Either it was wishful thinking on someone’s part or somebody’s idea of a joke, but if you swallowed all those stories about Amnesiac being a return to a ‘traditional’ Radiohead sound, or a more ‘accessible and commercial’ venture after the oblique Kid A, you’re in for a surprise. If anything Amnesiac takes the band’s wilful perversity to greater heights/depths. Put it this way, ‘Pyramid Song’ is the most obvious single here by a good mile.

What separates Amnesiac from Kid A is that last year’s album, although widely anticipated as a radical departure from the norm, was a surprise. This is near enough Kid A Part II and may be a greater test of fans’ patience and loyalty. It is, perhaps, easier to listen to in as much as it tends to hang on an easier groove; the dub and funk undercurrents are more relaxed, Thom’s voice now taking on a dreamier, less confused tone. Tracks like ‘You and Whose Army?’ for instance sound almost like 1930s dancehall easy listening transposed into the 21st Century via Seefeel’s laboratory in the clouds. Elsewhere the likes of ‘Knives Out’ and ‘Dollars and Cents’, hailed around the time of Kid A as more typically song-based are shadowy wraiths, existing in a sort of netherworld of dissolute electronica, dark, swooning classical passages and extremely stoned funk. They’re not machines and they’re definitely not averse to the odd spliff, Radiohead.

Radiohead’s central tenet that traditional song-orientated, guitar-based music is redundant is carried further on Amnesiac than ever before. Sometimes they take it too far: the ponderous, ennui-fuelled ‘Hunting Bears’ and the pointless remodelling of ‘Morning Bell’ for example seem to exist merely to fill space; elsewhere, notably ‘Like Spinning Plates’, they show that they are capable of creating a raw, haunting atmosphere.

Still, it all depends on what you consider a ‘proper’ song is. The awesome ‘Pyramid Song’ is no ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, but, like ‘Paranoid Android’ before it, its sheer twisted majesty and power comes bearing down on you like an unstoppable slow-motion avalanche, while ‘Pull Pulk Revolving Doors’ steals its beats from underground hip hop masters like Hoodlum Priest and twists and sours them accordingly. Equally, Amnesiac's coda, ‘Life In A Glasshouse’, featuring legendary jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttleton, is devilishly sly - Radiohead writing their own funeral maarch in a New Orleans jazz style. It’s maybe pertinent to ask if they’re simply taking the piss on occasions but Radiohead, utterly unlike anyone else on or anywhere near their level, really do seem to care about trying to unlock new doors. If they don’t always succeed - and Amnesiac is most certainly a difficult, flawed album - then at least they fail strangely and heroically. Can you even start to imagine Limp Bizkit trying anything so crazy as to disregard everything that made them successful in the first place?

Ultimately Amnesiac succeeds, despite its faults, because it shows a band cynical, disgusted, undaunted and enthusiastic enough about music to try it on, test people’s patience and damn the consequences. While Stereophonics are still discovering, and copying, Bob Dylan, while Oasis are proudly announcing that their next album will be more of the same (again) and while U2 have finally turned into the stadium rock Aha, Radiohead are deep sea diving on Jupiter by comparison. Apparently Muse are thinking of buying a synthesizer.

-Ronan Munro

Nightshift
06.01