I love this description – there are a number of albums that have this same effect for me, it’s almost impossible to listen to them and really pay attention because it’s like trying to feel your own skin or something.
OK Computer is a great album
Kid A is one of the greatest albums ever
Kill one for me too. I saw them in Chicago on the Kid A tour (wait me it was the next album). Great show, but the event staff was a fucking nightmare. Seriously, it had to be over 90 degrees in the sun with no shade. We sat there for hours and the still had the nerve to sell soda and water for $6.00. Luckily the opening act (Beta Band) convinced someone to get them to hose us down with fire hoses. Anyone else at that show?
I suspect you’d have massacred the entire family to be at the first Radiohead gig I went to: in 1994 in Hong Kong, premiering The Bends before it had been released, but playing most of Pablo Honey; an intimate gig with fewer than 1,000 people, and we were in the second row. It was really hot, so we shouted for water, and Thom stopped the gig between songs to get us about 10 bottles from backstage, some of which was stolen by the teens in the front row as he threw it. Also, at one point he was singing really quietly, and my buddy yelled “Stop Whispering!” and Mr Yorke pissed himself laughing, and at the end of the show deemed the people who stole our water “a bunch of cunts”. It was without a doubt the best gig I’ve ever been to. (It might have helped a little that someone spiked me with acid in the bar before we went to the venue.)
Okay, you’ve talked me into it, I’ll listen to it during my (2.5 hour) commute tomorrow. Multiple times if needed. Enough people have told me that Kid A is so good that I’m convinced I’m missing something, but I think I need some direction in how to appreciate the album.
What should I listen for? Is it something in the lyrics? The arrangement of the chords? The changes? The ambience?
Re-reading that, I think I just came across as really confrontational and snotty - which was definitely not intended! I’m seriously looking for some tips on how to appreciate Kid A better.
Hmm – first off, don’t listen to it as a Radiohead album. As I’ve said, I think they made solid rock music before Kid A, but Kid A is something entirely different.
Those first five notes of the first song – I was immediately hooked. Listen in a sonically clean envorinment with a pretty decent decibel level, that’s where it really sinks in. Don’t look for choruses or verses – the melodic lines are there but they’re much more fluid, and far more interesting.
I think a lot of it is actually the sonic textures, but I hate saying that because I think the atmospheric electronica around today is mostly emotionally empty, whereas Radiohead made sounds that were both rich and complex and that makes a beautiful artistic statement.
No time for more now, I’m sure others will chime in (or may have already).
The intro hook is compelling and I agree Kid A is an outstanding album. It is solid all the way through which is pretty amazing considering the jump the band made. But, for me, it can’t beat OK Computer – even if OK only had its first three songs. There is a lot more depth and complexity in OK, particularly with the way the percussion, keyboards, guitar, and vocals work together. When I listen to Kid A, it can be catchy or hypnotic, but it always seems more shallow – like I am caught just at the surface layer.
But I do agree a lot with Marley23’s post that Kid A opened me up to a lot more music than I would have otherwise experienced and that in itself might be a much bigger acomplishment.
I’ve given it about a week and a half. I really struggled with this, since I know so many people love the album, so please understand, that I understand that this entire post represents my own opinion and nothing more.
So anyway, I’ve listened to Kid A four times now, beginning to end, twice in a “sonically clean” environment (headphones in the office) and twice during the commute, plus 15-20 minute snatches here and there. On the whole, I’m still unimpressed.
I’m no great student of electronica, but when compared to what I have listened to, Kid A fails to move me. If anything, it seems even more repetitive and redundant than it did before. I didn’t notice anything new or innovative. Thom Yorke’s vocals seemed tinny, vapid, almost whiny. The live instruments sound almost bored after being mixed in with the loops. The album, on the whole, emotes monotony. It reminded me of experiments like Symphonic Pink Floyd, where you combine the repition of rock with the intimate personality of the Muzak corporate orchestra. (My wife loves that album, BTW, and I still love her. 
)
Just for kicks, I listened to two other albums in my collection that some might consider electronica - in that they rely almost exclusively on an eclectic collection of synthetic sounds - which were Opera Sauvage by Vangelis and Shepherd Moons by Enya. These albums had all the attributes I see people give to Kid A. They were at times hypnotic and invigorating. They conveyed a rich patchwork of emotions through the music alone. The vocals, when present, contributed to rather than detracted from the experience. Where these albums captured my attention, Kid A induced somnolence.
Indeed, I’m confused by this album’s popularity, given that it’s performed by a group so experienced in rock music. Based purely on a glance at my CD collection, there are so many good artists who have (IMO) successfully integrated synthetic music into their format - Flaming Lips, They Might Be Giants, Talking Heads, U2, The Cure, The Eels, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Faith No More, Collective Soul, Steve Vai, Jane’s Addiction, 311, Butthole Surfers, the list goes on and on.
My theory is that Kid A was great only because of the crossover effect. By waiting until they made it big before recording an album in a radically new genre, they didn’t do so much as break new ground, but rather they used the Radiohead brand name to introduce fans to a genre that would’ve otherwise had less attention. (An act which, by the way, I applaud and heartily encourage. It’s a shame that their first attempt was, when measured on its own merits, and again in my own opinion, at best a wash.) They didn’t so much reinvent what rock music was about, as they reevaluated what their own artistic direction was.
It should be noted, they never really broke new ground in the industry - there’ve been rock/electronica crossovers since the invention of the electronic synthesizer. ELO, anyone? Bjork? Daft Punk?
So, in response to spazurek’s OP, I’m scribbling a checkmark in the OK Computer side so furiously I’m leaving pencil marks on the clipboard underneath.
I’ll probably give their next album a whirl some time, but to be honest this one has put me off of Radiohead for a while. That, and my Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts CDs arrived and they’ll take me at least a week to properly enjoy. Japanese jazz soundtracks - it’s weird and a bit poppy, but damn this group is good.
Well, we can’t argue your devotion to the discussion, Subway Prophet.
I’ll just cast my vote for Kid A. There’s atmoshpere that’s created there that exists on so few rock albums. OK Computer is cool, but Kid A goes somewhere else. I can see how that somewhere else isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it was mine.
What are your thoughts on “Hail to the Theif?” It’s certainly different than the other post OK Computer discs.
When asked in 2001 by MTV, “How do you guys feel about the fact that bands like Travis, Coldplay and Muse are making a career sounding exactly like your records did in 1997?”, Thom Yorke replied simply: “Good luck with Kid A.” (from wikipedia, new yorker)
Subway Prophet, I’m happy that we motivated you to give Kid A such a thorough listening, and I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts. It’s fascinating how two people whose tastes are generally so similar can hear such different things in the same set of tunes. Part of what makes life interesting, I guess. And I can well appreciate how the lack of resonance of this album would lead you to your conclusions about its place in Radiohead’s line-up – one man’s radical transformation is another’s failed experiment.
I humbly submit that Kid A will sneak up on you and you’ll eventually find yourself falling under its spell. I really hope you keep it in your playlist, even if it only comes out on the occasional lonely evening when you’re bored with everything else.
Personally I felt like Hail to the Thief was too much of a reaction to fans who were turned off by the transformation represented by Kid A and Amnesiac. I think they tried to bring in more of a ‘traditional’ rock sound but also maintain the progressiveness, falling short on both counts. I hate when you can hear a band being self-conscious (on an even more tangential note, this is what destroys Nirvana’s In Utero for me).
This is so rad. Those of us who are Radiohead fans, regardless of what we think of Kid A, must take careful note of what Thom thought of it. Rarely have I disagreed with an artist when they have assessed their own work (honestly, not crassly praising their most recent release, which is perhaps debatable in the case of Kid A).