NOSTALGIA PICK #6: "Kid A" by Radiohead

  The internet is a wonderful thing. It really is. With mobile devices we have instant access to any information that we need, and anyone with a keyboard (hey, like me!) can voice their opinions to the rest of the internet completely unfiltered and unregulated. I find it endlessly fascinating and equally as worrying, then, that while theoretically the world is becoming more and more connected every passing day, isolation and loneliness seem to be inescapable parts of the modern human experience. This is one of the key ideas to take into consideration, I think, when trying to unpack the baffling, skeletal and icy classic fourth album by Radiohead, Kid A. 

   More than enough has been said and written about the state of frustration and exhaustion Thom Yorke was experiencing at the end of the twentieth century as a result of the massive success of Radiohead, particularly the equally as classic OK Computer. For those who don't know and need to be caught up, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke had basically reached a point at which music was no longer something he loved doing; it was simply his job and he was becoming sick of it (obviously there is more to it than that, but that's not the point of this blog so I'll let you do your own research on that). He was quoted saying that he had "completely had it with melody... I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment," which goes to some length to describe the lack of emotional and romantic connection Yorke had with writing and playing music at the time. In response he fronted the creative process that would culminate in 2000s Kid A.  

   Like most people, I would guess, I was completely thrown the first time I heard Kid A. In fact, I'm pretty sure Kid A was the first Radiohead album I listened to in full - I was a young teenager and I knew that Radiohead was this band that everyone had to like because they were super important and all that, and I had heard that Kid A was their masterpiece. I remember getting to the end and thinking what on earth is all the fuss about? I just didn't get it at all. There were no hooks to hold on to, no choruses and almost no guitars, something I thought was absolutely essential to a rock album. Why should I pay attention to this band if this was their masterpiece? 

   Some will disagree and say that OK Computer is the band's masterpiece, but I will unashamedly and without hesitation say that Kid A is indeed Radiohead's masterpiece. Like any great piece of art, it challenges and confronts you. I am sure that if Radiohead had simply given us OK Computer 2.0 (arguably they did later on with In Rainbows, but that's another story for another time) it would have been good. Great, even. But Kid A is a testament to what happens when a band is daring and confident enough to scrunch up the blueprint and start again, regardless of what the music world at large was saying. 

   I'm not going to go into the whole "turn of the century angst" narrative, simply because I was still being toilet trained at that stage and to have any opinion on that would be completely dishonest. What I will talk about, however, is how that sense of isolation, paranoia and loneliness is so tangible that it grabbed a hold of me fifteen years later to the point that it didn't matter that it confused the hell out of me, it didn't matter there weren't any guitar riffs to jam on - Kid A had me hooked simply on the way it reflected a mood back at me that I hadn't heard so clearly before in music. It's not the most depressing Radiohead album - A Moon Shaped Pool trumps all in that category - but it is the most lonely, and that feeling is carried over to its sister album Amnesiac, which is a collection of songs from the Kid A sessions. 

   Kid A is a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me Kid A was very much a gateway into more experimental music and a wider appreciation of music in general. It's definitely not something you throw onto your playlist and jam in the car on the way to the beach. It needs to be listened to, in the quiet of your room. It might just throw something terrifying back at you.