Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac Poll

I used to think Amnesiac was a bit slight compared to both Kid A and HTTT but I prefer it to the latter these days (although I still think the redone 'Morning Bell' is kind of a waste of time). HTTT is a great album but it could definitely lose a few tracks and I don't think it's sequenced particularly well - the mood gets a bit stifling towards the end. In Rainbows seemed effortless in comparison.

'They're just shamelessly ripping Warp Records in a really sloppy way' was my first reaction.

Mine too and I was also wrong.

I also agree with whoever said upthread that it would be great to be able to hear these records outside of the context of Radiohead The Band. If some other band had simply released these two records and then disappeared, I wonder how I'd feel about them.

EIIRP, although if this were expanded to include 'I Might Be Wrong:Live Recordings' I'd vote for 'Like Spinning Plates'.

I kinda feel like HTTT is one of the great albums iof the decade. Like, for one thing, afaic it looks forward to, like, Silent Shout

It's a good album but it could have been trimmed and rearranged a bit. I always liked Punch Up At The Wedding, personally, but found the Gloaming a bit lacking and I don't like the way the album's got two intro tracks. Strangely I sometimes wish Radiohead were MORE conceptual with their releases in some way. Too often I find their post-Amnesiac work to be disjointed and directionless; just loose jumbles of disparate tracks. Considering the amount of time and care Yorke spent on sequencing OKC, the track orders on In Rainbows and HTTT are kind of unforgivable.

best track: Idioteque
worst track: The National Anthem

both are simple, repetitive, and claustrophobic; one of them works astonishingly well, the other flounders.

Great tracks which I feel may be overlooked: Optimistic, In Limbo, Dollars and Cents.

Optimistic is great. I can't remember much about In Limbo or Dollars and Cents.

Idioteque

Pyramid Song
Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors
Everything In Its Right Place
In Limbo
Idioteque

I can narrow it down to these five before I get stuck, so I hope these are the top 5 in the poll results

I can't help but mention how wonderful Kid A was for the teenage stoner. Treefingers seemed like an obvious invitation to pack another bowl, and then Optimistic would come on at juuuust the right time and kick off side 2.

Wow, I think the paranoia and dread of that album would have sent me round the bend personally. Kid A is def the iciest record they've made (In Rainbows is the warmest).

Can't believe Pyramid Song got to number 2 in the UK charts. That's like These New Puritans breaking the charts. I never could understand how they managed to remain quite so commercially successful.

The poll to end all polls!

How to disappear all the way. My favorite song on my favorite album of all time.

I remember all the accusations upon release of them ripping off other artists (autechre, miles, and can and the warp catalog in general were mentioned frequently), but I didn't really have an opinion since I wasn't deeply familiar with all of that stuff at the time. As others mentioned upthread, those criticisms seem totally bogus now.

The influences of Treefingers are more obvious because it stands apart as its own ambient track without integrating the influences into other radiohead sounds. Still love it though !

I can't help but mention how wonderful Kid A was for the teenage stoner. Treefingers seemed like an obvious invitation to pack another bowl, and then Optimistic would come on at juuuust the right time and kick off side 2.

― Karl Malone, Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:56 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha, totally. went on a snowboarding trip w/ a couple friends in high school and kind of just played this album on repeat and smoked bowl after bowl

Everything In Its Right Place was the perfect introduction to this new phase. I remember loving it the very first time I heard it and then losing faith when the title track slowed things down. I have a vendetta against momentum-killing second tracks (see also: Daft Punk's Game of Love).

Also, the title track sort of does sound like a pallid imitation of Warp whereas Everything is entirely its own entity, and joyous in a way. It's almost rave-like live.

also the national anthem is really pretty awesome, it wasn't my favorite at first but now it's one of the highlights of kid a for me, wish they explored those free jazz experiments a little more

Gigamesh unearthed the deep house track Radiohead was clearly trying to make here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HzTdmeSgjU

I was holding out for an Orbital remix at the time. Would have paid good money for a version with a boshing kickdrum.

My mate reckons the opening chords of EIIRP sound like slipping into a warm bath.

I have a vendetta against momentum-killing second tracks (see also: Daft Punk's Game of Love).

is OTM. A total sequencing faux-pas. Especially since it's usually track 2 I tend to skip to if I need to sample an album very very quickly.

The Gigamesh remix of Once in a Lifetime is amazing. Looking forward to hearing this.

Kid A is still my favorite radiohead song. The first half of the Kid A album is basically all the radiohead I really need, maybe throw in "There There" as a bonus track.

Kid A was a massive stoner album among my friends in college. I remember thinking of it back then as sort of a millenial update of Dark Side of the Moon

OTM in many ways

I never could understand how they managed to remain quite so commercially successful.

They are very good at hooks despite themselves.

just can't get my head around this being a stoner album, or even a "social environment" album. Don't think I can remember a time I ever listened to 'Kid A' in a social context. Tried to get my other half (who'd stopped listening to Radiohead in the 90s) to listen to Kid A with me once but she wasn't interested. Maybe Amnesiac...? I'm sure I listened to that with friends once... I did buy Amnesiac the same day I first tried berries though.

my stoner friends enjoyed amnesiac but found it much more alienating than kid a

They are very good at hooks despite themselves.

― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Thursday, February 13, 2014 3:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mmmmmmmmhhhhhh..... Don't really think that's a good enough explanation for me. Pyramid Song's not exactly a hook fest and I can't think of that much post-OKC stuff that would count as hummable in a commercial way. I might be wrong (pun intended)

"Jumped in the river what did I see" is a big hook imo. Don't think a band can get as big as they are without a significant element of catchiness.

friends who can get stoned to kid a and not be totally weird about it are the best friends imo

Pyramid Song's not exactly a hook fest

yes it is, actually

I'd say Kid A is to Autechre as Remain in Light is to Fela Kuti - there's a marked influence but they're not at all the same beast.

This is really OTM; I thought the "just copying Warp" criticism was lazy and just an old standby of the Radiohate crowd. I mean certainly there's some Ae influence but it's worth noting that Autechre themselves were onto things like Confield back then which is really freakin far away from what Kid A was doing...if anything it's aping bits of early Ae albums like Incunabula or Amber. I didn't know anything about Warp when I first heard Kid A - my initial impression is that it captured the despondent feeling of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity, which I've never heard another album quite get before.

I tend to agree with whoever it is around here that posits that Kid A's critical rep owes a lot to its sequencing. Skip the first two tracks and start with "The National Anthem" and I think a lot of the album's "strangeness" dissolves.

This thread is doing what I thought impossible; it makes me want to listen to Radiohead again

xP: I mean, the piano riff, the various vocal phrases, the wordless "Ooh" phrase that acts as a bridge, the bassline; the only reason the song wouldn't be considered "catchy" is because it's in a stately 12/8 meter which makes the rhythm sound more complicated and abstract than it actually is.

Rabbit in Your Headlights seems like the first Kid A song in some respects.

Talk Show Host a little bit too.

When Kid A came out all the major UK print titles gave it lukewarm reviews and then I noticed an alternative consensus - mostly online (this was around the time I discovered ILX and Pitchfork), possibly more US than UK — that saw it in Dark Side of the Moon terms: a serious, forward-thinking, gloomy-yet-comforting rock record that sounded good stoned. It was weird seeing its rep change from self-indulgent misfire to decade-defining classic, although to me it's always been somewhere in the middle.

I'd say "Meeting in the Aisle" predicts this era the clearest.

og morning bell

^^^ listen to this brad

I am surprised by all of the negativity around "Knives Out" upthread, I can't think of a single bad thing to say about that song.

Yeah it's the OKC b-sides like Melatonin and A Reminder which preceded this era and stopped Kid A feeling like such a huge jump into the unknown. It's kind of cool that in retrospect the b-sides can be seen as experiments that point to the future rather than throwaway lesser-songs that weren't considered good enough for the album.

I felt like they'd made Knives Out already. Always equated it as being part two of another song (Karma Police?). BTW Karma Police is probably my second or third favourite Radiohead song. Did we ever do a Radiohead tracks poll?

I felt like they'd made Knives Out already.

The chord structure and texture are somewhat similar to the first section of Paranoid Android.

Yeah, probably that.

It was weird seeing its rep change from self-indulgent misfire to decade-defining classic, although to me it's always been somewhere in the middle

That process you describe isn't its reputation changing though, since the initial consensus from the print titles (dud) remained. There are still plenty of people who (rightly, in my view) view it as a self-indulgent misfire. FWIW I would say that your description of "a serious, forward-thinking, gloomy-yet-comforting rock record" actually fits OK Computer much better than it fits Kid A.

i find OKC harsh and grating now

og morning bell

Yeah this song is really, really amazing