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Kid A
10/06/2000 3:11 PM, Yahoo! Music
Mac Randall
Let's give Radiohead the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that when the Oxford five began making their latest album, they didn't consciously intend to produce something that would sort out the true believers from the OK Computer bandwagon jumpers. Making that assumption is the kind thing to do, but it sure is tough once you've heard Kid A. For this is an album that dares you to listen to it once, scratch your head, and walk away. Casual listeners are not welcome here. Neither are fans of easygoing pop music. And as for rock, the rapidly fossilizing genre that some believed Radiohead had come to revivify, forget about it--the Biggest Rock Event of the Year 2000 has turned out to be the most un-rock album this band has ever released.
This is not to say that there isn't the occasional moment of accessibility. The languid "How To Disappear Completely," with its sigh of a melody and string section quivering in the background, could have fit nicely on OK Computer, while "Optimistic," a rocker of sorts, and "Idioteque," a sparse drum 'n' bassy number, both feature aching choruses--even if the latter track does sound like it's being accompanied by an aging teletype machine. Overall, though, Kid A is an album of timbres, not tunes.
But what timbres: the austere synthesizer plinks on the title track (reminiscent of early-'80s groups like Japan and the Blue Nile); the merging of apocalyptic fuzz bass with a raging horn section on "The National Anthem" (like Can hooking up with Ascension-era Coltrane); lead singer Thom Yorke's ultra-processed howls at the end of "In Limbo," which conjure up the image of a man trapped inside the body of a robot and desperate to be free; the combination of creaky pump organ, fruity sampled harps and celestial choir on the widescreen closer, "Motion Picture Soundtrack." And that's just for starters.
Stick with Kid A for a few listens, and eventually the craft and the emotion behind it become clear, and affecting. You'll hear hooks where at first you heard only gibberish. It's by no means a perfect album; Yorke has said that most of the lyrics were written on fragments of paper, put into a big top hat, and then selected at random, and they sound like it (when you can hear them over the piles of vocal effects, that is). Yet coherence is obviously not Radiohead's goal. They're trying instead to make music that has a textural depth and a messy beauty unlike anything you've heard before, and they're succeeding. Whether you're a headscratcher or a true believer, the rest is up to you.
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