Music May 8, 2013 at 4:00 am

Radiohead's Kid A

Comments

1
I'll see your "free to be..." and raise you a horn fart. You got it right.
2
Anton Newcombe has some insightful thoughts about "Kid A" as well. So even surly, perpetually annoyed, musical genius's can agree with you.
3
Anna is just too fucking hip to listen to Radiohead.
4
It just mostly sounds like a computer trying to teach itself how to cry. I like my feelings realer and bigger.

This pretty much describes how I feel about Radiohead, and I am definitely a self-professed music nerd, so take heart, Anna.

While I respect them - I think they have integrity and have always genuinely cared about making good music - I've never thought they entirely deserved the kind of praise lavished on them. I figure they're popular because they hit on the right combination of having some interesting musical ideas with being kind of inoffensive and middle-of-the-road.

As you point out, their range is limited. And all their music seems so pointlessly gloomy - it's too bleak to make me feel joy, too mousy and sterile and hermetically sealed off from the real world to be a form of catharsis for real pain and anger.

It's kind of like the musical version of a clingy, needy, kinda boring boyfriend who never wants to go out but sulks when you go out without him. Actually, I had a boyfriend like that, and he worshipped Radiohead. Never mind.
5
If your motivation to form an opinion is based on the reaction to that opinion, is it really your opinion of the work reviewed? If it isn't then your opinion is only related to the subject reviewed as a means to provoke the desired reaction.

Kid A is an irreducible work of art. It is a robot trying to cry as much as it is everything that led up to a traffic jam including the dinosaurs that were squashed, heated, and processed into gasoline in the cars in that traffic jam. It's the child in the back seat awed by the details revealed by the polarized glass of the sunroof of the fluffy clouds flying overhead.

The robot is trying to cry because it sees the death and damage and stupidity that that led to the traffic jam.

The robot is trying to cry because it sees the traffic jam in the context of the sky and the dinosaurs and the enormity of deep time with awe and wonder.

It's a robot trying to cry because of all the things possible to do, the only thing it finds in its database that fits the entire truth of a traffic jam is an ineffectual outburst of emotion expressing awe, grief, love, rage, and terror.

Anna Minard's metaphor of the robot works for any conscious being. Love or hate Kid A, the production, professionalism, talent, inspiration, and thought that went into it deserves more than a review based on figuring out a way to be cooler than the nerds that love it.

Review art as if everyone everywhere ever is dead. The robots that replace us will be grateful to you for sorting through all the crap and pointing them to the best stuff. Kid A is the some of the best stuff.
6
@4 Kid A: Rats and children follow me out of town
come on kids

Motion Picture Soundtrack: Cheap sex and sad films
Help me get where I belong
Everything in its Right Place: Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon.

Kid A is better than your ex-boyfriend.

Can you make a comment without considering the opinion of people that like Kid A? You seem to be reacting to your ex and the music press more than you're talking about the actual music.

The music you're writing about is not described accurately with words you use. Kid A has some pretty whimsical bits as you can see from the lyrics above.

The fact that dumb-ass losers like stuff doesn't change the quality of the stuff.
7
Debating matters of taste is a fool's errand.
8
@meso, that's the triple truth...
9
Radiohead is the soy latte of music.
10
@9 I think you're mistaking Coldplay for Radiohead.
12
Don't worry Anna, it's not really any good. Radiohead is the "Emperor has no clothes" band of our generation.

Don't get me wrong, they have some great songs. But their talent-to-adulation ratio is way out of wack.
13
Kid A is not a good album to throw at someone with those doubts. Pablo Honey has almost nothing to do with Radiohead's career, other than to give them name recognition, but Kid A is pretty unlikeable album. If you wanted to teach a computer to cry, wouldn't you give it OK Computer?
14
I always find it surprising that people describe Radiohead as robotic and sad. I find the band's sound + York's voice to be incredibly human and capable of soaring positivity as well as loads of other emotions. The inorganic character of their sound is as true a reflection of modern human identity than any unplugged folk band, if not more so.

Either way, Minard's reviews rule. Keep up the good work!
15
@12, yeah iconic in their heyday should be put in the proper perspective, and you've self-identified as an expert.
16
I have never been much into indie rock, but starting with OK Computer, Radiohead was always the exception.

One thing I have noticed is that their fan base seems to skew male, perhaps that has something to do with some females not "getting it".

About the production: Seattle is a bastion of rock music traditionalism/puritanism. Radiohead's embrace of non-traditional sounds (especially the use of sampled/looped material and electronic beats) has always bothered some of the locals.
17
@5/@6: Toasterhedgehog! Where you been? I've missed you on SLOG. Welcome back. I was just wondering a few days ago where you went. Someplace much more exotic than I was imagining, I hope. Cheers!
18
"Everything in Its Right Place" is among the best (and most human) songs ever written.
19
@18 -- Agreed.

@13 -- I think OK Computer might have actually been a better place to start ...
20
@18, I see your "Everything" and raise you a "Paranoid Android".
21
No Surprises should be Seattle's theme song for CFS.
22
Radiohead has always been boring. It's just the soundtrack to being a limey, and I'll tell you what's wrong with limeys: they're fucking BRITISH - childish, rotten-teethed, anti-humanist, pinch-lipped, queen-loving, shit-food-eating depressive imperialists. Ask the half a million shithead Brits who live in LA and they'll agree.

Worse even than Canadians, which is hard to do.
23
@13 & 19, agreed that Kid A is a tough spot to start. I would have suggested OK Computer for an introduction, too. Or maybe even Hail to the Thief.

And @7 ain't lyin'.
24
"Overrated" is shorthand for "too many people like something more than I do and it makes me uncomfortable."
25
Ok computer is to dark side of the moon as kid a is to all the shitty songs on the first tape of the wall.

/yeah, I said tape.
26
Creep is to "I'm a Loser" as OK Computer is to Sea Change. I love Sea Change, but others might say Odelay.
27
Uhh, maybe the problem I'm having with this review is that it focuses more on the writer than the actual music. Two very vague paragraphs talking about an album surrounded by how you've never liked a band and how not liking something many people like makes you feel good is not a review. But it will give Radiohead haters something to jump onto, so there's that.
28
@22 great britain has produced the better and mosre influential music in the past 50 years than the rest of the world combined.

29
It should've been In Rainbows.

Seriously, how has noone said this yet?!?

Don't get me wrong, Kid A is great, but In Rainbows is awesome.
30
Morning Bell is so fucking good.

Fuck all you Kid A haters, it's a brillant album.
31
Kid A should be put in proper perspective. Listen to "The Bends" and "OK Computer" which are excellent offerings from Radiohead and then compare it to Kid A which is much different, but still awesome on it's own. Not many bands change so drastically and nail it.
32
Like many of Radiohead's albums I think Kid A takes a few listens to in order to fully appreciate the album. There is always so many layers and so much going on that the first few times through is always a little disorienting. Kid A has been one of my favorite and most played albums since it came over over 10 years ago and I still find new things in the songs.
33
Uh, "The Bends" maybe?

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