Dec. 23, 2009 - Issue #740: Wyld December
Radiohead
Radiohead {recordings_bands_mg} Radiohead {/recordings_bands_mg}
, Radiohead
0
RadioheadKid A
(Capitol)
Originally released: 2000
As with a lot of albums, my favourite take on Kid A when it first came out was from the Village Voice's Robert Christgau: "Alienated masterpiece nothing—it's dinner music." That might sound snarky, but in the context of an A-minus review, I think it cuts to the heart of why Kid A, for all its experimental flourishes and critic-/audience-defying leaps, is actually worthy of being one of the albums of the decade: it's not actually anything that new.
I mean, obviously, yes, it was out of left field. Though Radiohead are now revered as esoteric, genre-hopping geniuses—thanks in no small part to this record right here—in 2000, they were just another Brit-rock band, maybe a little more in tune to subtle melodies and modern, well, alienation, than their contemporaries, but not really that much ahead of the Blurs or the Pulps. The sheer curveball of it all is probably part of the reason it has such a reputation.
But there aren't a lot of people other than critics who truly appreciate curveballs, and the really amazing thing about Kid A is how palatable it makes its eclectic ideas: electronic twitches, car-crash horn sections, technologic paranoia—it all gets filtered through melancholic melody until even people who don't know the word "melancholy" but for the Smashing Pumpkins album can't help but respond. Kid A was the top-selling album the week it was released. In the decade that Nickelback wins the Billboard sales award. Think about that.
The reason for that, again, is accessibility of emotion and attention to melody, though it's probably the former that's more immediately gripping. Thom Yorke arranged most of the lyrics for these songs out of a hat, but that only seems to add to the sombre disaffection, the sheer disjointedness of his mood. These are the reflections of someone walking through a cityscape that has started to look more and more dystopian, his half-formed thoughts mixing with the dull glow and cacophony. But this is never really all that bleak, or depressed or anything too heavy: it is more an encapsulation of forced apathy, the weight of the world leaving you dulled and dumb, but not enough to freeze you.
And that more than anything points to its enduring relevancy. What has this decade been but a dull wandering while oblivion seems to encroach around us? "Big fish eat the little ones / Not my problem give me some," "I'm not here / This isn't happening," "Everyone is so near / Everyone has got the fear." Hell, "Idioteque" alone could sum up the last decade: "Laugh until my head comes off / Swallow 'til I burst," "Ice age coming / Let me hear both sides," "We're not scare mongering / This is really happening." These sentiments weren't new in 2000, they haven't left us for a decade, and yet, how much have we done about them? Alienated masterpiece something: it's a masterpiece because it finds the alienation in dinner conversation, and it's just as ambivalent about it as we all are. V
New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.