Amazon.co.uk Review
Radiohead may well be the most courageous band in Britain. Their second album,
The Bends, was a success both critically and commercially, and they followed it up with an album of epic prog-rock,
OK Computer, that would have destined a lesser band to commercial failure and, eventually, obscurity. Instead, it was almost universally hailed as one of the finest albums ever recorded. So it should come as no great surprise that their fourth album,
Kid A, is even more experimental, owing a debt to the studio-born soundscapes of
Brian Eno,
Aphex Twin and even later
Talk Talk.
Kid A is an album that would not sound out of place on the Warp Records roster, as keyboards, sequencers and electronic effects take the place of guitars on most tracks (particularly unusual for a band that boasts three guitarists). In fact, this is an album that succeeds without rock's bombast, from the looping keyboards of album opener "Everything In Its Right Place" to the bouncing, bass-led "The National Anthem" to the album's hauntingly atmospheric highlight, "Idioteque". Meanwhile, more traditional Radiohead tracks like "How To Disappear Completely" and "Optimistic" offer a natural bridge between the electronic noodlings of
Kid A and the (slightly) more mainstream-sounding
OK Computer. Radiohead may well be the most innovative popular band since the
Beatles; as such,
Kid A represents the most successful evolution of a major British act since
Sgt Pepper's.
--Robert Burrow
CD Description
1997's OK COMPUTER turned the rock world on its ear by bringing visionary neo-prog rock touches to a Britpop format. Consequently, KID A was one of the most anticipated releases of its era. This limited edition comes in a fine, rigid, oversized high-quality glossy paginated format, with artwork by the same hand as the regular edition, and with speculative philosophical jottings heading each page. No secret booklet, though.
On KID A, Thom Yorke's passionate wailing is put through the aural wringer, and the band's previous nimbly orchestrated full-frontal sonic assault is replaced by full-frontal electric piano, to iconoclastic effect. The ambient underpinnings and garbled vocals of "Everything in Its Right Place", and the instrumental "Treefingers", the electronic beats of "Idioteque", and Yorke's processed voice on the titletrack will come as quite a shock to diehard '70s rockers who spent the late '90s deifying Radiohead as heirs to the Pink Floyd throne. But these touches work brilliantly, while the more organic elements, such as the jazzy horn section on "The National Anthem", and the comparatively conservative arrangement (though there's some unsettlingly atonal orchestration lurking here, too) of "How to Disappear Completely" provide a counterpoint to all this incipient modernism.
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