Oregon daily emerald., November 10, 2000, Page 7, Image 30

Radiohead Fans Rejoice
A new CD and bonk hi! the stores.
By Keith Powers
Musicians are artists, and if they don’t follow their muse, they stop
being artists. But rock ‘n’ roll musicians also need to sell CDs, or they
go back to playing bars in their hometown. Hardcore fans are willing to
take a chance on music that is unconventional, but a couple more
releases like Kid A and we'll all be saying, “Remember Radiohead?”
But if their career were on the line, the band would never make
an album like this. The phony “lyric sheet” buried in the jewel case
under the CD has a sentence that sums up Kid A: “You can do any
thing and not have to face the consequences.” This is where
Radiohead is in their career. They can’t stay there, but they proba
bly weren’t planning to anyway. •
Radiohead
Kid A
(Capitol)
(radiohead.com;
hollywoodandvine.com)
A healthy dislike of the music business
is usually a good thing. Bands that
get too cozy with the business often
aren’t creative enough to keep on making music—they make prod
uct instead.
Don’t worry about that ever happening to Radiohead. The
British fivesome had their first hit with the single “Creep” in 1993,
and has three solid albums to their credit: Pablo Honey (1993), The
Bends (1995) and OK Computer (1997).
Now, after three years of silence, their newest work, Kid A, bolts
off in a new direction. Musically, it’s an inviting soundscape. The
songs flow from one to another without breaks. The vocals are
atmospheric—most of Thom Yorke’s words are incomprehensible
anyway. It’s a concept album without the overblown pseudointellec
tualism of work like the Who’s Quadrophenia or any of the weaker
Pink Floyd albums. No 90-minute marathons here—you’re in and
out in less than one hour.
There is much appealing music here; it’s just not packaged in
digestible chunks. Radiohead is a three-guitar outfit, a fact that indi
vidualizes their sound, but you’re hard put to find much guitar on
Kid A. In the second half of the album, especially “Idioteque” and
“Morning Bell,” the band finally gets a groove on. But the predomi
nant mood is synth-pastiche, with swirling tunes surrounding the
altered vocal tracks.
Followers of the group love the CD—it sold 207,000 copies in
its first week. But it will bring very few new members to the
Radiohead fan club. (The word is that the band has already record
ed another CD, set for release early next year. They are hardly tour
ing behind Kid A at all—only two U.S. dates were scheduled.)
Exit Music: The Radiohead Story
(Delta Music)
By Mac Randall
(bantamdell.com)
Timing is everything. Mac Randall’s Exit
Music: The Radiohead Story (Delta Music;
$13.95), is being released just as the band
comes out with their first new work in three
years, Kid A.
Randall is a frequent correspondent to
Steamtunnels, and has written about music for Musician magazine,
Rolling Stone and the Boston Phoenix. He’s currently the East Coast
editor of launch.com, as well as being an accomplished guitarist.
What first attracted Randall to the band was their musicianship
and their don’t-make-me-into-a star attitude. True to that spirit,
Radiohead declined to officially participate in the making of the
book. Fortunately for Randall though, he had done several interviews
with the band around the release of their first three CDs, so they
had already talked to him about the important stuff—the music.
The lack of cooperation makes for a better read, since there are
no “band approved” quotes around. When Randall talks about the
songs, he describes thenystraightforwardly, interspersing quotes
from the band members about the genesis of the music. He was
forced to sleuth out the facts about the bands’ early years in
Oxford, and comes up with an interesting read that’s part interview,
part research and all music. •
For more info on Radiohead, go to steamtunnels.net and search
for keyword “Radiohead.”
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