Amnesiac is, if anything, a bolder rejection of the conventions and expectations of the modern music business and the modern rock band. It's an album spiked with wacked-out rhythmic patterns (and if drummer Phil Selway is handling the programming, he deserves special honor), distorted voices, inaudible lyrics, unsettling or non-existent melodies, and cut-and-paste digital song construction.

Despite seemingly handicapping themselves with an alien (and alienating) approach to music-making, Radiohead has still managed to produce some indelible music. The sinister propulsion of "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box" discharges a hypnotic effect. "You And Whose Army" brilliantly uses a defeated delivery to convey the song's contrasting anti-authoritarian bravado. The mid-section of "Dollars & Cents" builds to a thrilling crescendo, and "Pyramid Song" - with it's haunted melody and jazzy undertow - may be both the unlikeliest song you1ll ever hear in radio rotation, and the best song the group has released.

The very thing that singles Amnesiac out for skeptics - the seemingly willful obscurity, the lack of easily digestible songs, the abandoning of the guitar (hitherto considered Radiohead's ace) - to my mind mark it out as a landmark. Hearing the dialogue about this record, the evaluation of the band1s tactics and the merits of their inconsideration of all things practical and commercial serves to underline a very basic but vital point: The listener really needn't worry about such things. But we1ve been innoculated with the belief that those fiscal concerns are our concerns, to the point where we accept it unquestioningly as part of the game.

There is no shortage of artists willing to stay within the comfort zone and replicate past successes. Somewhere, there's an accountant or two questioning the wisdom of Radiohead's decision to make Amnesiac instead of OK Computer II. The rest of us should simply celebrate the fact that there are groups of this stature still willing to roll the dice on their own whimsy and rejoice that the results are so challenging and, more often than not, rewarding.

SIMILARITIES: Autechre, Neu, Charles Mingus (at least, those are the influences the band-members keep referencing).

BEST TRACK: "Pyramid Song" (and kudos for the little-seen but very effective video).

WORST TRACK: "Morning Bell/Amnesiac." Not a terrible song, but inferior to the Kid A original. Was there really room for this song, but no place for a studio version of "Follow Me Around?"

THE BOTTOM LINE: It's the conversation piece you can listen to, too!