Amnesia Review
Colin Freebury
496
Radiohead
Amnesiac, Parlophone
01 June 2001
Almost as soon as it became common knowledge some time around the release
of Kid A that there existed a "sister album" recorded during the same
lengthy round of sessions, rumours began circulating as to its contents.
Those unhappy with Radiohead's new, electronic direction were sure it must
comprise a return to their indie guitar roots, as if, at the end of each
day's recording, the band had thrown the masters into bins marked "weird"
and "wonderful" and perversely chosen to unload the weird bin first. Kid A,
they hoped, was a temporary diversion, a sorbet to cleanse fans' palates
before the main course of melancholy riffing.
That patronising view was dashed by the lovely, lonely piano chords that
announce "Pyramid Song", as strange and elegant a Top 5 single as will be
heard all year (and no surprise, as it's inspired by the jazz legend Charlie
Mingus's "Freedom"). And though, yes, guitars do figure more on Amnesiac
than on its predecessor, they're used in discreetly different ways as, for
instance, the jazzy chords underpinning "You And Whose Army?", or the
cyclical figure snaking through "I Might Be Wrong". Most of the time,
though, the ever-inventive Jonny Greenwood (see interview overleaf) is
employed elsewhere, playing keyboards and writing string arrangements and
getting Humphrey Lyttelton's jazz band to add a beautiful, George
Lewis-style New Orleans funeral lamentation to the closing track, "Life in a
Glasshouse".
As might be expected, Amnesiac bears rather closer relationship to Kid A
than to previous Radiohead albums: the exploratory urge is still dominant,
certainly, with sounds and methods drawn largely from the jazz and
ambient/electronic genres, and Thom Yorke's vocals pursue melodic angles
more associated with Ennio Morricone or 20th-century chamber music. The main
affinities, though, are with such fellow iconoclasts as Neu! (the digital
flutter and reversed loops of "Like Spinning Plates"), Massive Attack (the
scratchy rhythm, synths and dark mutterings of "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors")
and their favourite tour support, The Beta Band (the swirling depths of
"Morning Bell/Amnesiac"). And though traditional verse/chorus structures are
still largely eschewed, repetitions and hints of hooks render these 11
tracks more appealing than those of Kid A.
Thom Yorke's lyrics, meanwhile, seem more pared-down and epigrammatic than
before, littered with everyday cliché "Where'd you park the car?", "I'm a
reasonable man; get off my case", "Living in Cloud-cuckoo-land" etc as if
he's trying to resuscitate the old, dried-up vernacular by recasting it in
disconcerting new surroundings (or, conversely, offering listeners familiar
phrases to guide them through the challenging music). Mostly, though, he
sounds like a slightly paranoid, intrinsically melancholy man getting
seriously pissed off with Blair's turncoats, with press attention, with
the million petty annoyances of our nasty little dumbed-down nation in the
angry-Rothko manner suggested by the sleeve design. Nothing, then, to be too
afraid of.
the urban sophisticate
"Colin Freebury" <free...@magi.com> wrote in message
news:AGER6.2082$rD3.4...@news.total.net...
>
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/recorded_reviews/story.jsp?story=75
> a beautiful, George Lewis-style New Orleans funeral lamentation to the
> closing track, "Life in a Glasshouse".
an intelligent, thoughtful interview on balance, but everyone's missing that
it's not really "life in a glass house" that is the new orleans funeral
dirge, even though the music is of that ilk. for the words, it's pyramid
song. imagine a load of fat women and dwarves wandering along with a brass
band belting that out. there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt.