Well, that's not the case. The (very general) rule of thumb for Amnesiac is "If it has guitars, then it doesn't have live drums." There is a handful of guitar-oriented tracks, including the spaghetti Western riff-drum machine lope of "I Might Be Wrong," the album-closing funeral dirge "Life in a Glass House" (complete with brass and clarinet), the slow-building "You and Whose Army?" and the magnificent "Knives Out." But if you were hoping that this record would show a return to OK Computer's "Karma Police" or "Let Down," prepare to be disappointed.
But only slightly. Like Kid A, Amnesiac is a somewhat noisy and "difficult" album, with bits of electronica vamps and analog keyboard pads coating songs to the point where singer Thom Yorke seems to be fighting to be heard through the pingponging percussion and drifting ambient noises. And he doesn't fight too hard, meaning the vocals are often buried - something that points to the obvious noncommercial nature of the record. Yet, underneath it all, there are delicious moments where the cleverness is subjugated and great songs peek out.
There are somewhat "traditional" songs, but none of them are verse-chorus-verse, and there isn't a hook anywhere within the 11 tracks. Songs crescendo, ebbing and flowing with dynamic shifts moving in nearly imperceptible increments. But don't be mistaken; they're not reinventing the album as a piece of art. They're doing experimental things with instrumentation, sequencing and pop songwriting, but it's nothing Talk Talk, Tortoise, Aphex Twin, Pink Floyd or DJ Shadow haven't done to some degree.
If there is any band worth following on its exploration, it's Radiohead. The band have proved their ability to keep changing, challenging themselves and fans, yet Amnesiac represents the first album on which the band haven't taken a major leap forward. At its least inspired, Amnesiac retreads Kid A, literally. There's a somnambulistic version of Kid A's "Morning Bell," turning the jazzy drums and near-funky keyboards inside out. "Amnesiac/ Morning Bell," as it's called here, is flattened and dulled, performed on acoustic guitars and plinking bells, with gauzy keyboards doing little more than filling up space. More successful is the drone of the warped and dizzying "Like Spinning Plates," built on a backward track from the Kid A recording sessions.
The coda of "I Might Be Wrong," with its loose, freewheeling guitars and stuttering drum machine, actually sounds like a band vamping on a little groove. And when Yorke's wordless vocals come soaring above it all, it's as warm and human a moment as you'll find on any album. That's quite a compliment, suggesting that Radiohead have managed to find the soul within the machines.
-David Simutis
New Times Los Angeles
07.06.01