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Radiohead
tourdates
official website
artist information
Track List:
1. Everything In Its Right Place
2. Kid A
3. The National Anthem
4. How To Disappear Completely
5. Treefingers
6. Optimistic
7. In Limbo
8. Idioteque
9. Morning Bell
10. Motion Picture Soundtrack
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Radiohead - Kid A
(Capitol)
This is the album everyone's been desperate to hear. Three years later, Radiohead has finally followed up the prog-gothic majesty of OK Computer, possibly the planet's most acclaimed and influential record of recent times, with the new long-player Kid A. The burden of expectation that's been weighing on this record would undoubtedly have broken most bands. But then, Radiohead isn't like most bands. That much is clear from listening to Kid A, a magnificent musical statement from start to finish.
It's also a radical departure from the group's last radical departure, OK Computer. Supposedly a cradle-to-grave musical suite dedicated to the first human clone, the new record is beautiful and life-affirming, but not in the sense of rock anthems like "Creep" or stadium-sized folk such as "Fake Plastic Trees." Indeed, if the rumors are true, the conventional rock record should follow next Spring. No, this one's an electronic album, light on guitars, heavy on the Aphex Twin, with the studio functioning as the band's sixth member. The songs here are more in keeping with the eerie "Fitter Happier" from the previous disc, or the output of obscure musical treasures like Boards of Canada. Commercial suicide? Maybe, but commerce is the last thing on this quintet's mind.
Kid A opens with "Everything in Its Right Place," a twitchy, glitchy, electronic mantra featuring Thom Yorke's heavily-treated vocals intoning such bizarre lines as "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon." If that's not unsettling enough, the title track follows, and features what can only be described as a Speak And Spell vocal over a nursery rhyme keyboard pattern. The voice is Yorke's, but again in electronic disguise, rather like Neil Young in the vocoder-heavy Trans. Like Young, Yorke seems to be approximating child speech. The first glimmer of the old Radiohead comes on the opening bass riff of "The National Anthem"; however, the riff builds monotonously (in Krautrock style) before collapsing into a free-jazz riot worthy of Ornette Coleman. The disembodied acoustic ballad "How To Disappear Completely" is next, all spaced guitars and desolate dream-of-consciousness lyrics, followed by a decidedly Eno/Bowie-esque instrumental called "Treefingers."
From there, things take a slightly more straightforward path with the savage, raging guitars of "Optimistic," and jazzy tunes "In Limbo" and "Morning Bell." Fractured drum loops, off-kilter vocals, and robotic samples are still present—especially on "Idioteque"—reminiscent of Public Image Limited and New Order. The album closes with the harmonious strains of "Motion Picture Soundtrack," a floating elegy in which Yorke closes with "I think you're crazy, maybe" over harps and choir voices. It's all light years away from conventional rock, but utterly thrilling, bewitching stuff nonetheless.
Despite sticking to its trademark melancholia, Radiohead's increasingly interior landscape still manages to have a luminous, uplifting quality. Whether the demands of its record company will force the band back onto the straight and narrow remains to be seen, but on the strength of Kid A, one would hope not. This disc deserves album of the year.
by Andrew Montgomery
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