I have a brother who always says he loves abstract art, because you can put any meaning you want into it, and it still works. This album by Radiohead (made up of Thom Yorke on vocals/guitars/keys, Johnny Greenwood on any instrument he felt like playing but mainly guitar, Colin Greenwood on bass, Ed O’Brien on guitar/backing vocals, and Philip Selway on drums) in so many ways is abstract art. There could be (and are) a hundred different meanings that can be attached to the music and the lyrics, and they may all be right, and they may all be wrong. Either way it’s entirely up to the listener’s experience.
Kid A was recorded after Radiohead had stopped touring for what up to this point had been their biggest album “OK Computer”. Due to the high stress of the tour, and various personal factors, lead singer (and primary lyricist) Thom Yorke was having what tvtropes.org describes as a creator breakdown. Partly due to this the band decided to move away from the conventional rock of their previous albums and instead started cobbling together a project made up of lots of electronica noise, lyric fragments, and free jazz. The resulting album was an unlikely success, went platinum and catapulted the band towards even bigger heights. For many critics at the time and especially now days this album is considered one of the best of the decade if not the century. However the hype can definitely turn some people off and I can understand that. For me this album is a lot of my introduction to experimental music. Tracks like opener “Everything In Its Right Place” (man that haunting piano riff is still so great) “Kid A” and “Idioteque” make your head spin with all the sound effects, uncommon time signatures, and abstracts, hard to pin down lyrics. However, Radiohead is still fundamentally a pop band and tracks like “The National Anthem” (with an amazing bass riff as the main hook) and “How To Disappear Completely” (which honestly sounds the most like a traditional Radiohead track with it’s sad guitar and lyrics about alienation) demonstrate this pop sensibility nicely. The lyrics definitely touch on the previously mentioned themes of alienation (as pretty much every Radiohead album does in some way) but for the most part stay pretty word salad. This is by design as a lot of lyrics were literally cut up and pulled out of a hat to see what would happen. The lyrics could be about alien abductions, global warming, or human cloning, ultimately this is an album that leaves much up to your imagination and your personal interpretations. Radiohead would go on to make music that was both more conventional and more experimental than this album. However because Kid A was the first album in the bands discography to do something truly different and because of the great craftsmanship on display, it stands as an artistic accomplishment and personal favorite. Suggested Tracks: Everything In Its Right Place The National Anthem Optimistic Idioteque
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