We
used to listen to music in an entirely different way. There was once a
time when music was organized into 45- to 75-minute chunks often a few
standout tracks padded with a lot of mediocre filler, but occasionally
designed so that the parts built up a larger structure. Used to be,
people would sit down and listen to that lengthy piece of music from
front to back in one sitting, resisting the urge to jump to their
favorite parts or skip over the instrumental interlude that served as
grout between two fuller compositions. These antiques were called CDs.
Here's a story about the last of its kind.
When Kid A came out in October 2000, it sounded like the future.
Unless you were a Napster whiz-kid, the record was one of the last to
arrive unspoiled and complete, a physical object, the disquieting
Stanley Donwood art reinforcing its dark mystery. It's arguably
two-and-a-half minutes into "How to Disappear Completely" more than a
third of the way through the album until anything sounds like a
"Radiohead Song," even with how far the elastic of that term was
stretched on OK Computer. And while Radiohead were far from the first
to glitch-up their vocals with a computer or drown their compositions
in ambient washes, it was still a thrilling experimental gamble for a
band that could've profitably re-made "Karma Police" 100 times over
with minimal reputational damage.
But simply flirting with new technology wasn't enough; even in 2000,
the idea of a band "going electronic" was a laughable marketing gimmick
from an era that spawned the term "electronica." But the samples,
loops, and beats of Kid A were more than just the patronizing dalliance
of a bored band, they were tools used to service the album's even
deeper exploration of OK Computer's thesis on identity loss in
computerized society. It was, unashamedly, a complete album, one where
everything from production to arrangements to lyrics to album art were
carefully crafted towards a unified purpose.
It's also a contoured album without clear highlights, best
experienced in one sitting rather than cherrypicking the best parts.
(It's telling that the band famously quarreled over the sequencing of
tracks.) The biggest stylistic coup was the corruption of Thom Yorke's
vocals arguably the band's most singular feature up to that point and
the detuned-radio effects of the album's opening couplet: "Everything
in Its Right Place" and "Kid A" threw listeners expecting that
signature "Fake Plastic Trees" falsetto immediately into the deep end.
On "The National Anthem", Yorke is shouted down by horn section mayhem,
and when he finally gets in an unfiltered word in on "How to Disappear
Completely", it's the album's most haunted (and revealing) line: "That
there, that's not me."
There's no storyline to pick out from Yorke's lyrics, but a unified
thread moves through the album nonetheless: Basically, Kid A is scary
as hell. It might be the paranoid, nearly subliminal, unbroken
undercurrent of haunted drone, courtesy of a Rhodes or a tape loop or
Jonny Greenwood's Ondes-Martenot, a instrument for nightmares if there
ever was one. Or it might be Yorke's terrifying one-line, Chicken Soup
for the Agoraphobic Soul mantras that alternate between honeyed
violence ("cut the kids in half") and clichés and hum-drum observations
twisted into panic attacks ("where'd you park the car?").
(A brief intermission to talk about the bonus tracks included with
this reissue. Capitol's in a tough spot with finding Kid A outtakes,
because they already released such a thing it's called
Amnesiac...*rimshot*. So instead the bonus-disc padding is all live
tracks, culled from British and French radio or TV shows. In keeping
with the album's isolation fixation, the empty studio of the four-track
BBC session is the most fitting environment for the band's performance,
the vocal manipulations of "Everything in Its Right Place" ricocheting
off egg-crate walls. Contrast that with the clap-along crowd on an
"Idioteque" from France, which neuters the song's sinister undercurrent
and turns it into an inappropriate party jam.)
Every great album needs a great resolution, and Kid A has two: the
angelic choir and harps of "Motion Picture Soundtrack" which serve as a
much-needed (if fragile and a bit suspicious) uplift needed after such
unrelenting bleakness, and a brief ambient coda that justifies the
hidden-track gimmick. The silence that surrounds that final flash of
hazy analog hiss is almost as rich, conferring a eerie feeling of
weightlessness upon anyone who's completed the journey with a proper
headphones listen.
But that's where the twist ending comes in. Kid A turned out not be
the music of the future, but a relic of the past, more in line with
dinosaurs like Dark Side of the Moon or Loveless as
try-out-your-new-speakers, listen-with-the-lights-off suites. By the
time Amnesiac officially arrived, it had been served up piecemeal on
the internet, handicapping the final product from reproducing its
predecessor's cohesive structure. From then on, albums have persisted,
sure, but they're increasingly marginalized or stripped for parts
release Kid A today, and many might choose to save or stream
"Idioteque" and Recycle-Bin the rest, missing the contextual build and
release that makes the album's demented-disco centerpiece all the more
effective.
That's not a qualitative judgment: The way things are now isn't
better or worse, just different. Technology, of course, is a selection
pressure, digital music eroding the arbitrary 45ish-minute barrier that
once was dictated by vinyl's finite diameter. But while a single song
will often do, there's a talent to building and a pleasure in
experiencing a dozen songs weaved together into a 40 minutes that's
richer than each individual track, a 12-course meal for special
occasions between microwave snacks. Like calligraphy, it's a fading
art, as even Radiohead themselves seem to be disinterested in the
format, perpetually threatening to dribble tracks out in ones or fours
when the spirit takes them. In the end, one of the many ghosts that
haunt the corridors of Kid A is The Album itself, it's death throes an
unsettling funeral for a format that, like so much else, was out of
time. — Rob Mitchum, August 25, 2009
Disc 1:
01. Everything In Its Right Place [04:11]
02. Kid A [04:45]
03. The National Anthem [05:52]
04. How To Disappear Completely [05:56]
05. Treefingers [03:43]
06. Optimistic [05:16]
07. In Limbo [03:31]
08. Idioteque [05:09]
09. Morning Bell [04:36]
10. Motion Picture Soundtrack [07:02]
Disc 2:
01. Everything In Its Right Place (BBC Radio One Evening Session — 15/11/00) [06:04]
02. How To Disappear Completely (BBC Radio One Evening Session — 15/11/00) [06:37]
03. Idioteque (BBC Radio One Evening Session — 15/11/00) [04:12]
04. The National Anthem (BBC Radio One Evening Session — 15/11/00) [04:44]
05. Optimistic (Live) (Lamacq Live In Concert: Victoria Park, Warrington, England — 02/10/00 [04:39]
06. Morning Bell (Live) (Canal+ Studios — 28/04/01) [04:26]
07. The National Anthem (Live) (Canal+ Studios — 28/04/01) [05:01]
08. How To Disappear Completely (Live) (Canal+ Studios — 28/04/01) [05:57]
09. In Limbo (Live) (Canal+ Studios — 28/04/01) [04:43]
10. Idioteque (Live) (Canal+ Studios — 28/04/01) [04:13]
11. Everything In Its Right Place (Live) (Canal+ Studios — 28/04/01) [06:43]
12. Motion Picture Soundtrack (Live) (Canal+ Studios — 28/04/01) [03:55]
13. True Love Waits (Live) (I Might Be Wrong — Live Recordings) [05:05]
