Adam Sweeting
CD OFTHEWEEK
It’s difficult to believe that Radiohead once made The Bends, a rock record with power-chords, choruses and a Turtlewax production job. Even listeners raised on Krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A (Parlophone) a mystifying experience.
Thom Yorke rejects the notion that the disc was designed to be “challenging”, but he didn’t explain why it sounds like a score composed for an experimental dance troupe. It also fails to sweep away preconceptions about Radiohead, pandering to the worst clichs about their relentless miserabilism.
It’s an album that comes at you in fragments the hesitant church organ of Motion Picture Soundtrack tumbling into a pastiche of celestial bliss with choirs and harps, the “overheard” orchestral snatches in The National Anthem prefacing a Mingus-like splurge of jazz anarchy. The lyrics, too, sneak out like cloaked assassins: “I laugh until my head comes off.”
For sheer awkwardness, it breezes off with the gold medal. Still, it does make OK Computer sound like Abba’s Greatest Hits.