Radiohead
Hail to the Thief (2003)

review by: Stephan Finch
Date: 1/15/04

Radiohead finally tried to write rock and roll songs again, and Hail to the Thief is the result. The band single-handedly revived popular interest in art-rock "concept" albums with its 1997 masterpiece, OK Computer. But fans and critics loved the work so much, the band apparently got nervous. It decided that rather than follow with a new collection of rock tunes that would likely dissapoint, it should produce beautiful but sleepy techno-infused mood music. What a bore. Kid A got big press, but after Amnesiac followed too rapidly, fans and critics realized they'd been had. Maybe, they thought, Radiohead had shot its wad on OK Computer after all.

Now comes Hail to the Thief, and these feel like real songs. There's still techno influence here, but it's just seasoning this time, not the whole meal. From the very first guitar lick on the first track, "2+2=5," through the buildup to the high-tempo techno roar of "Sit Down, Stand Up" and the sinister and sexy bang-a-drum of "There, There," it's clear this album is meant to be listened to carefully and taken quite seriously. If Radiohead keeps clawing its way back toward full-blown rock n roll, the band may escape OK Computer's long shadow after all.

review by: Dustin Pangonis
Date: 1/15/04

A new Radiohead album is a token choice on any music critic type's year-end list, but for my money, four of the last five albums have deserved it without question (the exception being Amnesiac, on which I could fill a column complaining about.) Hail To The Thief may not be a masterpiece on the level of OK Computer or Kid A, but that is only because it lacks the focus of those albums. It's flaw, if you can call it that, is that the album is merely a collection of great songs without a theme. But Radiohead manages to touch on the experimentation they've been exploring on the last two albums, and veers off into some new directions: the funky "Punchup At A Wedding", the propulsive "Myxomatosis", and the stunning closer "A Wolf At The Door." And don't forget "There There", which ranks among the group's finest moments. But there's really no need to hype the album: if you consider yourself a serious music fan and aren't already listening to Radiohead, you're probably reading the wrong list.

Radiohead
Amnesiac (2001)

review by: Jason Thornberry
Date: 6/14/01

I just got an email from a friend who stood in line for a Radiohead/Sigur Ros gig. While I am actually curious to see Sigur Ros, I think I'd rather masturbate with finely shaved glass than sit thru the shite, pretentious bore-dumb that Radioheadupanus just shat out onto a new compact disc for the very gullible listening public to snatch up.

Gee! It’s been just six months since the "Brilliant" Kid A, and they say there's a new one already in the can for Xmas!

Radiohead aren't "visionaries", they're shrewd businessmen! Right now I can name off dozens, no, hundreds, nay, thousands of faaar superior albums to buy than anything those dickheads are even capable of imagining. Ever notice how Radiohead always look deep in thought whenever a camera is near? That’s because they're the next U2! Utter twats who would try to peddle CD-R’s of Thom Yorke saddled with a bout of explosive diarrhea in an echoey public washroom if they thought someone, anyone, would buy it.

Amnesiac is available in a “limited” edition booklet form for the idiots out there who were so easily duped into purchasing the last CD when it was released the same way.

Oh yeah, the album review! Ummm... this sounded like OK Computer and The Bends. I don't even wanna hear about that old man who plays on the album this time either. Wow! That's swell! Why not give him your royalty checks, boys?! And Mr. Yorke's weedy voice about sent me over the edge too. Yeah, Radiohead are shittin' ca$h, but I had to spend five years looking for anything by the Cardiacs, who are all probably very lucky to have week old, pissed on oatmeal for dinner. Makes perfect sense to me.

review by: Stephan Finch
Date: 6/20/01

Great day in the morning! It's another Radiohead album. For months, I've been searching for the perfect music to defacate to. Enter Amnesiac.

Eleven tracks guaranteed to soothe and relieve. If your sphincter is like a hair trigger, always clenching at the slightest jolt, have no fear: Radiohead is here to calm.

In fact, I'm listening to Amnesiac right now. Hang on for a sec...

There. I had to stop typing while I wiped. Golly, I feel like a new man. Thank you Radiohead.

Radiohead
Kid A (2000)

review by: Stephan Finch
Date: 10/5/00

Terrible news, gents. I've just listened to the new Radiohead album and... it blows. I guess it had to happen. When even the fucking New York Times Magazine and Newsweek are hyping you, it's over.

It's basically new-age techno, the sort of vaguely soothing but not terribly compelling crap that you now hear in every damned bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. (By the way, if you haven't been to the Lower East Side in a while, you may be destressed to learn that it is looking very much like what Soho looked like a decade ago, only with more black eyeshadow, thick velvet curtains and slightly lower prices. It's not all but, but damn, I'm glad not to live there.)

Listening to Kid A, I'm reminded of the horror of U2's hilariously bad 1997 album, Pop. Furthermore, I recall the even more terrifying memory of that year's television broadcast of the American Music Awards, during which the usually-respendent Bono made an utter ass of himself by dressing in ill-fitting jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and aping a techno-urchin-cum-rapper. As I watched Bono gesticulate wildly like that, with pinky-pointer-thumb semifists flailing and the occasional bird-toed, knock-kneed dance move, I could almost hear the REAL techno-kids laughing till they threw up – the same laughter that Pat Boone's fans hear whenever old Pat lays into Smoke on the Water, Crazy Train or Enter Sandman.

Yeah, I just knew it: My youth was gone. I was now officially out of the loop. "Christ I need a drink," I thought.

It's ugly when a band runs out of its own ideas. And though I've only listened to this Radiohead album once, it's fairly clear that, faced with trying to top OK Computer, they got cold feet and grabbed at the straw that is techno. And techno ain't easy.

Good techno is like good gin – you mix it with something else. Preferably with someONE else. And, if at all possible, someone who is not your lover but might soon be. Finally, like a good gin, techno is best if it's not really the thing you remember about last night, even if last night couldn't possibly have happened without it.

So even if this Radiohead were good techno – which it ain't – it couldn't possibly be what OK Computer and The Bends were: great albums to lay on the couch and listen to. Just listen to. No videos, no running on the treadmill or riding on the stationary bike necessary. Just listen.

The only question that remains is do we forgive these guys? Hell, I just spent $12 on this. I think I'll give it another listen or two, then decide. I sincerely hope I'm taking all this back in a couple of days.

Day 3. Okay, I admit it... as techno cum mood music, this isn't so bad. Yes it's still pretty dissappointing that these guys couldn't get it up to put together actual songs. But I'd put this in the stereo at my next party. (Okay, okay, I don't have parties, but IF I had a party.)

Willing also to say that track 4 is quite effective. If you liked the aching, moody "Bulletproof" on Radiohead, you'll like track 4, which is called, appropriately, "How to Dissappear Completely." In fact, as I write this, my intern Sarah (no, not THAT kind of intern) says that this track is "seems familiar and that makes it comforting."

Maybe she should she be writing this review.

review by: Stephan Finch
Date: 10/26/00

Day 23: I honestly hoped by now I'd be on my knees, begging for forgivness for calling Radiohead's album, Kid A, a pile of washed-up Eurotrash. But, despite a glimmer of hope on Day 3, I'm still standing here and telling you: This sucks.

What's really painful is that it sucks in completely uninteresting ways. If there was a moment or two of genuine, wincing suckitude here, I'd be more worked up about it.

One writer who did manage to get worked up about it was Nick Hornby, whom you may know as the author of the comic novel High Fidelity. Hornby reviewed Kid A for the New Yorker magazine, and he compares the album to other really sucky, long-forgotten albums by Lou Reed and Neil Young, who in the 1970s both released albums that were little more than 90 minutes of distortion dressed up as avante-guard head music. Check out Hornby's review. I think he's on to something.

I must say I'm glad some other people who've submitted reviews on Kid A love the album. But I'm a bit disturbed when I read that somebody out there thinks that Radiohead "knows what's good for my ears and soul even if I don't." It's this very attitude that led an emperor stand naked before his subjects, isn't it?

review by: Matthew Scrivner
Date: 11/17/00

"I have ticklers in my head"

Radiohead's latest release, Kid A is their tightest, most complex, and by far their strangest to date.

There are ten tracks on this album and perhaps only three of them have the sound of Radiohead's previous releases. Instead we are soaked in the polystyrene bliss of those old analog moog keyboards, bizarre ambient effects, and these clean and minimal bass/drum loops. I think I was most impressed by this, since many bands never evolve, and ten albums later you can sing the lyrics of their latest hit to the tune of their first.

This, obviously, is not the case with Kid A. If any of you are familiar with the work of Richard D. James of Aphex Twin fame, you'll recognize some of the dirty liquid shuffling, and imbalanced timing of harmony. I have no idea if James was actually involved in the making of the album, but ok, so that's what it reminds me of.

For me, the gem of the album is the third track, "National Anthem." It has this addictive bassline that is interposed with this weird highpitched digital keyboard wail of some kind, and the two combine to lead you to a climax that includes SAXAPHONES and TRUMPETS and TROMBONES that sort of explode and shatter into this incredible mad freejazzesque scream.

On a scale of 1 to 5 this is a 4 for me. I recommend it to both old Radiohead fans and people looking for something new and different. Hope you enjoy!

review by: Matthew Scrivner
Date: 11/18/00

Those of you who recognize that technology soaks more and more into our lives, permeates our daily existence like liquid silicon will see this in Radiohead's Kid A.

Yes, ok, so the alternative music scene is becoming increasingly dominated by musicians who let machines generate nine-tenths of their next big hit. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Music should evolve, and tools like computers are helping it do so. But now any schmoe with a PC and a decent sound card can download Rebirth or Fruity Loops and turn themselves into livingroom Fat Boy Slims and garage Prodigy's.

It becomes an even worse thing when it sounds imitative and cliche. Let's admit to ourselves that among the reasons we listen to music are to experience a new thing. For me, techno is imitative. No new thing. That same old thump tick thump tick pouring out of trendy alterna-dance clubs on liquored city nights. Yeah, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it but that does not make it Dick Clark TEN material, kids.

That, said, lets take a look at a band that has traditionally led the alterna-rock genre in innovation. What does a band like Radiohead do when all around it bands are falling into the techno-schtick? I think a lesser band would have done some childish live-sounding gritty analog-instrument-only album (Pearl Jam's last joke of an album comes to mind here for some reason...) But a band with a bit more wisdom such as Radiohead would reject the easy road and bend the technology obsessed music world to its will.

That's what we have here with Kid A. Radiohead is painfully aware of the techno crayon box it is drawing from. It is with that in mind that they can sing lines like 'I am soaking in enamel' on the intimately weird "Everything In It's Right Place" or can take a song like the amazing "National Anthem" and place a free-jazz brass combo on top of what would otherwise be just another weeping angsty alterna-rock song; and THEN let it all deteriorate into mad disorganized howling heard only in places like Frank Zappa albums.

I feel bad for the people who wanted Radiohead-the-product. Who were expecting the band to come out with just another lousy time-to-take-my-prozac-and-listen-to-the-bends album for teenagers. Leave that to the Pearl Jams and U2's out their and let Radiohead evolve.

Radiohead
The Bends (1995)

review by: Chris Orcutt
Date: 10/4/00

Everyone went crazy for OK Computer (for good reason) and hopefully the release of Kid A will get people to go back and listen to The Bends because it's absolutely incredible.

Though the band was definitely expanding their arsenal of instruments and sounds, this is primarily a great guitar album. One of the great strengths of this record (and, actually, of Radiohead) is that there's no one sound that defines them, and that sure goes for the guitar sounds here. They are crushing in "Planet Telex" and "Bones" while staying relatively passive and underneath everything in "Bulletproof (I wish I was)." The songs are overwhelming and heartbreaking, often at the same time; "Fake Plastic Trees" is (in my opinion) one of the five best songs ever recorded. Thom Yorke's voice is simply astounding in its range and feeling, and his lyrics are really affecting. He's very much an artist in that he reveals so much about himself in his songs that you can't believe he can go out in public.

I don't know if other people have this reaction, but even though I absolutely love this album, I can't listen to it very often. It has the same effect on me that Pink Floyd's stuff had on me when I was a teenager: it's overwhelming and too much to take at times. But what the hell – I'd rather feel that than listen to Ricky Martin and feel nothing at all.

review by: Michael Walls
Date: 10/9/00

Chris – you're absolute right on about The Bends. No one gave Radiohead a second look, including the radio stations and myself, until OK Computer started stirring things up. If "The Bends" had been release after "OK Computer", people and critics would definitely be talking about it, maybe even calling it a better album.

I enjoy every song on this CD, but the first four always get me. Absolutely amazing songs. "Fake Plastic Trees" is awesome, but I always liked "The Bends" and "High and Dry". All three make me wish I could play the guitar (and sing).

As a side note, have you ever noticed that Radiohead has the ugliest album covers?