Originally
published on isnotwas.com
Judging solely by their single
“Creep” a few years back, folks could be forgiven
for suspecting that Radiohead might evolve into a band somewhat
like, oh, the Flaming Lips. You know: creative, intelligent, experimental,
but . . . well, funny. Because “Creep” was a joke,
wasn’t it? You know, self-abasement, self-pity, self-flagellation
from a rock star! Ha-hah. I get it. I get jokes. Turns out, the
joke was on us. Thom Yorke was apparently serious, and on three
subsequent albums now, Radiohead have carved out a musical literature
of angst and alienation, prompting that most literate of movie
stars Brad Pitt to declare them “the Kafka and the Beckett
of our generation.”
Well, Radiohead fans have waited three years
for Kid A to materialize, and what a wondrous monster they’ve
awaited. On their new album, Radiohead confound expectations and
wander further into electronic territory. If OK Computer portrayed
man standing before technology quivering like a stunned deer,
Kid A allows the same deer to step tentatively towards the hand
of technology, hoping to nibble on its fingers.
The mountains on the cover of Kid A look
more like icebergs as viciously sharp as they are. (Warning: I’m
about to stretch the hell out of a metaphor now.) How appropriate.
I mean, this has gotta be the biggest, iciest rock band in the
world. Nine-tenths of them hidden from public view. No singles
off this album. No videos—just short little “blips.”
No elaborate world tour. Few interviews. They’re like the
tenth of the iceberg piercing the ocean’s surface. And Yorke
and Co prefer it that way. Just to find the album credits you
hafta unfurl the bloody CD sleeve until you find them hidden,
buried deep at the end in small print. (And if you forage around
enough, you’ll find another secret insert, too.) As a band,
they’re practically impenetrable.
Kid A awakens with some sorta electro-vibe
piano thang, “Everything in Its Right Place.” Some
trance-like samples burble to the forefront at first followed
by more fragments of Yorke’s voice chopped up and shot into
the stream intermittently until the actual Yorke interrupts this
electronic babble with his trademarked keening. “Everything
in its right place,” he sings before launching into a mantra:
“Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon.”
“Kid A,” the song, is chockfull
of squawky goodness. All distorted vocals and beats (major headphone
material), it stutters and crawls along and evolves into something
akin to a Luciferian lullaby. It even ends with what sounds like
a squealing infant, but is probably Yorke’s own digitalized
wail.
Wait. Haven’t I seen Radiohead with
guitars? Two or three of them, at least. On stage. Strumming away.
On a good part of this album, they’ve ditched them and turned
into Aphex Twin or something. Hell, some of this doesn’t
even have drums. And when the drums do appear—on “Kid
A,” for example—they can’t seem to make up their
mind what beat they’re keeping. Very disorienting.
But three tracks in—is that guitar
I hear? Yessir, youbetcha. The old Radiohead haven’t disappeared
altogether then. “National Anthem” may be a raucous,
riotous (though nonetheless melodious) mess, but it does have
a beat and guitars. And eventually vocals, too. And a roomful
of horns? Yes. This is one national anthem that’s practically
farted out. It’s a jazz-laced anthem, at that—and
I mean the real deal, hard-core John Coltrane, Miles Davis cacophonous
jazz, not your namby-pamby Kenny G drivel. Jazz pokes up elsewhere,
too. On the decidedly pessimistic “Optimistic,” for
example: it’s probably the album’s most radio-friendly
single, but it still peters out with a noodly coda.
Track four: “How to Disappear Completely.”
Named after an American book: How to Disappear Completely and
Never Be Found. A real book aimed, no doubt, at middle-aged loser
Dads, the ones who want to fake their deaths, dump the wife and
kids, and never look back. Now, it’s a Radiohead song, allegedly
a diary entry describing the freaked-out feeling Yorke got performing
onstage before a record-number of fans on the OK Computer tour.
“I’m not here,” he moans. ”This isn’t
happening.” Gorgeous. Splendiferous even. This entry slips
right into the Radiohead vein we’re accustomed to: sweet
songs of isolation and despair. Some folks have made a little
noise about the lyrics on this song and, well, practically every
song on Kid A being kinda, shall we say, minimalistic. They complain
that the songs are lacking somewhat in lyrical density. But Yorke
is often just using his voice as an instrument on these tracks.
You might make the same association I did with Karl Hyde of Underworld.
Yorke’s lyrics have that same stream-of-consciousness bent
to them. The words themselves are often incidental.
Next, “Treefingers” provides
a breather from this investigation into performance anxiety. It’s
a profoundly ambient piece, one of the places on the disc where
the souls of Brian Eno and Aphex Twin flutter by. It’s music
for behemoth cargo ships pulling slowly out to sea from deep dark-watered
harbors.
Track seven: “In Limbo” begins
with some faint keyboards that made me fear Yorke was about to
launch into “The Logical Song” or some similar Supertrampish
concoction. He doesn’t. Instead, he drifts through fluttery
guitars and sings distortedly about losing his way. It’s
a short, soaring track.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kid A has a suspiciously
trip-hop (whatever that means these days) patina to it in places—evidence,
no doubt, of Yorke’s recent dalliances with the likes of
Massive Attack and UNKLE. Guitarist Ed O’Brien told Muzik
magazine the band’s taking on a more collective approach
to developing their sounds, much like the boys from Bristol. He
went far as to admit, “We always wanted to be Massive Attack,
in a way. We thought they were the coolest ban don the planet.
Well, Kid A clearly bears the results. Take “Idioteque,”
for example. It’s particularly beat heavy and . . . giddy:
Yorke sounds like he’s stumbling along gloriously punch
drunk. He starts out strong enough—advance, advance—until
the chorus, and then he’s all over the place in a wilting
falsetto. And he changes his mind here, too: “This is really
happening,” he decides.
It most certainly is. Though it may not
be happening quite the way some fans expected it to. In fact,
The Village Voice’s Douglas Wolk declared Kid A “the
biggest, warmest recorded go-fuck-yourself [to the fans] in recent
memory.” Well, for those who are mystified by the sounds
on Radiohead’s latest, I submit that there is a progression
here: OK Computer is to The Bends as Kid A is to OK Computer,
if you see what I mean. Quivery, spacious, tender, alive with
harsh, unyielding light—with these songs, Radiohead continue
their singular fever dream into the 21st century.
Robert Stribley
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