Amnesiac

Rolling Stone (1/03/02, p.119) - Ranked #10 in Rolling Stone's "Top 10 2001". Rolling Stone (6/21/01, pp.74-5) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...Clear proof that the progressive-rock impulse survived the 20th century....full of computerized clicks and hums...and of instruments and voices so heavily filtered they sound alienated even from themselves....It's like ZZ Top kidnapped by Autechre..." Spin (1/02, p.76) - Ranked #2 in Spin's "Albums of the Year 2001". Spin (7/01, pp.123-4) - 7 out of 10 - "...Lullabies for the compressed present...abandoning verse-chorus-verse motion to let the tracks just roll out, like bolts of cloth..." Q (7/01, p.118) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Similarly shy, textural and embroidered by electronica, but where it differs vitally from KID A is in being 1) better balanced, 2) more emotionally intelligible and 3) even more grimly beautiful..." Alternative Press (2/02, p.64) - Ranked #1 in AP's "25 Best Albums of 2001". Alternative Press (7/01, p.79) - 9 out of 10 - "...Quintessentially Radiohead, full of existential rock songs powered by Yorke's delicate, aching, soaring vocals..." Magnet (12-1/02, p.57) - Included in Magnet's "20 Best Albums of 2001". The Wire (1/02, p.40) - Ranked #18 in Wire's "50 Records of the Year 2001". The Wire (6/01, p.52) - "...It works for as long as you can keep other - weighted, braver, graver - examples or exemplars out of your mind, The moment you summon Jeff Buckley or John Cale, PiL or Can, Talk Talk or David Sylvian, the spell is broken..." CMJ (6/4/01, p.5) - "...Another adventuresome, aloof, non-rock joint that's more an album of concepts than a concept album..." Vibe (8/01, p.160) - 4 discs out of 5 - "...Populated with skittish techno beats, water-damaged samples and the kind of vocal mastery you would hear from a wounded donkey....If genuises are slightly mad, then Radiohead is stark, raving bonkers..." Mojo (Publisher) (1/02, p.69) - Ranked #10 in Mojo's "Best [40] Albums of 2001". Mojo (Publisher) (7/01, p.104) - "...Deliriously provocative....as splendidly other and awkward as its sister album [KID A]..." NME (Magazine) (12/29/01, p.59) - Ranked #25 in NME's 50 "Albums Of the Year 2001". NME (Magazine) (6/2/01, p.37) - 8 out of 10 - "...It complements KID A beautifully....the jazz spasms and electronic pulsings, the chill blood, and most of all, the chronic hypersensitivity to the world outside..." Pitchfork (Website) - "[I]t's an emotionally resonant and often very warm record."

Faced with a deliberately difficult deviation into "experimentation," Radiohead and their record label promoted Kid A as just that -- a brave experiment, and that the next album, which was just around the corner, really, would be the "real" record, the one to satiate fans looking for the next OK Computer, or at least guitars. At the time, people bought the myth, especially since live favorites like "Knives Out" and "You and Whose Army?" were nowhere to be seen on Kid A. That, however, ignores a salient point -- Amnesiac, as the album came to be known, consists of recordings made during the Kid A sessions, so it essentially sounds the same. Since Radiohead designed Kid A as a self-consciously epochal, genre-shattering record, the songs that didn't make the cut were a little simpler, so it shouldn't be a surprise that Amnesiac plays like a streamlined version of Kid A, complete with blatant electronica moves and production that sacrifices songs for atmosphere. This, inevitably, will disappoint the legions awaiting another guitar-based record (that is, after all, what they were explicitly promised), but what were they expecting? This is an album recorded at the same time and Radiohead have a certain reputation to uphold. It would be easier to accept this if the record was better than it is. Where Kid A had shock on its side, along with an admirably dogged desire to not be conventional, Amnesiac often plays as a hodgepodge. True, it's a hodgepodge with amazing moments: the hypnotic sway of "Pyramid Song" and "You and Whose Army?," the swirling "I Might Be Wrong," "Knives Out," and the spectacular closer "Life in a Glasshouse," complete with a drunkenly swooning brass band. But, these are not moments that are markedly different than Kid A, which itself lost momentum as it sputtered to a close. And this is the main problem -- though it's nice for an artist to be generous and release two albums, these two records clearly derive from the same source and have the same flaws, which clearly would have been corrected if they had been consolidated into one record. Instead of revealing why the two records were separated, the appearance of Amnesiac makes the separation seem arbitrary -- there's no shift in tone, no shift in approach, and the division only makes the two records seem unfocused, even if the best of both records is quite stunning, proof positive that Radiohead are one of the best bands of their time. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine