Radiohead: Kid A

Kid A

Best song: Everything In Its Right Place

Worst song: no, I just can’t. but In Limbo if you make me choose

Overall grade: 7

If Sigur Ros and Kraftwerk decided to make an album together, the end product would probably sound similar to this. Only not as good, because few things are: this is not only the best Radiohead album, it is one of my top albums of all time. You don’t have to like it, but I’ll probably be more inclined to like you if you do.

I’ve noticed a very different attitude to this album between ‘serious’ music fans and more casual music fans. Either of them might like it or dislike it, but upon hearing that I think it’s the best thing Radiohead have done (yet) the serious fan shows little surprise, yet to the casual listener, this is considered to be a surprising and controversial opinion. Maybe that’s because a lot of critics rate it, but people who don’t read reviews just remember back to when it was first released and everyone was really shocked that it wasn’t OK Computer, version 2.0.

Now I heard about all this controversy before I listened to the album, so I was actually expecting to hate it, or certainly be more surprised by it than I was. However, what ended up happening was that not only did I fall completely, uncontrollably in love with Radiohead’s fourth effort, but it also made perfect sense. ‘OK Computer’ hinted at the band’s interest in electronic music, and it seemed only natural that they would take that further.

It’s not full blown electronic, though. It may be mostly made by computers and packed with even, regulated rhythms but the human, emotional touch is always present. Like ‘How to Disappear Completely’, where Thom Yorke’s wailing is absolutely heartbreaking, and there are more legato, swirling textures enveloping the whole song. (Is using an Italian word in a music review too pretentious? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it, to be honest. Might not do it again.)

You might expect an album where the first track is the best to feel top-heavy and be a letdown later, but no, the quality is top notch all the way through. The opener truly is almost faultless, slow and deliberate and intriguing to introduce the album’s themes, with those opening notes that seem to be warm and cold at the same time. Then there’s the atmospheric title track, a piece of music that defines the ‘less is more’ philosophy. And then there’s ‘The National Anthem’, heavier than the first two barely-there compositions with a  noisy horn section at the end that contrasts the note-by-note perfect construction of the rest of the album. That’s okay. Not everything has to be precise, this isn’t math rock, you know.

‘Treefingers’ is the song Radiohead always seem to have, that works really well but only as a part of the album. I can’t see anyone hearing just this song and liking it, but as part of a whole it’s excellent. Some people call it ambient, I don’t really see that – I prefer to think of it as a song that requires patience.

Another favourite of mine here is ‘Idioteque’, a Krautrock-influenced track with a whole bunch of unrelated layers looped and thrown in together, creating a really unsettling landscape. People have covered this song, which seems crazy to me. How can you cover something that has so much unique identity?

Things slow down again towards the end of the album with ‘Morning Bell’ and ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’. The first of the two is a harrowing, empty song about cutting kids in half. Well, we actually had a positive song earlier in ‘Optimistic’, so that had to balance out somewhere! About that final song, what kind of messed up film would it take to have that as a soundtrack? That’s not an insult, though, it’s a wonderful conclusion to an incredibly intense album. It’s not the conclusion – there’s actually a mini hidden track after a couple minutes’ silence, ‘Genchildren’, but I don’t listen to that one, it ruins the album’s symmetry and completeness. Maybe it should’ve been on ‘Amnesiac’.

This album almost casts a spell. Once you’ve started it, you can’t turn it off until the end; it takes you to another world – the impersonal, indifferent ice world of the cover. Then somewhere around ‘Optimistic’, you realise that that’s this world, and that’s terrifying.