If Kid A had come unlabelled in an inconspicuous brown paper
parcel, arriving at a verdict would have been relatively simple
- that it is an intriguing, imaginative and exploratory album which
sounds a lot like Radiohead in places. It's resolutely experimental
with the odd failure that comes hand in hand with that approach;
a bold if elliptical statement that steers away from the mainstream
but is an accessible slice of avant pop nonetheless. It took a lot
of personal debriefing to come up with the above as the record carries
more baggage than a mule train. Playing similar mind games, John
Peel has been giving the album airplay claiming - by way of justifying
a deviation from his usual playlist criteria - that if he had received
the same music on a demo by an unknown group, he would have been
very interested anyway.
One thing that gets in the way of objective critical judgement
is that concurrent with their massive popularity, the group have
often been lauded as 'rock saviours'. Young, white, middle class
record buyers have yearned for these saviour figures since the birth
of Indie in the late 70s: a group or singer with credibility who
can give them a rock version of an out-of-body experience, to get
them out of themselves (and therefore out of their everyday situation)
and up and away, albeit briefly. This perennial, deep-rooted, almost
archetypal need creates a vacuum that those at the head of the queue
for the next big thing are likely to balloon up into. The roll call
has included groups like Echo And The Bunnymen, U2, The Smiths,
The Stone Roses, The Verve, even Simple Minds circa New Gold
Dream. They have all produced big, yearning music and also been
transcendental after a fashion. And some, like Radiohead, have worn
their wounded sensitivity like a badge; but that's OK as it's perfectly
in character for the saviour to be a sufferer as well.
To read Thom Yorke whinging about the rigours of stardom, one is
tempted to advise him, if he were willing to listen, to shut the
fuck up and do something useful. There are few things more tedious
than having to listen to rock stars moaning about fame. But he has
a point. They are rock product and the conveyor belt they were riding
on wasn't going to stop for them, so they had to consciously hop
off.
U2 are now tipped, according to Q, to "save rock" in a second coming.
It seems they've left behind the archness that punctuated their
97 album, Pop (Gosh, how ironic!), rolled up their sleeves
and got back into chest-beating rock'n'roll mode. In 2000, rock
music is in as healthy a state as it's ever been and certainly doesn't
need saving, except, perhaps, from U2. Radiohead realised that a
life of U2-style stadium bluster and big bucks lay ahead of them
for the taking if they wanted. Maybe it still does, as they can
arguably do it better than anyone else. But not only are they reluctant
to acknowledge the deification bestowed upon them, they have, with
Kid A, torn up the plans that got them into that position.
But have they gone against expectations for the sake of sheer perversity
or is this new tack a successful development?
Kid A is no OK Computer Part 2 and the results vindicate
their big rethink. And good on them for doing so - it would have
been far easier to acquiesce to the pressure, but there is proof
here of an active intelligence at work. Some eye-witness reports
of their recent London shows have indicated that Yorke seems chary
about communicating with his audience, even appearing contemptuous
of the people who have put him in the position he now feels he has
to rail against. But this album is far from a big "fuck you" to
the fans. From the anti-star publicity shots that accompany the
album's release to the booklet of non sequiturs hidden in the jewel
case underneath the CD itself, Yorke's chosen mode of expression
- and at times this is close to a solo album - eschews the public
display of running his angst up the flagpole. He has retreated into
a sort of cryptic introspection, at least that seems the case. It's
difficult - intentionally, no doubt - to decipher his lyrics. After
the full throttle vocals on The Bends, on OK Computer
he adopted a melismatic way of singing that slurred the lyrics,
and complemented the shady unease of the words. But here he is retreating
further, intoning what sounds like cut-up text and there is no help
available from a lyric booklet. His voice is treated and shrouded
by the mix which reduces his more discernible lyrics to gnomic utterances.
The "I'm not here" refrain on the sublime, spartan "How To Disappear
Completely", carries an obvious sub text, evoking the image of the
child who is convinced that if he clenches his fists, closes his
eyes and concentrates hard enough he can make himself invisible.
Kid A is diffracted in content and reads like a sonic scrapbook.
Reports that Radiohead had obsessions with early 90s Warp material
sketched a picture of a group who had run out of the creative drive
that had spurred them on since their formation and were anxiously
trying to reinvent themselves - rather like U2 trying to playing
catch-up with their peers around the time of Achtung Baby.
But this is belied by the opener, "Everything In Its Right Place".
A gorgeous vocal melody hovers over chopped up voices, a synth pulse
and electric piano in an exquisite cameo. Yorke's proclamation that
yesterday he "woke up sucking a lemon", hints at self-deprecating
humour, but then again there is no precedent for such frivolity
in the group's music. If there is a Warp factor here then at a push
the song shares a kinship in feel and instrumentation with Seefeel.
The title track is the only weak track on the album. A semi-formed
jotting, it consists of a meandering treated voice over more e-piano
and a pattering drum program. It takes the computer voice from OK
Computer's "Fitter Happier", this time with Thom himself playing
the paranoid android and sounding self-important, and unwittingly
comical.
"The National Anthem" starts of in familiar Radiohead territory
with a syncopated bass and drums lope, and ghostly electronics swirling
away in the background in a sort of "Tomorrow Never Knows" kind
of way. At least it sounds like electronics, but it was recently
revealed that under the new experimental regime, Jonny Greenwood
has largely forsaken his guitar for keyboards and features here
on the Ondes Martenot, an electronic keyboard instrument augmented
by a slide on a metal ribbon. It predated the synthesiser by a number
of decades and was pioneered by early twentieth century composers
like Olivier Messaien and Edgard Varese A thread of vocal melody
is soon revealed as a false dawn as a troupe of caterwauling jazz
free-blowers, including a particularly meaty baritone sax, muscle
in on the action. It's driven like a wedge through the album and
in common with this type of rock-based fusion, the horns sound like
they have been grafted onto the rhythm track, with little engagement
between the two parties.
"How To Disappear Completely" is the sound of a group etherising
before your ears then reappearing swathed in strings and a sweeping,
minimal guitar refrain. The song features Yorke's most gorgeous
soaring vocals, and is only tenuously tethered to the earth by Phil
Selway's mixed down drums before drifting out of sight on massed
string glissandi. Their desire for disappearance is granted on "Treefingers",
a beautiful slice of chamber ambience that wouldn't have been out
of place on Brian Eno's Music For Films.
So far so interesting. This is one of the most eagerly anticipated
albums of recent years, but produced by a lesser group, in commercial
terms at least, it might have sunk like a stone. It's interesting
to read media reactions to an artist or group of this size or reputation
on the rare occasions they do something so uncharacteristic - Scott
Walker's Tilt, for example - as pundits are then obliged
to wrestle with and make sense of music they wouldn't normally allow
in the house. That said, reactions have been largely positive with
some critics going for it wholesale, even landing on the side of
the more experimental stuff. But reading between the lines many
are hedging their bets, making sure they're not caught out, to be
seen uncool if it takes off massively. There's also a reluctance
to slaughter a sacred cash cow - Radiohead on your magazine's cover
is guaranteed to sell copies and in times of dropping circulation,
that's important.
In these cases approval has been cautiously positive, with a subtext
that bemoans the lack of songs and a hope they go back to a more
familiar style and bash out some big tunes (even though there is
melody aplenty within the supposedly difficult stuff here). Melody
Maker took the "If you don't understand something, smash it" stance,
putting the boot in and rekindling some of the derision the group
had to endure in their early days. Even the hoary old topic of Yorke's
wonky eye is opened up in a review that shows just how vituperative
people can be when their saviours apparently turn their backs and
leaving them feeling there is something going on that they can't
comprehend. But as Captain Beefheart advised with regard to the
far more daunting structures of Lick My Decals Off, Baby;
put it on, clean up the house and let it come to you. And it will.
Structurally there are parallels to be drawn with David Bowie's
Low. Personal memories re-emerge of the soul boys at school
who had been totally taken by its predecessors, Young Americans
and Station to Station, enjoying the grotesque, emotionally-numbed
disco mutations on side one as at least these sounded a bit like
the stuff they were used to. Then they laughed aloud at the instrumentals
on the second side, pronouncing them "crap". Consciously or not,
Radiohead have reversed that programming, kicking off the album
with a number of instrumental ideas and song fragments in a move
they must have known would alienate many, before revealing a cluster
of developed songs half way through. An interesting idea - and the
group themselves had arguments about the running order - but a more
integrated approach would have given Kid A greater coherence
Yorke's wish to both disappear and chronicle the process also mirrors
Bowie, who in his mid-70s coke-phase almost did disappear, artistically
and physically. And although he hadn't got much to say circa Low,
he had a desire to say *something* - although it was couched in
a delivery so full of blanked-out ennui that many listeners found
way too cold. And when Kid A's 'real' songs appear they have
a vagueness about them, but are the equal of anything the group
has attempted before. "Optimistic" is the nearest they come the
album's predecessor, with tom-toms and bass laying out the ground
pattern and Jonny Greenwood's guitar reasserting its presence, before
unfurling into a sublime chorus with the drums opening up. Yorke
throws in the line "big fish eat for everyone", possibly echoing
the Brueghel engraving, "Big Fish Eat Little Fish", which, based
on a Netherlandish proverb, depicts a gigantic fish being hacked
open on land and scores of smaller fish spilling out. It might also
just be a neat line that means nothing in particular.
The stunning "In Limbo" follows, with baroque guitar patterns in
three time cutting obliquely across the syncopated 4/4 rhythm for
the duration giving a supple, constantly shifting perspective. In
structure, it is bizarrely reminiscent of Pentangle, of all things,
and is garnished with a delicious vocal melody.
Riding out on a double-speed hip-hop groove straight out of the
Autechre text book, "Idioteque" is a guitarless creation on which
Yorke is heard claiming, rather unconvincingly, "I laugh until my
head comes off". Whatever, he soon comes up with another succulent
chorus backed by poignant autumnal keyboard counterpoint and is
positive and effusive enough to start yelling "this is really happening",
and although one doesn't know what that is exactly, it's hard to
disagree. That positivism is carried on through "Morning Bell",
another bass drums and keyboards excursion with Greenwood's guitar
letting in a crack of light into the choruses after the monotonous
verses, then picking atonally and sliding up the neck at the close.
The disarming "Motion Picture Soundtrack" signs off. First in is
a creaky pump organ, or perhaps harmonium, which acts as a launching
pad for a glorious amalgam of choir and harp glissandi that is pitched
somewhere between a melancholic sigh of almost cosmic beauty and
"Somewhere Over The Rainbow". Radiohead have embarked on a voyage
that is for the moment heading further into inner space, an area
that they appear to be finding far larger and less fathomable than
they could have realised. And it proves not only that the songs
are there when they want to write them, but how good they are in
being able to withstand these treatments.
This could be a stop gap to let them get the weird shit out of
their system before making another album of the songs they have
been playing live recently. Let's hope it's more than that. And
forget about Prog Rock, a tag which has always been stuck on them
lazily and inappropriately. This melodic mix of texture, timbre,
ambience and disturbance shows if they can fully integrate all the
elements, they could come up with something truly mind-blowing.
Reading the pre-release hoo-ha prior to listening to Kid A,
it seemed likely they were perversely refusing to playing to their
strengths. But their strengths may turn out to be quite different
from the ones we used to attribute to them.