Radiohead
Amnesiac
(Capitol)

The great enigma of our time, the UK's Radiohead, has released their second album in less than a year, Amnesiac. Unfortunately, following their critically acclaimed yet audience perplexing Kid A, many have written these new tracks off as simply Kid A outtakes. But while much of Amnesiac's material was written and produced during the same sessions as the material from Kid A, there are definite reasons to listen to Amnesiac as a completely separate and fully realized work. This is not a B-sides record. This is not an attempt to confuse listeners. This is a completely honest growth from both OK Computer and Kid A; it is a meld of these pasts, with a look to the future.

On the most basic level, thank god Radiohead avoided the overwrought mega band bloated two-disc set. The split of Amnesiac from Kid A allows the weighty issues covered on the newest release, from politics ("You and Whose Army") to divorce ("Morning Bell/Amnesiac") to existential clarity ("Pyramid Song"), a deeper focus. In the end, Radiohead has delivered their vision in two tightly wrapped packages, to force and allow the listener to concentrate on the music, the issues, and each record as an independent artistic statement. And wily they are for making this choice. Had these songs been double album, few would have ventured to or had the stamina to trudge through the musical depths to which they have plunged within the years following OK Computer.

While both records seek and deliver on the goal of clarity and focus, though, Amnesiac should not be shrugged off as Kid B. While the influences of leftfield or IDM ("intelligent dance music" as the genre has been dubbed) acts such as Squarepusher and Autechre are still plainly obvious in tracks such as "Pakt Like Sardines..." and "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" as well as jazz structures and styles on "Life in a Glasshouse or "I Might be Wrong," on Amnesiac, Radiohead has given the people what they want, albeit on Yorke and Co.'s own terms. These tracks are a much more direct outgrowth of the OK Computer sounds the masses came to revere. Song structure has returned, even though they are not simple verse-chorus-verse tracks. Tracks like "Pyramid Song", "Morning Bell/Amnesiac", and "Knives Out" parallel OK's "Exit Music", "Lucky" and "Tourist" more than anything on Kid A. The common Radiohead sound thread has resurfaced, as have the guitars. The collective whine from fans in the immediate post-Kid A-era rang loudly for more guitars and more rock. With "Dollars and Cents", "Hunting Bears", and especially "I Might Be Wrong", the guitars once again reach the top levels of the mixing board.

But all this does not mean the Radiohead have in anyway compromised anything for anyone. Whereas, on Kid A, influences and experiments reigned, Amnesiac presents the band's own sound as primary, and relegates the influences to a secondary role. These "other" sounds that scared listeners so much the first time around, still make their presences known, but to those who have forgotten where Radiohead were going, Amnesiac reveals exactly where they were, as well as where they are going.

-Miguel Banuelos

Outer Sound
06.01