Kid A

The biggest problem with KID A is that, because OK COMPUTER proved to be one of the biggest records of the 1990s, a Gen X DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, Radiohead felt they had to come up with another genre shattering record. THE BENDS still held Radiohead in a pop status, albeit a very mature sounding pop band. With OK COMPUTER, they had been pushed over the brink, where the commercialism of music, a la Britney Spears, is regarded with scorn. In a word, they became one of the major bands in rock music producing worthwhile, lasting music. They graduated to elite status, where rock critics faun over them and college intellectuals, when speaking of current bands with as little distaste as they can muster, speak of a band called Radiohead that has a very intellectually stimulating record about a computer. This process begun as early as THE BENDS, for it is on that record, and the numerous B-Sides of that project (a full album in itself), that Radiohead proved themselves far above their peers. With OK COMPUTER, they cemented their reputation as a post-modern musical force to be reckoned with.

OK COMPUTER also established Radiohead as one of the best guitar-rock bands of the 1990s. The music on OK COMPUTER is tight, muscular, densely layered, and wonderfully executed. OK COMPUTER, much like DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, presents a very English view of reality, and like its predecessor, OK COMPUTER finds the world dehumanizing and cruel. There is a wistful voice throughout OK COMPUTER, wishing to retreat into a world of isolation because everything has gone so dreadfully wrong. The entire LP announced to the world that a major, landmark album has just arrived.

So how do you follow up a record like OK COMPUTER? Floyd followed up DARK SIDE with WISH YOU WERE HERE, which is tunning in its own right. The Beatles followed up SGT. PEPPER, the ultimate high watermark in highly valuable, artistic rock music, with the vast double album THE BEATLES. (For an aside, I find THE WHITE ALBUM much more musically satisfying than SGT. PEPPER. This reviewer does not wholly agree with the general public perception of SGT. PEPPER.)

Well, the answer's simple, really. To throw out the guitars and get into electronic music. Radiohead now has a reputation that it must uphold. So KID A is the result. Where COMPUTER used music as a catharsis, an aural equivalent of Orwell's 1984, KID A was now more interesting in constructing challenging, `artistic' music, not because they have something to say, but because that is what is expected of them as an avant-garde band. And that is the real problem with KID A. OK COMPUTER never sounds forced; that record plays like a stunning document of post-modern ansgt in modern rock and roll trappings, albeit very English rock and roll trappings. KID A, on the other hand, sounds like the band is trying to be live up to a reputation set up for them by themselves and by public perception, as the premier intellectual rock band living in a technological and ideologically bankrupt world. KID A, although musically very far afield from Radiohead's previous work, is the next logical step in the career that OK COMPUTER predestined them for, because the very fact that KID A exists shows people that Radiohead has risen above mere commercialism and is into making real music, wherever their muse follows them..

All that being said, as for the music on KID A, I find it very highly rewarding. Radiohead, while trying to develop a stylish, `hip' sequel to their critical smash, did manage some genius songwriting here. Although you have to be open to electronic music to begin with, in KID A you will find that the whole album stands up as a very solid album with a lot of good songs on it. It's a very good electronic album from a rock and roll band, and a great addition to Radiohead's catalogue. It's just KID A is a self-conscious stab at trying to be `different,' where OK COMPUTER is a natural, organic statement of a world view.

P. S. One controversy sparked by Radiohead's move into electronic music is people unfamiliar with electronic music are claiming it to be pure genius while people who are very heavily into techno, etc, say Radiohead's KID A is not as musically rewarding as, say, the Aphex Twins or other major musical electronic groups. While not being familiar with electronic music, I will say KID A has a lot of great electronic music, though I wish they would have cut "Treefingers," which as far as I'm concerned is little more than a dead-weight instrumental.

But "Kid A" is entirely different, smoothed with techno groves that would make you think of Aphex Twin or Kraftwork, then covered with a sheet of Pink Floyd. But with the slow, almost sometimes quiet mood of the songs, Yorke and crew give you an entirely new message on this album--Surrender. The angst of "OK Computer" is gone forever, replaced with a sense of slow decay, not giving a damn about the world anymore.

Songs like "Everything in it's Right Place," gives you a good example, with simple electronic keyboards driving a continous note with little pause; Yorke's fractured vocals, saying "Everything...Everything...Everything..." cry out in muted sadness continuously, interupted by a record stopping and going, leaving him to sing out of tune terribly. The next song--the title track--with its simple, lonely lullabyish keys, sounds like one thinking of their childhood, yearning for a long-gone innocence when things weren't so clear

I have to agree that "Optimistic" is the most up-front and radio-friendly track on this album, since all the other songs are too sonically different and by far out of place on modern-rock radio. But in my opinion, "Kid A"'s best achievement is "How to Disappear Completely." I don't know how to decribe it, other than it's brilliant! Yorke's lonely vocals set back against an accoustic guitar and eerie keyboards can make anyone's hair stand up.

The song also fits into much of the album's artwork, where a faintly drawn scene of a post-apocolyptic office hallway shows, covered with icey cave-like stalagmites. It's the complete opposite of "OK Computer." Instead of the imagery of endless, inhuman, windowless cubicles, circled by a world where people work and live like corporate drones, we have a place where everything has come to pass. The companies are gone, the workers have disappeared, and the world that they used to inhabit is decaying. "This isn't happening," Yorke sings chillingly

Of all the descriptions of this album, it can be quickly summed up as an album that breaks the commercial barriers of pop and returns it to anti-pop. Instead of 'N Sync dancing around with plastic smiles or Limp Bizkit moshing and being angry about nothing, Radiohead is a group with purpose, bringing fans with them on a journey where neither knows where it's going.