Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac Poll

jazz covers of radiohead is a whole thing unto itself, but they can be cool for highlighting parts that might have gotten obscured by the instrumentation for some people. i hadn't seen this before, i like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSw7TXt3DZE

Interesting that the biggest "hit" on either of these albums came in last

Hi fives to Simon H

xpost - huh? I thought Idioteque and Pyramid Song were the 'hits'

"Optimistic" was pushed out to US radio and semi-inescapable on alternative/modern rock stations for a hot minute

I agree that "Pyramid Song" and "Idioteque" ended up being bigger impact songs, though

Fair dos. Yeah, I think if I were to name a third 'hit' it would have been 'How To Disappear' whihc got played on Radio 1 a bit before the album came out.

IIRC they also released "Knives Out" and "I Might Be Wrong"

I'd say 'Idioteque' got the most airplay of the Kid A tracks in the UK. Can't recall 'Optimistic' getting much, if any exposure here.

Amnesiac to me is where they lost the plot. I get that it's similar in a sense to Kid A, but that one's cohesive in a way this isn't. "Pyramid Song" is amazing but otherwise it's total garb

just thought of this cuz I think of Radiohead whenever Coldplay drops a new album for some strange reason

lol didn't see someone already said "lose the plot" way up there

Kid A is my favorite Radiohead though so I can't agree with the plot-losage there

Do you like the post-amnesiac stuff?

I like about half of Yorke's solo album.

My basic problem with their material post-Amnesiac is that they tried to reintroduce guitars into their sound while still retaining the more "experimental" electronic streak of that album/Kid A and to my ears it's not meshed well. Theoretically it could and since Kid A's my favorite I'm not someone clamoring for a return to The Bends/OK Computer or whatnot, but yeah.

Amnesiac b-sides are mostly a waste of time, but man, how great is 'Fog'?

Relistened to Amnesiac recently and was reminded of how much I love "Dollars and Cents". Krautrock RH = Best RH.

Amnesiac b-sides are mostly a waste of time, but man, how great is 'Fog'?

would be their best set of bsides for "fog" and "cuttooth" alone, but also "kinetic" and "worrywort"!

concur as "kinetic" is probably the only track from that era i ever go back to. i remember "the amazing sounds of orgy" having a really great haunting groove.

i would love a long sprawling instrumental radiohead album full of fucked up fragmented shit like "pulk/pull" and "hunting bears"

Lol at t4 votes for pulk/pull and troll votes for hunting bears and treefingers.

LOL at 'Optimistic' only getting one vote

I think 'Treefingers' is great, and absolutely perfect as an interlude between the first and second halves of Kid A. 'Hunting Bears' feels like filler in comparison.

Agreed. I love that 'Treefingers' is supposedly all effected guitar, no synths.

They're good interludes but they're interludes. Picking them on top of the rest of their respective albums is vexing.

Treefingers is amazing, interlude or no. I don't think it's a troll vote at all (though I didn't vote for it). I wish I were like eight minutes long.

I also wish IT was eight minutes long

I wish Like Spinning Plates was 9 hours, like an Andy Warhol movie.

Taste is subjective. I love treefingers but I wouldn't choose it over any of the other songs in Kid A. Even the hidden track after MPS sounds better to me. To each its own. If you think treefingers is the best song on Kid A, then go listen to one of Eno's ambient albums and prepare to have your mind blown.

I hate the 'Like Spinning Plates' version on Amnesiac always end up skipping it. It's cool how it was made but I prefer the piano version on IMBW. Would prefer if they had made something more similar to that on the studio. It sounded interesting 15 years ago but it's one of their experiments that hasn't aged that good imho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqZM71MXNfs

live Fog; even better!

most of the second side of Amnesiac (save Glass House) leaves me cold. It's like a warm up for TKOL or something.

Dollars and Cents is a real hidden gem though.

agree w/ dog latin

first half is great though, pyramid song one of the best

It's all over the place it really feels like the b-sides to Kid A. Lots of gems but wouldn't fit in Kid A.

'Dollars and Cents' is one of those tracks that grew on me a great deal. When I heard Amnesiac the first few times it didn't make much of an impression, but nowadays it's a favourite. I particularly love the way the drums are treated in the mix, alternating between heavy reverb and a more drier approach.

Reading back through the studio diary Ed was keeping at the time of recording, it's amazing how much stuff they've put out since that either had its genesis during these sessions or was written earlier, didn't work out, but found a version that worked later on. For all the talk of writers block and all that stuff, it turned out to be an incredibly productive period that you can still feel echoes of in their work even now. They really don't throw anything away, do they!?

*they

I think I've only made it through the whole of Treefingers maybe twice... I like the concept of an ambient interlude at that point in the album, but it's fearsomely dull to actually listen to.

I don't think it's that difficult to get a handle on 'Treefingers', really... it's not formless at all, it has a structure and a chord progression and everything!

Doesn't mean I have to like it.

I've nothing against beatless textural ambient numbers, but I don't think Treefingers is a particularly interesting one.

I've always preferred Amnesiac to Kid A. Kid A has more real songs but they're both mood pieces, basically, and Amnesiac does sustained mood better IMO.

Is there a thread for ppl to discuss their personal kid amnesiac mixes? Bc that's a thing I've done

x-post:

I dunno, I think Kid A works well as a start-to-finish thing, whereas Amnesiac is frontloaded... I would have loved for them to have found a way of putting tracks like 'Fog' and 'Cuttooth' on there.

Both of these albums must have been a pain in the backside to sequence though. I guess they knew they had enough for a couple of albums when it came to compiling Kid A, but they had so much stuff that there must have been some strong debates about what eventually went onto Kid A and in what order. The fact that it came after OK Computer, too... they must have really agonised over it. Then with Kid A done, the approach for Amnesiac must have been "how do we make a decent record up out of the remainder of the tracks?"

Ed's diary of the recording sessions is fine, but doesn't really tell the full story... I'd really love to read a book on the sessions from these records from start to finish.

like both well enough as front-to-back listens that i've never considered stripping them down for parts. do agree that amnesiac lists a bit after "knives out". "treefingers" is perfect tho.

I found Dollars & Cents really dull at the time - same with Knives Out and I Might Be Wrong and most of the middle section of Amnesiac. As someone who was underwhelmed by much of Kid A but was glad they made it, I didn't want them to be making any kind of rock music any more, I wanted them to be better at making electronic music.

I wonder if D&C would sound better in light of the new album though. It seems to be closer to AMSP than anything else from that era.

Ed's diary of the recording sessions is fine, but doesn't really tell the full story... I'd really love to read a book on the sessions from these records from start to finish.

They appear to be so fearsomely passive aggressive and closed off I wonder if anybody knows the full story of their tortured, album making sagas.

i love how Cuttooth got mentioned the most in the diary by far and it ended up being a b side

the weak points of Amnesiac are Knives Out (quite a dull song), Morning Bell/Amnesiac, Pulk/Pull (nothing really wrong with it but doesn't work in context) and Hunting Bears

would have much prefer Cuttoth, Fog, Kinetic & Worrywort on it over those, Cuttooth and Fog especially are among their very best. i don't know why they hate the recording of Fog so much