Radiohead
Kid A
[Capitol]
Rating: 10.0
I had never even seen a shooting star before. 25 years of rotations, passes
through comets' paths, and travel, and to my memory I had never witnessed
burning debris scratch across the night sky. Radiohead were hunched over
their instruments. Thom Yorke slowly beat on a grand piano, singing, eyes
closed, into his microphone like he was trying to kiss around a big nose.
Colin Greenwood tapped patiently on a double bass, waiting for his cue.
White pearls of arena light swam over their faces. A lazy disco light
spilled artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift
stage. The metal skeleton of the stage ate one end of Florence's Piazza
Santa Croce, on the steps of the Santa Croce Cathedral. Michelangelo's bones
and cobblestone laid beneath. I stared entranced, soaking in Radiohead's new
material, chiseling each sound into the best functioning parts of my brain
which would be the only sound system for the material for months.
The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward
into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a
wizard's cap. The staccato piano chords ascended repeatedly. "Black eyed
angels swam at me," Yorke sang like his dying words. "There was nothing to
fear, nothing to hide." The trained critical part of me marked the similarity
to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe.
The Italians surrounding me held their breath in communion (save for the
drunken few shouting "Criep!"). Suddenly, a rise of whistles and orgasmic
cries swept unfittingly through the crowd. The song, "Egyptian Song," was
certainly momentous, but wasn't the response more apt for, well, "Creep?"
I looked up. I thought it was fireworks. A teardrop of fire shot from space
and disappeared behind the church where the syrupy River Arno crawled.
Radiohead had the heavens on their side.
For further testament, Chip Chanko and I both suffered auto-debilitating
accidents in the same week, in different parts of the country, while
blasting "Airbag" in our respective Japanese imports. For months, I feared
playing the song about car crashes in my car, just as I'd feared passing 18-
wheelers after nearly being crushed by one in 1990. With good reason, I
suspect Radiohead to possess incomprehensible powers. The evidence is only
compounded with Kid A-- the rubber match in the band's legacy-- an
album which completely obliterates how albums, and Radiohead themselves,
will be considered.
Even the heralded OK Computer has been nudged down one spot in Valhalla.
Kid A makes rock and roll childish. Considerations on its merits as
"rock" (i.e. its radio fodder potential, its guitar riffs, and its hooks) are
pointless. Comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to
blue construction paper. And not because it's jazz or fusion or ambient or
electronic. Classifications don't come to mind once deep inside this expansive,
hypnotic world. Ransom, the philologist hero of C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent
Planet who is kidnapped and taken to another planet, initially finds his
scholarship useless in his new surroundings, and just tries to survive the
beautiful new world.
This is an emotional, psychological experience. Kid A sounds like a
clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction. It's the sound of a band, and
its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently
rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, Radiohead hated being Radiohead,
but ended up with the most ideal, natural Radiohead record yet.
"Everything in Its Right Place" opens like Close Encounters spaceships
communicating with pipe organs. As your ears decide whether the tones are
coming or going, Thom Yorke's Cuisinarted voice struggles for its tongue.
"Everything," Yorke belts in uplifting sighs. The first-person mantra of
"There are two colors in my head" is repeated until the line between Yorke's
mind and the listener's mind is erased.
Skittering toy boxes open the album's title song, which, like the track "Idioteque,"
shows a heavy Warp Records influence. The vocoder lullaby lulls you deceivingly
before the riotous "National Anthem." Mean, fuzzy bass shapes the spine as unnerving
theremin choirs limn. Brash brass bursts from above like Terry Gilliam's animated
foot. The horns swarm as Yorke screams, begs, "Turn it off!" It's the album's shrill
peak, but just one of the incessant goosebumps raisers.
After the rockets exhaust, Radiohead float in their lone orbit. "How to Disappear
Completely" boils down "Let Down" and "Karma Police" to their spectral essence.
The string-laden ballad comes closest to bridging Yorke's lyrical sentiment to the
instrumental effect. "I float down the Liffey/ I'm not here/ This isn't happening,"
he sings in his trademark falsetto. The strings melt and weep as the album shifts
into its underwater mode. "Treefingers," an ambient soundscape similar in sound and
intent to Side B of Bowie and Eno's Low, calms after the record's emotionally
strenuous first half.
The primal, brooding guitar attack of "Optimistic" stomps like mating Tyrannosaurs.
The lyrics seemingly taunt, "Try the best you can/ Try the best you can," before
revealing the more resigned sentiment, "The best you can is good enough." For an
album reportedly "lacking" in traditional Radiohead moments, this is the best
summation of their former strengths. The track erodes into a light jam before
morphing into "In Limbo." "I'm lost at sea," Yorke cries over clean, uneasy arpeggios.
The ending flares with tractor beams as Yorke is vacuumed into nothingness. The
aforementioned "Idioteque" clicks and thuds like Aphex Twin and Bjork's
Homogenic, revealing brilliant new frontiers for the "band." For all the
noise to this point, it's uncertain entirely who or what has created the music.
There are rarely traditional arrangements in the ambiguous origin. This is part of
the unique thrill of experiencing Kid A.
Pulsing organs and a stuttering snare delicately propel "Morning Bell." Yorke's
breath can be heard frosting over the rainy, gray jam. Words accumulate and stick
in his mouth like eye crust. "Walking walking walking walking," he mumbles while
Jonny Greenwood squirts whale-chant feedback from his guitar. The closing "Motion
Picture Soundtrack" brings to mind The White Album, as it somehow combines
the sentiment of Lennon's LP1 closer-- the ode to his dead mother, "Julia"-- with
Ringo and Paul's maudlin, yet sincere LP2 finale, "Goodnight." Pump organ and harp
flutter as Yorke condones with affection, "I think you're crazy." To further
emphasize your feeling at that moment and the album's overall theme, Yorke bows
out with "I will see you in the next life." If you're not already there with him.
The experience and emotions tied to listening to Kid A are like witnessing
the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see
her play in the afterlife on Imax. It's an album of sparking paradox. It's cacophonous
yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral,
textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes. It will
cleanse your brain of those little crustaceans of worries and inferior albums clinging
inside the fold of your gray matter. The harrowing sounds hit from unseen angles and
emanate with inhuman genesis. When the headphones peel off, and it occurs that six
men (Nigel Godrich included) created this, it's clear that Radiohead must be the
greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who. Breathing people made this
record! And you can't wait to dive back in and try to prove that wrong over and over.
-Brent DiCrescenzo