Walkman that couldn't be opened. (Of course, tracks from that album still found their way online before the official release.)

Still, some music biz analysts point to the success of the mega-selling The Eminem Show and 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin', not to mention the high chart debuts and million-plus sales of Radiohead's last two studio albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, as evidence that advanced copies actually boost album sales.

Meanwhile, the band has donated the track "Meeting People in the Aisle," to would-be British filmmakers and asked them to submit short films or animations as part of an initiative by MTV UK to aid various mental-health orgainizations.

The Oxford natives, who first shot to fame in the early '90s with their alternative radio hit "Creep," have lined up a series of gigs in the U.K. and Ireland in May followed by stops at several major European festivals. The band is also planning a North American trek sometime in late summer or early fall.

Here's a full track listing for Hail to the Thief:

2 +2=5 Sit Down. Stand Up Sail to the Moon Backdrifts Go to Sleep Where I End and You Begin We Suck Young Blood The Gloaming There There I Will A Punch-Up at a Wedding Myzamatosis Scatterbrain A Wolf at the Door