Radiohead
Kid A

THE REVIEW

Forgive me. I know the Radiohead (especially Kid A) have already been reviewed enough. But I couldn't not write something about what I consider one of the best albums of the new millennium. So let me vent for 5 minutes, and then I'll leave you in peace. 

Let's start with the fact that getting out of an album like OK Computer is not an easy feat. Masterpiece here, masterpiece there, you're besieged by journalists, interviews. You might want to tell everyone to go to hell. Well, in the end, Thom was about to do just that.. He was a step away from breaking up Radiohead. Fortunately, he didn't. He locked himself in the studio, turned off the phones, put a sign on the door that said "Don't bother me" and set to writing new pieces.

And he churned out everything you hear in Kid A and Amnesiac. (Small note: I believe that if Thom had selected the 13/14 best tracks from these two albums and put them all together to form a single album, perhaps we'd be here talking about one of the greatest works of the last 30 years.)

But alright, Kid A comes out. Anticipation through the roof. A clone of OK Computer was expected. How wrong we were. 10 tracks that make your skin crawl. It's hard to believe it’s Radiohead. Audience divided: it's horrible/it's magnificent, it's crap/it's art. It's easy to see where the reviewer stands. And so everyone hits with the "here come the blind and deaf fans of Yorke who praise anything that comes out of his mind". Oh please... Continue living in your world, where Thom should have eternally produced clones of OK Computer (not to detract from it, mind you). Forget about it.

As I was saying, 10 tracks that make your skin crawl. "Screw everyone! I don't care about what others want! I want to experiment. Let's see what comes out."

This must have gone through Thom Yorke's mind in those moments. And indeed, the one-two-three (and let's add the four) at the beginning is lethal. By the end of "How To Disappear Completely" you feel lost, you don't know what's happening, you wonder why all this. With "Optimistic" you catch your breath, but the close leaves you no escape with the epic "Idioteque" and the extraordinary conclusion of "Motion Picture Soundtrack". You stand still for 5 minutes staring into the void. You wonder what the hell happened in the last quarter hour. You need to listen to it again, you need to make sure what you just heard is indeed what you are thinking. You're just afraid to think it. Then you listen to it again...

Yes, it is a masterpiece.