British novelist and amateur rock critic Nick Hornby is not often someone I agree with. His inflated opinions of Badly Drawn Boy and Marah, for instance, are vinegar enough to drive away any proverbial flies. Yet, the frozen hands on his broken rock criticism clock were in perfect alignment with reality regarding Radiohead's "masterpiece," Kid A.
Hornby's argument from rock purist grounds may not have been the best means to his end of deflating the Kid A hype balloon, but let's pass over that and try to figure out what exactly is wrong with Kid A. When I recently formulated a list of the most overrated rock records, it occurred to me that, in many case, an overrated record suffers from an outsized reputation and/or backstory: that is, its actual music is often eclipsed by the critic's breatheless banter about the band's battle against the corporate mainstream (see: Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), about the band's commitment to "saving rock" (see: The Strokes, Is This It?), or about the artist's overall reputation rather than the merits of the album at hand (see: any Bob Dylan record after the mid-1970s). Kid A, though, perhaps bests them all in this regard.
Central to the "classic" status of Kid A is the presumption that it says something about modern society. Its predecessor, OK Computer, had dissected popular fascination with technology and mechanical organization, culminating with its narrator pleading for "no alarms and no surprises, please" as he argues that his predictable, boring life is somehow preferable to anything spontaneous. Whatever OK Computer's faults (and there are several), the album had a clear, coherent message. The gap between its preachiness and Kid A's nothingness is perhaps akin to the gulf separating The Mothers Of Invention's peerless We're Only In It For The Money from band leader Frank Zappa's insipid Lumpy Gravy. That is, just because an artist has the capacity to make a (brilliant) topical statement about the world does not mean that every one of his records contains said statement.
Kid A is a willfully obtuse record. It forgoes the guitar-pop heroics and gorgeous tenor vocals of the band's mid-90s output in favor of cool, calculated electronica. It pursues this tack in order to defy expectation or make the "difficult" artistic statement that we have come to expect of bands either at or already past their third LP. While there's nothing wrong with such motives, the decision that Radiohead made simply does not play to the band's strengths. Underworld had pioneered dark British electronica almost a decade earlier with Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Long Fin Killie (see below) had already formed, churned out three jazzily inflected records in the mid-90s; Kid A was not exactly blazing a new trail. Nor was it a peak example of the electronica genre: Stylus Magazine's (RIP) Nick Southall once described Kid A as an electronica record mixed like a rock record. I think this is a spot-on assessment. Kid A has none of the minor aural details, complex textures, or (most obviously) melodies that characterizes the best, most memorable electronica.
Opener "Everything In Its Right Place" hovers around a single rudimentary synth pattern. The title track is an impenetrable haze that might have been "weird" if Tubular Bells hadn't been released decades earlier. "The National Anthem" is an amateurish vamp nearly drowned by its squawking horns. Other lowlights include the bland, wordless "Treefingers," and the highly derivative "Idioteque" which plays like a carbon copy of Killie's "Lipstick." Collectively, these songs do not even come close to communicating the assumed message of alienation and dissatisfaction with modernity that pervades the rest of the band's work. Free of any discernable lyrics/vocals from Thom Yorke, which had previously driven both OK Computer and The Bends the pressure for communicating the band's ideas is transferred to the accompanying music, and it does not deliver.
Radiohead lost the plot after this record. They never fully reclaimed the muse that led them during the 90s. Even after returning to guitars, the band seemed to have abandoned strong songwriting: it's no wonder that their strongest song of the past 10 yeas is "Nude," an OK Computer-era outtake. Kid A (and it successors) is the sound of, in the words of Trouser Press, "an album created to fulfill expectations the band doesn't necessarily share."
Find it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?gwmzy4dnn2r
Underrated: Long Fin Killie, Amelia (Too Pure, 1998)
Long Fin Killie were a short-lived Scottish band from the mid-1990s. Singer/guitarist/violinist Luke Sutherland went on to become a successful novelist, but prior to his writing escapades, he helmed a virtuosic group of musicians who played minimalist rock with jazzy precision. Largely foregoing the extended sonic explorations of their first two LPs, Amelia is a highly economical record that packs an enormous number of details and rich melodies into its compact aesthetic. Opener "British Summertime" is a warm, plaintive number that oscillates with Sutherland's rich, range-y vocals and lyrics, and the band's interlocking guitar attack and muscular rhythm section. "Lipstick" is a proto-mechanical rock number whose distinctive drum sound Radiohead were certainly aware of a few years later.
Enjoy it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?mgn3ojwoxnc
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