Thom Yorke had a bit of a problem a couple years ago which he told Q magazine about: He was listening to obscure art-techno music, stuff that you can't dance to. He wanted to make an album of that kind of music. He didn't want to sing at all. He didn't want to write songs. The problem was that he was in a band with four good, old friends from school and lots of people really liked that band and that band had released One of the Greatest Albums of All Time on which all of the band played. One of the things that people liked best about the band was Thom's voice. So Thom compromised. He stalled and cried writer's block. He threatened. He talked the rest of the band into playing keyboards and samplers instead of guitars and drums. Or not playing at all. And he put his voice on the tracks but he didn't really sing, he just mumbled or hummed or used electronic effects. Some of the band (Ed O'Brien, Jonny Greenwood) liked his idea better than others (Phil Selway, Colin Greenwood). Two albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, got made.

Amnesiac has more dynamics and swells and emotions than Kid A did. "You and Whose Army" is a classic case of Thom playing the taunting little kid (small k), slunking in the corner and daring "you and your cronies" to bring it on, kind of like he did on "Paranoid Android". "Knives Out" and "Pyramid Song" are very pretty, "Morning Bell" (again) breaks your heart (again) and "I Might Be Wrong" sounds like Morphine on twice the drugs just like "National Anthem" did on Kid A. I'll say the same as I did for Kid A: if this were a new band with a debut album, I'd be oohing and aahing away but I still wouldn't know quite what to make of it. Since it's Radiohead I'll say that I want to like it more than I actually do and I wish they'd stop pissing around and make a proper album like big boys do, but for a rock band they make good techno and for a techno band they make good rock. As far as problems go, Thom's isn't a bad one to have.

-John Bergstrom

Milk
08.07.01