Radiohead's Latest Album Is A Confounding Misture Of Ambient Soundscapes And Buried Melodies
Jake Kennedy Adjusts His Dial

Radiohead released "Kid A", the follow-up to the seminal "OK Computer" a month ago. Inevitably, after the acclaim their third album earned them, the hype machine was in full swing during the build-up to the 'event'. With no singles or videos to promote the new collection, the rumour mill was left flailing as to how to describe 'that' new release.

As the stamp on promo copies of the CD advised, public broadcast of "Kid A" was prohibited before 19th September--London station XFM played it in its entirety at midnight that day! There was also idle talk of a £2000 pen-like MP3 player with the album downloaded on to it for review purposes only. And who could forget the mini-TV ads, and the Spanish Radioheadcapri--a Mk1 FordCapri produced in conjunction with Ford Motors, complete with an 8-track machine and a promo cartridge super-glued into it? A snip at £7500, but also a lie.

As long ago as autumn 1999, Michael Stipe described an early version of a Radiohead tune that may or may not have made it to the album as "quite special". Recently, the band have stressed that there will be a comparatively prompt fifth album in the spring of next year. Indeed, of the songs debuted at Scott Walker's Meltdown at the Royal Festival Hall in June, and September's UK tent tour, only half actually found their way onto "Kid A".

While "Dollars And Cents", "You And Whose Army" and especially "Knives Out" were received rapturously at the time it's now clear that such tracks just wouldn't fit in with the experimentation of the LP. They were initially scheduled to be released as limited twelve-inches in the months after the album, but have subsequently been put aside for the follow-up. They are indeed complete songs, many as moving as anything the band have ever recorded, but they are also, in essence, 'old Radiohead'.

Guitarist Ed O'Brien confessed earlier this year that he'd considered making the polar opposite of "OK Computer", with harmonies and a sunshine pop feel. This didn't get past the ideas stage, and the public got "Kid A" instead. The album is about experimenting (a band that has decided not to release any singles from such an eagerly-awaited project is clearly not too concerned by chart success), but it also represents a very logical progression from the previous three LPs, and indeed many of their more adventurous B-sides.


DIRGE

Faced with the challenging prospect of the "difficult fourth album", Radiohead, after initially suffering from a bout of writer's block, took to recording everything they played in the studio. This led to a blackboard with over 60 titles on it, reminiscent of REM searching for a title for "Out Of Time". Evidently, much of this studio jamming has fallen by the wayside. But the open-minded nature of the rehearsals still hangs heavy over much of "Kid A". Such an approach led to "The National Anthem", a song built around a simple but dirge-like bass-line (played by Thom), bastardized beyond all sanity by snatches of jazz-bands and symphony orchestras.

"Treefingers" is the other side of the coin. A sprawling ambient soundscape, the song is as much reminiscent of Eno as it is Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works Vol. II". With these two very different tracks, the band showed both ends of their spectrum, and even flirted with the idea of a double-album. The magic is in the precision, even if the musicians have since stated the album "made itself".

Looking fack, the influence of Sheffield's Warp Records becomes evident throughout. "Idioteque", for example, is as dance-orientated as it is possible for a rock band to get without being remixed. Oddly though, the combination of Thom's melodies and "Windowlicker"-style rhythms doesn't quite gel.

It's a convincing pastiche, but the trouble with copying cutting-edge artists and styles is that they don't stay cutting edge for that long. A more satisfactory attempt is the title track, where a unique skiffle-esque beat is coupled with distinctly artificial vocals. The track was originally written around a computer program and then jammed over. Neither of the styles seem to obstruct each other.

The "techno" edge to much of the newer material has been hinted at as something ground-breaking, a radical departure of some kind, and while it is certain that it is three or four sonic leaps from Oasis' "Fuckin' In The Bushes", it isn't exactly the "new Radiohead". As far back as "The Bends", they were flirting with other genres. Warp pioneers LFO remixed "Planet Telex" (which was a double A-side to the anthemic "High And Dry"), and even the original holds true to the staccato rhythm of much of the music on one of the band's favourite labels, Mo' Wax. Later on, Zero 7 and the criminally under-rated Fila Brazillia did the works on "Climbing Up The Walls". Radiohead provided the somber mood, while the dance acts worked foreign, yet fitting rhythms over the top (or underneath).

Now valued at £125, 1992's "Drill EP" contained the first glimmer of the breathtaking songwriting of which Thom Yorke was capable. In a very traditional sense, moments like these are when the band are at their most cutting edge; they soon became moulded into what anyone with only a loose understanding of Radiohead would describe as their "sound".

To truly understand the appeal of songs like "Thinking About You", and the many other vocal and lyrical masterpieces that litter the band's career, you need to look at a very different set of influences. The friendship between Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke may go some way to explaining the REM influence on "Kid A".

After writing the bleak poetic verse of "Automatic For The People", Stipe chose a more cut-up technique for the follow up, 1994's "Monster". The phraseology and lyrics to the new Radiohead album are often reminiscent of such techniques. Indeed, "Motion Picture Soundtrack" is to harps what "Let Me In" was to feedback. According to the band, the song pre-dates their one-time albatross, "Creep".

The writer's block Yorke was plagued with for two years between the last two albums lends itself to this style of lyrical composition. In the studio, recording "Kid A", he kept a top hat with various phrases written on scraps of paper in it. Whenever he felt in need, he would reach for the hat and work with whatever he pulled out. The band also had the phrase "What am I doing here" from Talking Head's "Once In A Lifetime" imprinted in their minds throughout much of the recording of the album.

Such a mood is synonymous with the lyrics of Radiohead. Often described as depressing, the newer songs (and many older ones) are in fact defiant fingers-up to the numerous copycat bands who followed in the wake of "OK Computer", both sonically and lyrically. "Everything In Its Right Place" is the prime example, where the refrain "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" seems to have been chosen because it sounds phonetically convincing, rather than because it might mean something to a big top full of fans.

They are more observational than self-pitying--more "deal with this" than "can't deal with this". Inevitably, that strikes a chord with the millions to whom "Creep" is not the be all and end all of the band's career.

It's also worth remembering that Radiohead lyrics never veer too far into substance-abuse territory. The narrators are somehow distanced from the rest of the world, on ice even, but never via illicit means. "Fitter Happier", from "OK Computer", is an obvious example--the Stephen Hawking-style artificial voice belching out numerous modern day idealisms--but elsewhere the suggestion is more subtle.

There is a definite trance-like state to "Morning Bell", with its drowsy "walking, walking, walking" refrain, but even on older B-sides like "Killer Cars" and "You Never Wash Up After Yourself", Yorke seems to find isolation in even the most mundane things (i.e. a sinkful of dishes, or a loved one going for a drive).

Unsurprisingly, this displacement appeals to angst ridden teenagers, jilted lovers and those who feel alienated by "the norm". It may also explain the monstrous shadow the success of "Creep" cast over both "The Bends" and the "OK Computer" world tours. In truth, Radiohead, and Thom Yorke especially, have crafted something altogether more refined since those days.

While "I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo" may have been an apt idea in 1992, we now find Yorke focusing on a different world altogether. For a time at least, perhaps due to the approaching millennium, the blank, bland and sterile lyrical atmosphere of "OK Computer" seemed like a more coherent summing up of our culture than a dome, or a river of fire.

Suddenly, lines like "Cattle prods and the IMF" (from "Electioneering") seemed like poetry. The equivalent on "Kid A", the exquisite "How To Disappear Completely", offers "Strobe lights and no one speaking, fireworks and hurricanes". One can only guess if such lines are comments on the band's collective state of mind during the media frenzy threatening to engulf them, or more personal than that. Or nothing at all.

This mood continues throughout the whole Radiohead visual experience. Although they hate making them, their videos are frequently cimematic masterpieces. "Street Spirit" from 1996 used a deft combination of slow motion photography and black-and-white film, while the seven-minute cartoon that accompanied "Paranoid Android" aped the knowingly over-matured prog-esque pomposity of the track.

"Just" had the greatest non-punchline punchline of all time. A man who chooses to lie on a busy pavement only reveals why when his speech is not transcribed via on-screen subtitles. The surrounding crowd then mimic him as the band watch from an apartment above.


RESUSCITATION

Yorke has a large part to play in Radiohead's artwork as well. He took the photograph of a hospital resuscitation doll that adorns "The Bends" cover, and he assisted Stanley Donwood with the Photoshop imagery which has become synonymous with both the "OK Computer" album and its respective singles.

What's depicted here is surely the closest we've got to a pictorial representation of a Radiohead song. The covers are multi-layered collages created with everything from computer gibberish, Yorke's sketches, sweet wrappers and ghostly religious motifs thrown into the cauldron.

"Kid A" sees further digital manipulation employed. We are shown an icy mountain range reminiscent of an old school computer game, splintered by amateurish-looking computer fields. All is not as it seems, however. Aren't some of those peaks exploding in flames? Is that a forest in the distance? Either way, it would hurt if you fell on it.

Radiohead find themselves in a unique position, then. After releasing both the most coherent, yet confusing album in their history, they can still afford to refuse to play the media game. And they are also on the brink of another, more mainstream LP. Staggeringly, this all follows "OK Computer", voted by Q readers as the most important album of all time, above the Dylans and the Stones and, of course, the Beatles.

It is indeed a ludicrous situation for any band to be in, let alone one so reluctant to toe the line or sacrifice their ideals and beliefs. "Kid A" was once reported to be entitled "ENC", an acronym of "Emperor's New Clothes".

Perhaps that's a fitting epitaph. There is always that self awareness of the situation, be it personal, commercial or artistic. And yet, we all liked them when they were mop tops, didn't we?

"There's been enough bullshit said already, so we're not going to say anything tonight." If only the Australians behind me had heeded Thom Yorke's words, delivered after the stunning opener ("The National Anthem") at Radiohead's first night in London's Victoria Park last month. Instead I was treated to an antipodal discussion on the previous night's television. I could have dealt with that alone, but when the merchant banker directly in front started punching the air during "Karma Police", I started to think perhaps many of the people here were missing the point.

Indeed, Radiohead put on a more than magnificent show. They never ventured further back than songs from "The Bends", but they tackled 95% of "Kid A" with surprising efficiency and even handled the more 'difficult' moments from "OK Computer" with ease. Certainly, it seemed as if much of the older material was given short shrift--"Paranoid Android" and "My Iron Lung" seemed sluggish and unengaging, but for every moment like that, there were newer tracks, often baffling on record, shining through now as works well worthy of the three years we spent waiting for them. "Idioteque", in particular, was met with stunned yet rapturous applause, the most 'studio' moment of the recent album transferring spectacularly to the live arena, with Yorke flailing around and the mechanical rhythms recreated in a not too cod-techno fashion. At points he lost his breath, gasping for air mid-sentence, but it only added to the thrill of seeing such a song in this environment. And what an environment.

Radiohead apparently chose to tour in a tent with higher ticket prices to avoid sponsorship, so even the paper cups we supped our warm beer from bore no advertising logos. But the consumer spirit was all around--under air-raid lights and flashing red blips, I watched aghast as mothers queued up in the cold to buy lurid yellow Radiohead raincoats, not for their children, who may have been there, but for themselves. Then they were off to buy falafels, because they're, like, healthier than chips. Suddenly the world of rock took a decidedly ironic turn. Was this even a rock concert?

I had seen Radiohead many times before, and had always felt a great sense of isolation afterwards. Never more so than this evening, though. Not in the morbid sense, but I remembered my dad talking about his feelings when the Who 'sold out', like following a first division team that suddenly makes it into the premier league. You want them to do it, but at the same time you don't. Then you hate yourself for being so precious about it all. They were mine and now they're not.

Yet I'm not that self-righteous, just confused. If people want to come and talk about TV during even the quiet bits then fair enough--so what if this is the first time we get to hear how Yorke's voice handles "How To Disappear Completely" in a live arena. If I can't see the oscillating neon lights while the band interpret "Climbing Up The Walls" because a businessman has chosen to throw caution to the wind, then so what? They are here because of all our support. And it's still better than watching Travis, isn't it?