Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac Poll

it sure would be nice to be able to listen to these like they weren't 'radiohead albums'

― j., Wednesday, February 12, 2014 5:01 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

It just doesn't work for me, as an album. Then there's TKOL, which is like 25 long and I wouldn't change any if it, it grows more and more cohesive every time I listen to it.

still feel like "in rainbows" is the only radiohead album i have any time for nowadays.

these two are pretty good though, i can imagine a day when i can listen to these and regain some kind of enjoyment out of them. i was a HUGE radiohead stan from ages 17-25 but, i don't know, i just don't get any pleasure out of hearing them anymore

these two albums were the height of my radiohead fandom. can't say i listen to them that often anymore, but that's probably because i listened to them hundreds of times back in the day. i'm not sure which one to pick. Kid A (the song) only gets better and better with time.

I go through phases of listening to nothing but Radiohead intensely for a few months (these tend to be rather emotionally intense/transitional periods of my life) then not feeling the need to hear them at all for another year. It's like it's all or nothing saturation point with them.

xp yea, they were the peak of my fandom too even though nowadays i only want to hear in rainbows

I got off the Radiohead bus with Kid A. Bad songs! Nice production! Got back on the bus with In Rainbows. Great songs! Concise!

Voted for Motion Picture Soundtrack. When the harps come in is one of my favourite musical moments.

Overall In Rainbows is my favourite album of theirs. Love every song on there.

Voted for Kid A. Love the drums. Think King of Limbs is their best since Kid A. But the only one I really care about is Kid A. Kid A.

Frederik I think this is a tracks poll and iirc there are no drums on the title track of "Kid A" but there is some backwards singing and DX-7 bells

there's definitely a rhythmic pulse (especially a synth-BD kind of noise) though

ETIIRP or Pyramid Song.

ah, another radiohead thread.

― festival culture (Jordan), Wednesday, February 12, 2014

wait, there are more . . . ?

HTTT is my favourite album but In Rainbows is an overlong mess of songs that are fine individually but fail to work together

Completely agree with this, but the other way round.

Although the best songs on HttT are definitely better than 'fine', and they don't really fail to work together, but it is overlong. IR on the other hand is the most perfectly formed album they've done.

agree with that except i'd say OKC flowed even better. like melting buttah. so good. but i have a lot more time for IR these days

OKC computer is a moody teenager, IR a philosophical adult.

warm radiohead > icy, cold radiohead

HTTP: I loved the RAINDROPS! part, but couldn't care less about the rest, thought the "Drunken Punch-Up At A Wedding" song was bad-enough to sour the entire oeuvre, like "oh this is what Radiohead must sound like to people who hate Radiohead"

I listened to OK Computer a lot as a teen and never liked the mix, found it rarely transported me away from "men in a room", but the good songs are great enough for me not to care. I love Pablo Honey and The Bends, great albums!

I'm posting in this thread because somebody "accused" me of not liking Radiohead and I do like them, but not enough for some people

you must love them.

only ever heard these round someone else's house, what's the one with the plinky plonky keyboards, woozy vocoder and stop start drumming? i like that one.

No one ever likes Radiohead enough for "some people"! Apparently!

(I thought you told me you weren't a big fan?)

I'm not a big fan, yes, exactly

Drunken Punch-Up is incredible! The Bends is OK but for me very uninspiring compared to what was to follow. I think we want different things from this band.

what's the one with the plinky plonky keyboards, woozy vocoder and stop start drumming?

Sounds like the title track of Kid A

Drunken Punchup is great; We Suck Young Blood is the only thing I'd leave off HTTT, TBH.

I suppose we do want different things from this band. I read Tom's write-up on U2's "Discotheque" today and Alfred's response-- "this is the definition of rockism, white rockers occupying other genres"-- and immediately thought that "Kid A" was the same thing as "Pop". I couldn't really tell you who's a worse lyricist tbh.

BONO

Drunken Punchup has that amazing, lurching seasick bass. Colin G, man, now *him* I like. No shitty basslines there!

there there was "rock song of the decade"-level good.

Sounds like the title track of Kid A

checked it out on YouTube, correct! forgot about that icy keyboard bit at the end.

Backdrifts! Backdrifts is one of those songs I have like 3 different live versions of on iTunes and I don't even like liver versions!

Both U2 and Radiohead (and also Bowie, I sadly have to admit today after listening today to the bulk of his greatest hits in a coffee shop) are these "I'm a fan" bands that I was into when I was 15, I will always keep up with them, talk about them for years, but I don't feel there is any circumstance that I'd put them on for present-tense pleasure

Hm, I think this is "Idioteque" vs "Pyramid Song". Leaning toward the latter.

I love both of these but I must admit they are like a sound collage in my head and hard to connect titles with each song.

Kid A version of "Morning Bell" has always been my favorite off these

"Pyramid Song."

Only "There There" tops that one for me.

Yeah, "Pyramid Song" for me too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGW5jEIPDgU

unofficial vote submission from Kid A/Amnesiac-era for "Kinetic"

these two albums were the height of my radiohead fandom. can't say i listen to them that often anymore, but that's probably because i listened to them hundreds of times back in the day. i'm not sure which one to pick. Kid A (the song) only gets better and better with time.

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, February 12, 2014 4:34 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is me

kid a came out when i was a freshman in hs, in retrospect it was the most freshman in hs album ever made

nah just playin
i still get moved by the highs of radiohead for real, but i "get" ppl who find them dreary and dull because there are some of those songs, too.

like, first 3 traks on amnesiac im vibing and then 'you and whose army' comes on and im like NOPE straight to knives out

funny, when you say Radiohead can be dreary and dull "Knives Out" is the first song i think of

yeah, "Knives Out" should have been great but it feels like it has never 100% worked for me

it's just so listless and unpleasant

^^

"In Limbo" >>>>>>>>>>> "Knives Out"

tbf I remember reading a Smiths comparisons thrown out to "Knives Out" at the time so that was a helpful hand at never having to waste too much time listening to that band.

haha fair enough!

i think its got a rly pretty melody. i enjoy singing it.

must agree, sounds at that point like an ok computer outtake. still quite good, but.

and again: much as i love them, i'm not really at the level of fandom that merits appreciating bootlegs with radiohead.

contradiction: the live performances of the king of limbs era material is the definitive way to hear that stuff, but that's probably the consensus by this point.

it's not about the quality or the composition, it's that it was a very early circulated radiohead bootleg, the highest quality one of an unreleased song. everyone listened to it for years and years before the studio version was released

i think i was afraid that would happen to me with "pyramid song" bc i listened to the bootleg from the tibetan freedom concert that's just thom on piano like, over and over again for a solid year before amnesiac came out. the studio version was better though

The KID A MNESIA exhibition / game is astounding. Makes up for how mildly disappointing the physical release for the anniversary was.

it's pretty good yeah

people are currently working on extracting all the audio from it, there's a lot of interesting stuff found already. looking forward to digging through that

there's a 7 minute "pulk/pull" with the chords from the "true love waits" version but the "pulk/pull" vocals

where do i see / hear / experience this exactly?

https://kida-mnesia.com/
https://www.epicgames.com/store/p/kid-a-mnesia-exhibition

& someone's dumping some of the stems & oddities as they go through them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10FpF2mwKf9ESb8F0OIXOjUplKkOJa49q

but it's very incomplete at the moment, there should be a better collection up within a few days. some of this stuff isn't anywhere (that i could tell anyway) to be found in the exhibition either

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12lJ23Bobg6qt00Z35vbxf1Fwo3Ez48T-

oh this is apparently all the audio files but there's hundreds of them & they're unlabelled

nice!

this was the hope. Sweet. Can't wait to get into this.

Mailed my vinyl back to Toronto. Kid A was a mess!

I find it hard to listen to scuzzy bootlegs of *any* artist tbh.
But bootleg audio aside, that version is pretty uninteresting compared to the album version. No cross-rhythm with the bassline, boring strummy guitar, no strings. Meh.

The most interesting ones I heard were the vocals from pulk/pull without fx that makes Thom sound like a soulless salesman and an 8 bit optimistic.

the "8 bit optimistic" was just an organ track that must have been absolutely buried in the original version or something

I don't know what I expected but this is all surprisingly expensive imho - https://merch.kida-mnesia.com/

It is. It's cute that QR codes leading to products are scattered around the game... when i exited a place there were bears holding up a sign with a code... leading to their cookies. The bears are aggressive salesmen. 25 quid though, and probably as much again in postage...nuh uh.

The free game is great though.

Kudos to the @LandsEnd designer who got this past corporate. pic.twitter.com/2shIx5fMT5

— Sam Van Hallgren (@samvanhallgren) December 10, 2021

Reminds me of this all-time great ILM thread:

Photoshop/MS Paint Nike and other evil corporations ruining famous album covers

Sadly, most of them are gone forever.