Thom Yorke - Radiohead

Radiohead released their 4th album in October 2 2000 and it was a huge commercial success, as it was the first time that the band reached the No1 in US Charts. After their Magnum Opus, Ok Computer, everyone was expecting that a great album would follow! Radiohead surprised everyone with their experimental colors! Kid A wasn’t an album that would take advantage of the OKC success and follow the same path.. Radiohead played with string, brass, electronic beat and the result was great but completely different! Let’s have a look at the reviews of important music magazines for Kid A.

NME wrote: “Seemingly overwhelmed by the exorbitant praise heaped upon ‘OK Computer’, Radiohead elected to get in touch with their avant-garde side, that time (dis)honoured escape clause in the white liberal rock star’s lexicon of How To Deal With Success. But although they might disavow the process, Radiohead have been complicit in their own deification through sheer aptitude. Now, predictably, in attempting to reinvent themselves as a more elusive entity, they’ve made a record that by its mere existence will only heighten the intrigue and intensify their global cult“.

Rolling Stone’s David Fricke writes: “If you’re looking for instant joy and easy definition, you are swimming in the wrong soup“. And adds: “But the whole point of Kid A is that there are no sure things, in pop or anything else — and that our best intentions and finely tuned plans are often just fuck-ups waiting to happen. In a recent Web chat, Yorke claimed that the album title refers to “the first human clone — I bet it has already happened.” For all of its apparent inscrutability, Kid A is, in fact, a clear-eyed space opera about a plausible future — a generation raised like plant life. And inside the hermetic electronics and art-pop frost is a heated argument about conformity, individuality and the messy consequences of playing God“.

Pitchfork writes: “This is an emotional, psychological experience. Kid A sounds like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction. It’s the sound of a band, and its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, Radiohead hated being Radiohead, but ended up with the most ideal, natural Radiohead record yet“.

Finally, Q Magazine says: “In the time since OK Computer, Radiohead seem to have built up reservoirs of fresh bile and listened to a lot of Aphex Twin records…. Musically, the album’s best features are its keening, lapwing guitars and a thin, atonal orchestral drizzle…. Kid A will still baffle and upset those who are disappointed that they don’t do Creep anymore“.

Tags: kid a review, nme kid a, NME review, pitchfork review kid a, q magazine kid a, radiohead, radiohead kid a, rolling stone, rolling stone kid a review