Music Banter - View Single Post - 100 Essays on 100 Albums: A Journey Through Music and Life

Davey Moore · 08-01-2009, 02:46 PM

'Kid A' by Radiohead (2000)

Note: This is a rehashed and revised version of my Kid A review, plus some added in things. By this point I am sick of Kid A. I have been stuck for a day and a half trying to write about this damn album. This essay is part praise and part indictment.

There are a lot of different forms of depression. The one I have is a sort of numb detachment, an apathy for things. A very selfish thing. The kind where you say, f*ck it, nothing matters.

Radiohead have carved out a very unique sound, a sound which I dub 21st Century Cocaine Music. It's electronic, it's frantic, and it's incoherent, like you're speeding down a long tunnel at 2 A.M. in a black Mercedes and two people you just met at the nightclub are doing lines and screwing in the backseat. And yet, for all it's manic anxiety, the core of their sound is numb, like all of this is being broadcasted by a man in a coma, and I say that with all the love in the world. Kid A especially takes on and embraces this tone. It's an album of contradiction and duality, it's electronic yet organic, elusive and fragmented yet precise in the emotion and meanings it evokes.

'Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon. There are two colors in my head.'

That's the sort of fragmented, detached images we are given right at the start of the album. This album is lyrically populated by the sort of lines that stands on the fence between heavily symbolic and perhaps that joking Dylanesque throwaway that makes the songwriter grin as dipsh*ts like me try and dissect them and find a hidden meaning. The sorts of lines that while being interviewed the songwriter goes 'I don't know where that came from. Your guess is as good as mine.' This is a subconscious album. The purpose of it's lyrics are not to give you concrete meanings but phantom tones and images that evoke whatever feeling that happens to be associated with it. For each listener it's different and that's what makes it so special. And that's also what makes it so frustratingly elusive.

And at times, frustratingly boring. Usually multiple listens reveals more layers to an album. Surprisingly, with Kid A, more digging reveals nothing. I used to think this as their best album. I don't know anymore. At this point I'm wishing I did an 'OK Computer' essay, but then I realize that perhaps not all of my essays have to be glowing endorsements. This album can reached an unmatched brilliance at times. At other times, it seems almost irrelevant. I would call that a dichotomy, but I think in the end it is poor decisions by the band. Because there are some songs on Amnesiac, which was recorded in the same session, that are brilliant and some songs on Kid A which are subpar. Like Treefingers or Optimistic. Add in 'Pyramid Song', 'You and Whose Army', 'Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box', 'Like Spinning Plates' and replace 'Morning Bell' with Amnesiac's version of 'Morning Bell'. Add that third verse into Motion Picture soundtrack and cut out the hidden track. Listen to the demo: YouTube - Radiohead - Motion picture soundtrack rare demo

I give you, the improved Kid A, which would be three times better and be in the running for my favorite album ever. I defy you to claim it isn't improved:

1. Everything in it's Right Place
2. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box
3. Pyramid Song
4. Kid A
5. The National Anthem
6. How To Disappear Completely
7. You and Whose Army
8. I Might Be Wrong
9. Amnesiac/The Morning Bell
10. In Limbo
11. Idioteque
12. Hunting Bears
13. Like Spinning Plates
14. Motion Picture Soundtrack(with third verse added and hidden track removed, but keep the same instruments)

That looks like an improved album right there.

I love the image of the carnival. The symbolism. It's such a bittersweet and perverse sort of atmosphere, it looks flashy and great on the surface but dig deeper and you'll find a rotten underbelly populated by maggots. A carnival is confusing. A carnival is the perfect symbol for a decade of decadence, that's what the 2000s were and right now we're feeling the start of that hangover. We're in the same category as the 20s and the 80s. The last song on this album sounds like a carnival winding down. It's tragic sounding, somehow it sounds whimsical at the same time, and always, numb. It's the greatest song on the album.

I think you're crazy...maybe
I think you're crazy... maybe

How the f*ck did we get to this point? How did we get to a point where the government we thought would be our salvation is a giant beast gasping for life smashing things up trying to solve an unsolvable problem and probably just making it worse? How did we get to a point of such moral bankruptcy and excessive shallowness, where the highest rated TV shows show graphic murders, and flashy reality shows where we see broken celebrities humiliate themselves for us like those monkeys with a little hat and cymbals, and they desperately cling to the hope that they can get on top again, yet, as we watch them, we all know that isn't gonna happen...I ask you...how?

08-01-2009, 02:46 PM	#44 (permalink)
Davey Moore The Great Disappearer Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: URI Campus and Coventry, both in RI Posts: 462	'Kid A' by Radiohead (2000) Note: This is a rehashed and revised version of my Kid A review, plus some added in things. By this point I am sick of Kid A. I have been stuck for a day and a half trying to write about this damn album. This essay is part praise and part indictment. There are a lot of different forms of depression. The one I have is a sort of numb detachment, an apathy for things. A very selfish thing. The kind where you say, fck it, nothing matters. Radiohead have carved out a very unique sound, a sound which I dub 21st Century Cocaine Music. It's electronic, it's frantic, and it's incoherent, like you're speeding down a long tunnel at 2 A.M. in a black Mercedes and two people you just met at the nightclub are doing lines and screwing in the backseat. And yet, for all it's manic anxiety, the core of their sound is numb, like all of this is being broadcasted by a man in a coma, and I say that with all the love in the world. Kid A especially takes on and embraces this tone. It's an album of contradiction and duality, it's electronic yet organic, elusive and fragmented yet precise in the emotion and meanings it evokes. 'Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon. There are two colors in my head.' That's the sort of fragmented, detached images we are given right at the start of the album. This album is lyrically populated by the sort of lines that stands on the fence between heavily symbolic and perhaps that joking Dylanesque throwaway that makes the songwriter grin as dipshts like me try and dissect them and find a hidden meaning. The sorts of lines that while being interviewed the songwriter goes 'I don't know where that came from. Your guess is as good as mine.' This is a subconscious album. The purpose of it's lyrics are not to give you concrete meanings but phantom tones and images that evoke whatever feeling that happens to be associated with it. For each listener it's different and that's what makes it so special. And that's also what makes it so frustratingly elusive. And at times, frustratingly boring. Usually multiple listens reveals more layers to an album. Surprisingly, with Kid A, more digging reveals nothing. I used to think this as their best album. I don't know anymore. At this point I'm wishing I did an 'OK Computer' essay, but then I realize that perhaps not all of my essays have to be glowing endorsements. This album can reached an unmatched brilliance at times. At other times, it seems almost irrelevant. I would call that a dichotomy, but I think in the end it is poor decisions by the band. Because there are some songs on Amnesiac, which was recorded in the same session, that are brilliant and some songs on Kid A which are subpar. Like Treefingers or Optimistic. Add in 'Pyramid Song', 'You and Whose Army', 'Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box', 'Like Spinning Plates' and replace 'Morning Bell' with Amnesiac's version of 'Morning Bell'. Add that third verse into Motion Picture soundtrack and cut out the hidden track. Listen to the demo: YouTube - Radiohead - Motion picture soundtrack rare demo I give you, the improved Kid A, which would be three times better and be in the running for my favorite album ever. I defy you to claim it isn't improved: 1. Everything in it's Right Place 2. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box 3. Pyramid Song 4. Kid A 5. The National Anthem 6. How To Disappear Completely 7. You and Whose Army 8. I Might Be Wrong 9. Amnesiac/The Morning Bell 10. In Limbo 11. Idioteque 12. Hunting Bears 13. Like Spinning Plates 14. Motion Picture Soundtrack(with third verse added and hidden track removed, but keep the same instruments) That looks like an improved album right there. I love the image of the carnival. The symbolism. It's such a bittersweet and perverse sort of atmosphere, it looks flashy and great on the surface but dig deeper and you'll find a rotten underbelly populated by maggots. A carnival is confusing. A carnival is the perfect symbol for a decade of decadence, that's what the 2000s were and right now we're feeling the start of that hangover. We're in the same category as the 20s and the 80s. The last song on this album sounds like a carnival winding down. It's tragic sounding, somehow it sounds whimsical at the same time, and always, numb. It's the greatest song on the album. I think you're crazy...maybe I think you're crazy... maybe How the f*ck did we get to this point? How did we get to a point where the government we thought would be our salvation is a giant beast gasping for life smashing things up trying to solve an unsolvable problem and probably just making it worse? How did we get to a point of such moral bankruptcy and excessive shallowness, where the highest rated TV shows show graphic murders, and flashy reality shows where we see broken celebrities humiliate themselves for us like those monkeys with a little hat and cymbals, and they desperately cling to the hope that they can get on top again, yet, as we watch them, we all know that isn't gonna happen...I ask you...how? __________________ The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.