Living Past the Final Curtain

Freedom and its consequences in Radiohead's Kid A and Outkast's Stankonia

Joshua Ellison
Junkmedia
04.04.02

                                                                                                                                        -Book of Revelations

January 1, 2000. 00:00:01. The millennial turn was an empty flash. Just the small hours of an ordinary day. No harpists and no harps. No reeds like rods and no red dragon. No seventh seal. The pit of the abyss is still closed.

It was a revelatory understatement. And he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by reason of the signs... lots of clock-watching, some looking skyward, waiting on the news, then nothing.

With reckoning and rapture off the table, it was back to business for the infidels and fornicators. Back to self-doubt and self-importance. Back to our senses. But, admit it, for a few seconds there you thought your number might be up, your card pulled, all your sowing reaped, as promised.

A new era in name only, and a stay of execution. But, for me, a pair of records from that year showed a way forward into borrowed time. Outkast's Stankonia and Radiohead's Kid A capture the pressure and release of those first days. The state of the art at (and of) the moment.

The records told me that times really had changed. In some ways they are different: Kid A is a slow descent and Stankonia is a grand tour. Radiohead embeds sound in emptiness and ellipses. Everything in its right place. Outkast sets out on a collision course, a navigation of strange terrain. But they're linked, too. Both are obsessed with emancipation in the most sensual way: trying on every imaginable feeling of restriction, expanse, solitude, urge and infinity.

These two bands already gave us our best examples of pre-millennial tension: OK Computer and Aquemini. The taut, existential panic of humans in an information age, thinking of ruin. Outkast's "Art of Storytelling," the finest in apocalyptic frenzy since Prince's Sign O' the Times or the Book of Revelations itself. From sweet memory to parable to last rite in two movements. Mama Earth is crying and dying because of you / raining cats and jackals / all shackles disintegrate to residue. Outkast, in that one line, forecast the destruction and the jubilee. OK Computer works in a more diffuse mode; a world thoroughly regulated by machine logic. Repressed, alone and eerily calm, the protagonist slowly disintegrates. Our OK Computer hero is in alien territory, and in over his head.

It's a big deal when people who know fear start to wonder about freedom. In the Y2K, Radiohead and Outkast brought new records, new sounds, new views into, and out of, the fire. Both groups freed themselves to inhabit new worlds.

The records start on contrary notes: Outkast's most rabid (all of my heroes did dope / every nigga out here playin' married or payin' child support) and Radiohead's most serene (everything in its right place, the voice lightly singed). "Everything..." is death and birth: last gasp tranquility or open-eyed wonder. Amazingly, the Kid A story doesn't change much whether you think the character lives or dies in the opening scene. It's still about loss and remission. Still about imagining yourself alone and free.

Stankonia's opener, "Gasoline Dreams," sounds like a banner headline of Armageddon. I hear that mother nature's now on birth control / the coldest pimp is lookin' for somebody to hold. Another Pentecostal-worthy doomsday. With brutal guitars, the hot block explodes; wild, restless youth and racist police rage. Sin and iniquity rule the land. Destruction sounds an alarm: Prophesy must be fulfilled / the liquor fire is calling.

So, in both cases, we enter at ground zero, and then things get interesting. Stankonia careens through fantasy, burlesque, sex. Apology and sneering self-love, degradation and child-like devotion. Then, with "Bombs over Baghdad," the record reaches a peak of force. Thunder pounds when I stomp the ground. On this track, a high speed collision of bass and body heat, Outkast first reaches joyful abandon. The verses sprint over forbidding detail: Stack of question with no answers / cure for cancer / cure for AIDS. But every worldly intrigue melts away, peeled back by sheer velocity. Electric revival; a liberation dance.

The litany of entrapments on tracks like "?" and "Toilet Tisha" are just a counterpoint. What could make a nigga wanna lose all faith in / anything he can't feel through his chest with sensation? Every spasm is paired with a contraction. Being free is also being honest about anxiety and temptation. "We Luv Deez Hoez" has "Stanklove," a love theme of quiet, ecstatic bliss. "Gangsta Shit" and "Red Velvet" have "Slum Beautiful." Everything has its cost. Recently, coming back to the record after a while, "Slum Beautiful" had me trembling. I had one of those moments when everything seems possible and impossibly fragile. And you just know, with dread, that you are going to have to break a few eggs to get what you need. Sooner or later.

Kid A is more static, and doesn't go through clear phases like Stankonia. I slip away/ I slipped on a little white lie. This is the process: slow receding, ominous signs all around. The rats and children follow me out of town. Musical moods fold into one another. Shadows at the end of my bed. These lines, from the title song, barely pierce the surface. The vocal is splintered digitally. Tones are disrupted and themes are disjointed. On "The National Anthem," the lyric repeats, Everyone around here / everyone is so near / it's holding on. The ambiguity of subject and object. The voice (if we can still find one) has few distinct qualities; no real personality, no strong relations, fading memory.

"How to Disappear Completely" is an instruction in immaterial living. I'm not here / this isn't happening. Say it a few times fast and you may believe. No self, but also no boundaries. That there / that isn't me / I go where I please. By "Optimistic," a few songs later, the mortality theme is more explicit. Flies are buzzing round my head / vultures circling the dead. Doesn't get more vivid than that. But still there is a coldness: The big fish eat the little one / not my problem / give me some. Obviously, freedom is a low-pressure gig. If you try the best you can / the best you can is good enough. This is a pretty sharp contrast to the public angst of OK Computer.

"Morning Bell" is a brief detour to the land of the living. A recollection maybe. It's a break-up story. Cut the kids in half. Love is forfeited, and another liberty is won. Release Me. Nobody's home anyway. Release Me. The song ends with Radiohead's definitive statement on freedom: everybody wants to be a friend /nobody wants to be a slave. The Kid A ethos, in short. The open, decaying sound of the record captures a crumbling identity. The decimation of ego is pure liberty.

We dodged the millennial bullet for a few years. Now we're feeling tremors, and looking out for cracks in the earth. Stankonia and Kid A are useful, then and now, because they explore the consequences of being free. And the feeling. At day's end, or the end of days; nothing else left to do or be.

Outkast and Radiohead use their freedom as an exit strategy. Two different reactions to the prospect of living past the final curtain.