Well, it definitely ain't Kid B.

What Amnesiac also is not:

"Just an unwanted stepchild of Kid A... a more frustrating, even infuriating work... an act of hostility and contempt [that strays] off into the same category that Yes did [with Tales From Topographic Oceans] over a quarter century ago."
- the normally reliable David Browne, writing in Entertainment Weekly

"Turning down the bed in your head, switching off the lights, and giving you the chance to work it all out... abandoning verse-chorus-verse motion to let the tracks just roll out, like bolts of cloth, detail accruing like fuzz on a sweater. Nothing sudden, nothing jarring - just work it out."
- the metaphor/simile-intoxicated Sasha Frere-Jones, a musician himself who really should know better, in Spin

"The human touch and its visceral impact are no longer central to the music. The songs on Amnesiac are barely populated vistas, subdued and ambient but not at all soothing."
- a Rolling Stone-like comment from Jon Pareles, in, ahem, Rolling Stone

Got all that? Good; discuss. Meanwhile, the rest of us who actually sit around listening to music and reacting to it rather than theorizing it into the ground (take Greil Marcus - please) can kick off our shoes, flop down on the floor in the middle of the room and bask in the sonic luxury and downright hookiness that is Amnesiac.

By now everyone knows that, yes, these 11 songs are holdovers from the Kid A sessions. Not leftovers, mind you, as that term implies lukewarm or reheated goods; a number of them were initially shortlisted for Kid A, including "Knives Out," "You And Whose Army?" and "Life In A Glasshouse." Additionally, "Pyramid Song" was being performed live as far back as mid-'99 (under its early, provisional title "Nothing To Fear"), and Radiohead set lists in 2000 regularly included several tunes that now feature prominently on Amnesiac, proof the group doesn't regard them as unwanted stepchildren.

While there's sufficient abstraction and electronica folderol 'n' bric-a-brac a la Kid A to keep the cursor lights blinking in the heads of fans of Autechre or early Aphex Twin, Amnesiac is indeed jarring - in its overt pop beauty. "Pyramid Song," wrung from a desolate Thom Yorke vocal and sparse piano motif in the first half then leavened by a hauntingly beautiful orchestral effect in the second, suggests John Lennon collaborating with Ennio Morricone. Its similar, initially more subdued cousin here is "You And Whose Army?" which builds and unfolds toward a decisive climax (also orchestrally tinged) that's oddly grand in, well, a Radiohead-esque sense. The expansive "Knives Out" winnows and jangles the way you wish R.E.M. would have winnowed and jangled at least once on Reveal, while the dubbily aquatic, interstellar symphony "Dollars And Cents" is so damn Krautrockin' that you half expect Julian Cope to turn up as a guest MC. "I Might Be Wrong," of course, is the new song with the Big Riff, courtesy of Jonny Greenwood (who's always had a bit of the guitar-wank hero about him, recent non-stringed gear fetish - as evidenced front and center during RRadiohead's appearance on Saturday Night Live last winter - notwithstanding), and it's an infectious Big Riff pumped up by a mantra-like beat and propelled by a suitably chant-y vocal from Yorke. Oh, and if it's straightforward musical traditionalism you want, the Dixieland funeral dirge "Life In A Glass House" will do quite nicely.

No human touch? Sparsely populated? Subdued? Not soothing? No visceral impact? These are the impressions of a deadline-impaired writer who's listened to Amnesiac once or twice, three times at most, before having to file his copy. To be absolutely fair, I might've gleaned similar surface impressions but was fortunate enough to be given a CD-R of the complete album, downloaded from the Internet, long in advance of the press' promotional servicing. There's an intermittent digital-smeared-with-analog fuzziness in places that may imply disconnect, and several cuts serve more as mood-directing segues - the bleepy/staticy "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," the backward-tracked "Like Spinning Plates" - than real "songs," additionally givingg the illusion of remoteness. One recalls reviewers leveled similar criticisms, at least at first, at Achtung Baby by U2, whose apparent flirtation with the icy vistas of electronica seemed at odds with the group's well-worn humane populism.

But hostility? Contempt? Hardly the case. These are warm, red-blooded songs, exquisitely sequenced (an ongoing trademark of Radiohead) for maximum emotional impact, offering the feeling that even in Yorke's well-documented disillusionment with the human race, he and his mates still feel compelled to participate and, most importantly, invite us along for the ride. The album's flow is crucial, by the way, just like old-school, concept-laden gatefold sleeve LPs; you can test this theory by playing the CD on "random." Again, like Achtung Baby, the material on Amnesiac just gets better and better with every new listen - try the opening "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box" at different times of day and in different moods; I guarantee you'll hear a radically different composition each time - with pop hooks a-poppin' out a-plenty, too. In other words, it isn't necessary to theorize, postulate or pontificate in order to enjoy Amnesiac on its own terms. (Nor, it turns out, did you have to for Kid A, which had its own share of subtle hooks, but as it did tend to mark a sea-change both for the band, its musical peers in the U.K. and the post-rock world, you were excused if you did.) While you can't exactly sing along with Yorke the way you can with Bono (as on Kid A, Yorke is still enamored of heavy layering and/or processing his voice), you can damn sure hum along and tap your feet. Bob, I'll give it a 98 - and I can dance to it, too.

Worth noting is that unlike with Kid A, Radiohead is opting to release singles from Amnesiac. Overseas, the elegiac, swooning "Pyramid Song" gets the initial nod. (The less adventurous marketing department of the group's stateside label, Capitol, has apparently selected the more straightforward "rock" tune "I Might Be Wrong" for the first U.S. single.) Depending on what country you're looking at, "Pyramid Song" is matched up with two, three or four non-album b-sides (my advice: buy the Japanese version). They are, in succession: "Fast Track," a hectic, tribal percussion-driven electronic collage; "The Amazing Sounds Of Orgy," a swampy jazz/blues number splintered by ambient interludes; "Trans-Atlantic Drawl," a rockish, almost Stones-go-industrial slab o' scree with punkish vocals and a minimalist/drone coda; and "Kinetic," which is reminiscent of Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" arranged for orchestra 'n' dub. Taken as a package, the lot holds up remarkably. Perhaps the true Kid B - as in "b-sides" - is just around the corner for anyone with a CD burner and the patience to collect all the Amnesiac singles.

Kid A was an inscrutable, brave-move masterpiece, of course. But Amnesiac is a masterpiece, too. In its relative brevity, its hooky songs have genuine OK Computer-style staying power. In terms of bravery, Radiohead is starting to look like a squad of war heroes. In the past when bands have issued two back-to-back/joined-at-the-cortex albums, the strategy often seemed mostly egotistical (Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and II), a dam-burst of songwriting that should've been subjected to a more rigorous editing process (Bruce Springsteen's Human Touch and Lucky Town) or simply artistic indecision (Pink Floyd's The Wall and Roger Waters' The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking, both written at the same time by Waters and submitted to his then-bandmates for adjudication, who in turn initially rejected the more famous sibling - my, how rock history might have been different).

Radiohead may share partial turf with those three artists, but the group wisely opted not to issue Kid A as a double record and instead pared the tunes down to what it deemed (correctly, as things turned out) a couple of discrete albums, then leaving the rest for b-sides. And without a doubt, Radiohead sidestepped the third pitfall simply by being Radiohead - trusting its best instincts and not undergoing excessive career navel-gazing. There's your bravery angle. In less than a year, a band goes from A to Z, navigating the sort of creative wormhole that would wither even the most seasoned veterans of the psych or prog wars and coming out the other side gleaming like a black marble obelisk.

Might as well call the record - go on and say it, it won't hurt, you know you want to - Kid Z.

Magnet
07.01