Seems like Bob Ross painted his landscape on top of a 3rd grader's perspective painting...
As I stated in my recent review of Radiohead's OK Computer, that album was one of only two Radiohead albums to have been labelled /mu/core. Without further ado, let's dive into the other - Kid A.
With the rightful success of OK Computer, Radiohead was made world famous. They would end up embarking on a tour lasting from mid-1997 to late-1998 in support of the album. As the tour wore on, the band became more and more burnt out from all of the constant performances, interviews, and promotional events the band was expected to attend. Thom Yorke especially felt these pressures, suffering a mental breakdown during the tour. What's worse, he was suffering from a severe case of writer's block, leading to a style of writing more fragmented than his previous works. Tensions in the band were at an all-time high, with the band on the verge of breaking up. These tensions were the backdrop for the recording sessions that would eventually produce Kid A and its followup Amnesiac. After OK Computer, the band wanted to go in a new direction, but they all had different ideas as to what that would be. Eventually, they settled on a more electronic sound and slowly went to work recording throughout 1999 into early 2000. When they had finally finished, they had made about 30 new songs, 20 of which were saved for later albums so as to avoid a double album. The marketing for the album was rather unorthodox. No singles were released in promotion of Kid A, and most advertising was done on the still-primitive Internet. However, when it was released in October of 2000, it was a smash hit worldwide, giving Radiohead their first #1 debut on the American charts. Although fans and critics were initially confused about Radiohead's shift in direction, they soon came to regard it as a brilliant masterwork just like their past two albums, if not even more so. By the end of the decade, several publications had ranked Kid A as either the best album of the 00's or within the top three and ranked it higher than OK Computer in Greatest Albums of All Time lists. But could it really surpass something as brilliant as OK Computer?
A series of creepy online ads for Kid A, better known as "blips". Not only did Kid A sell well as a result, but so did the undergarment industry.
I'll admit, when I first learned about Kid A, I was a bit skeptical. See, up until last year, I was one of those kids who felt he was "born in duh rong generashun!!1! XD"; Anything that wasn't made with a guitar, I immediately viewed with suspicion. I felt that electronic music was tearing the music industry apart by allowing talentless hacks to create whatever they wanted to with the click of a button. Indeed, that may apply to some top 40 artists today. However, I was naive to think that all electronic music was made by lazy musicians who want a quick buck. I went into Kid A with mixed feelings. I loved Radiohead's previous output, sure, but how would they sound with electronic instruments? Could they still make an album as good as OK Computer without layers of ethereal guitar?
Right from the first five notes, it is clear that something has changed. The opening track, "Everything in Its Right Place" opens with a repeating, ascending scale from an electric piano played in 10/4 soon accompanied by Thom Yorke's vocals chopped up, looped, and reversed. Soon, a pulsating kick drum beat joins in as Yorke sings about how yesterday he woke up sucking a lemon. As the track fades into the distance, we are greeted with the sound of a UFO entering Earth's atmosphere and a melody played on what sounds like a music box on "Kid A". Thom Yorke's vocals come through as though he were a robot as he sings about heads on sticks and ventriloquists whilst a pulsating groove is hammered out by a drum machine. This is definitely not the same band who made "Pop Is Dead".
Fun fact: Although Thom Yorke was in the coffin for the puposes of the music video, he really was dead on the inside.
But just as you start to get into the relaxing grooves of the first two songs, an electronic noise abruptly disrupts your thought process and soon after, a simple, distorted bassline and an actual drumbeat enters (yes, that's right, Radiohead still play instruments) for "The National Anthem". Them Yorke sings about how "everyone around here" is "so near" and "filled with fear", while the main bass theme is constantly built upon by an Ondes Martinot and an improvising brass section. Eventually, this organized chaos comes to an end with the brass section apparently entering a traffic jam while electronic noise flies off into space before sputtering out. The following track, "How to Disappear Copletely", while it looks to start up this chaos once more, soon gives in to the soft chords of an acoustic guitar (!!!). As Thom Yorke sings about how he is invisible to the world around him, the song constantly builds into a beautiful symphonic piece combining acoustic with electronic (with a string arrangement courtesy once more of Johnny Greenwood). After the song ends, we are met with a wall of processed guitar sounds known as "Treefingers", which, by itself, would be entirely pointless, but in the context of the album, it helps to transition us from the first half of the album to the second. The serene mood of this track is then disrupted by a primitive drumbeats accompanied by piercing electric guitar chords that introduce the track "Optimistic", the most rock-oriented track on the entire album. Although Thom Yorke sings that "you can try the best you can; the best you can is good enough", the chord progression of the song gives it a depressing atmosphere. At the end, the song devolves into a jam session between the band, accompanied by an electric piano, before cutting right into the hauntingly ethereal "In Limbo". Here, in front of a looping guitar riff, Yorke tells the listerners that they're "living in a fantasy" and how he's "lost at sea". The song then erodes into a mesh of electronic noise that flies off into the next song.
And, oh boy, what a song it is. "Idioteque", a song made up of an alternating electronic drum beat, a sampled 4-chord progression, and a variety of electronic noises, is one of the more simple tracks on the album, yet probably one of the more frantic and tight. Here, Thom Yorke launches into a diatribe on modern life, singing of warmongering ("Who's in a bunker, who's in a bunker"), entitlement ("Here, I'm allowed everything all of the time"), climate change ("Ice age coming, ice age coming"), and propaganda ("We're not scaremongering, this is really happening") in a more simplistic and direct way than expressed on any song in OK Computer. The result is perhaps one of the best tracks in Radiohead's career. However, all good things are bound to end at one point or another, and the electronic noise that ends the song soon segues into the comparatively calmer "Morning Bell", a song the band thought was so good, it warranted a second version (which was later released on Amnesiac). A 5/4 song driven by drum machine and electric piano, the lyrics are comparatively more calm than the previous track, with the exception of when Yorke requests his listeners to "cut the kids in half". As the song ends, the instruments cut away until only the bass line is left. Finally, the album reaches its closer track, "Motion Picture Soundtrack", which, as you may guess, was not included in a movie). It is perhaps the most raw track on the entire album, as you can actually hear the click of the pedals Thom Yorke is using on the organ. About midway through the song, the song fully blooms, introducing brilliant sampled harp melodies. All the while, Yorke sings heartbreaking lyrics about a love of his who was corrupted and comments that he will see her "in the next life". With that, the album concludes with the sound of harp melodies flittering aw-oh wait! There's a hidden track on this album, which is really a collection of sampled and electronic noises, one final summary of the direction Radiohead was heading.
When the album concluded, I was unsure of what to say. There were songs I felt were brilliant the first go-around, "The National Anthem", "How to Disappear Completely", and "Optimistic" being some of them while others, I didn't really get. However, upon repeated listens, it slowly sunk in, and it all came to me: the complexity, the layers of electronic notes building on the atmosphere, the simplicity and power of the lyrics, and the utter beauty. If OK Computer was a sonic adventure, this is a Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Seriously, from the smooth textures of synth, to the crisp drum beats, to the loud and wild brass, to the weird processed guitar chords that make up "Treefingers", there are tons of different sounds that grace your ears, each one unique in its own right. The music is also brilliantly composed, being able to express feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and hopelessness all from a few simple notes. Indeed, minimalism is the name of the game here, and it works brilliantly for both the music and the lyrics. The lyrics are, due to Thom Yorke's writer's block, rather fragmented and simple. However, in many ways, less is more. Once more, like OK Computer, a recurring theme of the album's lyrics is the failures of modern society. However, the use of repetition in these lyrics (mainly to fill up space, I figure) further reinforces the points made in each of these songs. Furthermore, their simple wording opens up the possibility for lyricists to take each song's meaning a different way. You see this, Jeff Mangum? This is how powerful lyrics are written. These simple lyrics combined with the more robotic, computerized elements of the album make the band's message of alienation and fear in a modern, technological society all the more potent.
The instrumentation of this album is subdued, and rightfully so. This time, there are no blistering solos courtesy of Johnny Greenwood. There are, in fact, few songs where acoustic or electric instruments take the stage. For the most part, it is all boiled down to electronics, synths, sequencers, and drum machines. Despite this, Radiohead still know how when to be reserved, when to go all out, when to be tight, when to be loose, and more with their music. With this album, I realized something important: It is not about how well you play an instrument, it is how well you write music. Sure, learning to play the guitar takes a whole hell of a lot more work than using programs like Fruity Loops or whatnot, but in the end, unless you can write music, you can't really do much with it outside of bad improvizations and playing simple chords. That is what makes the good electronic musicians (or really, any good musician) so good - they have an ear for music, and they know which notes go with which in a sequence and which ones don't. Yes, anyone can use a program like Fruity Loops, but it takes someone who knows music to create anything actually good with it, and brother, let me tell you, Radiohead know music. Using their several years of musical experience, they were able to craft their masterstroke out of instruments considered by many kids nowadays as cheap.
As a result of all of these factors, I believe Kid A is an even better album than OK Computer, and that statement is not made lightly. It is even more of a sonic masterwork than the previous album, combining layers of electronic synthesizers, traditional rock instruments, brass instruments, and samples to create something that is truly astounding. The lyrics, due to their minimalism, are able to better capture the hopelessness of the modern world and its future. Finally, the album shows how truly talented Radiohead are, being able to compose these fantastic pieces using instruments that many kids today consider inferior to electric and acoustic instruments. Truly, it is one of the most innovative albums of the past 20 years for its successful combination of rock and electronic music. In fact, its innovative sound set the bar so high in rock music that Radiohead could no longer reach it. Their following album, Amnesiac, which was made up mostly of the leftover tracks from the Kid A sessions was (for the most part) just that - a bunch of leftovers from Kid A. They tried once more in 2003 with Hail to the Thief, another album attacking modern society, but at this point, it was clear that this theme had run its course and sounded more forced than ever. As a result, Radiohead have since stopped fucking around with concept albums and have returned to more simple themes, like love, on their most recent albums, the magnificent In Rainbows and the misunderstood King of Limbs. It's a damn shame too, to be perfectly honest; with many of the themes of OK Computer and Kid A still present and, in fact, more relevant today, the world needs another OK Computer or Kid A. Hopefully, Radiohead can still provide, because Muse sure as hell can't.