Martenot et ses ondes.
Fellow combattant Chris broke down with a few sentences the entirety of the Radiohead œuvre in a comment to my last post, in which I announced my new year’s resolution: to finally listen to some Radiohead and see what the fuss is all about. To figure out, in other words, what I’ve been missing.
What’s funny about Chris’s comment is that it more or less matches how I would’ve explained the course of the Radiohead career, having never really listened to them. Except I forgot about The Bends entirely, and I also forgot that Kid A and Amnesiac were two separate albums. But his take on In Rainbows matched mine, In Rainbows being the only Radiohead album I had bothered to acquire up to that point. Point is, Chris doesn’t offer some kind of groundbreaking or contrarian critique. It’s a rather cold assessment. This is this, and that is that.
In feeding the discography into iTunes, I listened to the opening seconds (and I mean like the first 3-4) of each song, and I figured I’d probably like Kid A the most, out of those opening seconds, so I put it on before going to sleep.1 And it was ok. Relatively unpainful IDM derivative with a bit of a whiny streak. Maybe what a Coldplay IDM album would sound like. But, again, nothing too amazing. “Well,” I figured, before falling asleep, “I guess I shouldn’t have started with such a whatever album.”
Now this morning, I read Chris’s comment, and, for laughs, decide to look up Kid A on Wikipedia, to see how it fit in the Radiohead career course.
And I find out it’s the best album of the last ten years?!?!?
Obviously, Rolling Stone doesn’t know shit about music. There is no possible way that Bob Dylan had two of the 11 best albums of the past decade. It’s so implausible that I more or less stopped reading the list the second time I saw Dylan’s name. But why, then, why is Kid A the best? Sez RS:
The result was the weirdest hit album of that year, by a band poised to be the modern-rock Beatles, following the breakthrough of OK Computer. In fact, only 10 months into the century, Radiohead had made the decade’s best album — by rebuilding rock itself, with a new set of basics and a bleak but potent humanity. Yorke’s loathing of celebrity inspired the contrary beauty of “How to Disappear Completely,” with its watery orchestration and his voice flickering in and out of earshot. His electronically squished pleading in “Kid A” sounded like a baby kicking inside a hard drive.
Given Yorke’s willingness (as noted in the Wikipedia article) to straight up cite the Twin, Autechre, and Warp Records in general as influences, as well as the admission that it was attending an Underworld (!!!) concernt that brought the band back together, basically the reason Kid A is good is because it’s a sort of IDMusic for the Masses.
Is that right? I’m listening to Music Has the Right to Children as I type this, and, yes, it’s not caught up in “loathing of celebrity” or a “bleak but potent humanity” (I absolutely adore how the two are stitched together with Cobain-colored string). But the album is not only two years older than Kid A, it’s about as formally inventive.2
Was it important then, that it was Radiohead that released Kid A, and not a pair of Scottish dudes? Or in the case of, say, Mouse on Mars, a pair of dudes from the western edge of Germany? Did they make it ok to like this kind of music, or something? Were they to IDM what the Rolling Stones were to blues?
I have a suspicion that the answer to these questions is more or less “yes.” And that, after a fashion, that is the point. There’s something so huge about a rock band putting out an album like Kid A, that, despite the fact that it trades in a well-defined but non-mainstream genre, it shows some sort of dissatisfaction with rock, with guitars, etc. They “rebuilt rock itself,” as RS gushes. One friend suggested that in as many words: the testament to their genius is that Radiohead showed they could make an amazing rock album and follow it up with an (even more) amazing post-rock (or whatever) album.
And yet, the second best album of the decade, released only a year later, brought the bullshit post-VU New York rock yawns back to the forefront.3 So much for Kid A, then. Later, “bleak, but potent humanity.”
Strokes aside, this is why I think this resolution is going to be tough. Can I possibly now return to Kid A and listen to it without saying to myself, “this is the best album of the past decade”? Can I possibly buy into a hype machine of this caliber? I bought into the Wilco hype machine whole-heartedly, so it’s not like I’m against admitting that I missed the boat on a band. Hell, I was late to The Wire, even, and I don’t feel the need to poo-poo it as a result.
I guess, then, that if I could buy into the hype around an HBO cop drama and consiider it worthwhile (though I think its hype, along with, say, Slumdog Millionaire‘s, is earned but misplaced), then I ought to be able to weave through the Radiohead hype. But after day one, boy am I skeptical.
- The équipe de ménage threw away my sleeping aids, so I had no doubt that I’d stay up for the whole album. [↩]
- If not as bombastic, and certainly not as whiny. The horn work in Kid A I’m eager to return to, but that aspect of the album, at least to me, stands out nowhere near as much as the nods to IDM. [↩]
- The recent BS Report between Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman where they discuss the RS list is brilliant for this. If they mentioned Kid A as the #1 album, I didn’t notice it; all I noticed was Simmons’s ludicrous hyping of the Strokes as the “saviors” of rock or some such. Like it took five dudes from NYC with leather painted on their bodies so tightly you could see the baggies of blow to rid the world of Limp Bizkit. Hey, Sports Guy, you can learn about new music, even back in 2000, from places other than MTV. Next, Simmons veered off into a borderline racist rant about how Stevie Wonder didn’t belong in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, reminding me, again, how Simmons should stick to reality TV, the NBA, and occasionally baseball or football. [↩]
Tags: aphex twin, being sad, bill simmons, boards of canada, cocaine, hype, idm, kid a, radiohead, rolling stone, Slumdog Millionaire, the strokes, The Wire
January 11th, 2010 at 9:00
Can I possibly now return to Kid A and listen to it without saying to myself, “this is the best album of the past decade”?
You can certainly try.
Simmons’ shit bothered me immensely. He said he was afraid the Strokes were “going to get screwed.” Out of what, exactly? They put out a well-timed poppy-New York grunge album. Good for them. And yes, the Stevie Wonder shit was racist as all hell. I couldn’t believe Klosterman didn’t call it on him harder, as he’s the only one who calls SG on anything and, thus, the only guy I listen to anymore—SG’s ability to contort himself “logically” to any position is never challenged by revolving door of sycophants.
Upon several listenings, I think In Rainbows is the best Radiohead album given that it’s fucking grat, but I don’t completely buy your criticism as Kid A. The musicians you cite have influences, so for Thom Yorke to have been influenced himself by others isn’t exactly groundbreaking news. At the same time, I’m no longer on the band’s rod, or, johnson, and I’m certainly willing to hear any criticisms unless it’s just to show how smart you are by not liking them. I would have a difficult time believing that there was something about Radiohead you didn’t like or admire that wasn’t completely Hey Ya!-d by Sid’s playback of OK Computer.
January 11th, 2010 at 9:01
That might be the worst editing or grammar I’ve used in 10 years, so forgive me.
January 11th, 2010 at 9:07
All that being said, if you don’t like them, that’s cool too. Ain’t no thing. No one’s forcing you.
January 11th, 2010 at 9:20
Look, at the current moment, in my reckoning, Kid A is a good album. All three-star tracks and maybe one or two four-stars. I’ll listen to it a few more times, and, likely, the number of four-stars will rise and maybe even yield a five-star or two. At that point, I’ll consider the album “very good” or “great” even, and call it a day. I never said it was terrible… my goal here is to try and see if I can catch some of the hype after the fact (as I did with The Wire and Wilco, for example).
So it’s never a “I’m smart since I don’t like Radiohead” position. I don’t play that game.
I think Klosterman simply didn’t know how to respond. He made the full-faith effort of arguing that “rock n roll” (contra rock) stands in as “US popular music” writ large, but Simmons wasn’t hearing it. To him, Stevie Wonder is Motown (the genre, not the label), and that’s that. _Talking Book_ (another album I couldn’t get into, but whatever) be damned. Wonder was so damned influential to pretty much everything that came after, that it just boggles the mind that Simmons would rather have… who… Bad English? in the HoF than him.
January 11th, 2010 at 9:21
_The Joshua Tree_–now that album is *terrible*. It could be the most overrated piece of trash ever, unless there is a more recent U2 album that gets even more acclaim.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:05
You’re being more fair in this whole thing than I ever have been, so I think you’ve made a good assessment. I realize I have been (and am hopefully no longer) one of those people that calls people idiots for not liking Radiohead, and there’s no excuse for that.
I’m with you: I can’t understand how Simmons can’t understand why Wonder would be in the Rock and Roll HOF. I don’t know how you could have one without him.
All of this gets into my Simmons as sheltered only child theory, but that’s for another time.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:06
But yeah, trying to ride the dragon on Kid A… that time has probably gone, and the Top 100 was probably written from a place of nostalgia (Hence the Strokes at #2). I think In Rainbows is the most resonant album, and not simply because it’s the newest.
January 11th, 2010 at 11:00
I was not prepared for the picture of Simmons’s dad in his playoff preview. I always imagined old man Simmons as more or less glued to his La-Z-Boy with the “3″ and “8″ worn out on his remote.
That Top 100 was straight up insane. On the other hand, it was useful–there was nothing on there that made me think, hey, maybe I should check that out. Pretty much everything on there I either had or had already decided wasn’t my thing (Bruce, Stripes, Dylan). That probably just means I’m hilariously mainstream, which is fine. I AM THE PATRIARCHY.
(comically, my reCaptcha is ‘are platypus’ I ARE PLATYPUS)
January 11th, 2010 at 18:40
I’m a little confused on how not liking Bruce, the Stripes, and Dylan makes you mainstream, even if I’m with you on the whole “Oh, that’s what I missed? Not too bad, then.” But that’s only because I’ve played catchup over the last year thanks to some coincidental timing (coincident with moving into a new apartment and having no one to talk to).
January 12th, 2010 at 13:08
I’d be interested to know what tracks you like off Kid A. I never listen to it front to back (I’m not much of an “album” person, for better or worse), but I love “The National Anthem.”
Also, you should peep John Darnielle’s exegesis of Amnesiac. Not saying you’ll agree with it, but it’s worth noting where Radiohead can put a thoughtful listener.
January 12th, 2010 at 13:15
One other thing about the Radiohead mystique: they’ve developed an amazing visual aesthetic as a band. Not just their videos (eg the crowdsourced data experiment), but they’ve got an incredible, essentially in-house designer (Stanley Donwood). The cover/liner/promo material design for Kid A was amazing, and really fits with the music. There’s actually a dialogue between their music, their videos, and their packaging, which I don’t think should be discounted.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:47
Bryan,
I simply meant that I’m mainstream for knowing, more or less, all the albums on the list. Not liking Bruce had nothing to do with it. Stupid nested clauses and syntax from Mars.
Whet,
I’m putting together a poundup of the album now that I’ve listened to it more carefully and thoughtfully, though I forgot to hunt down your recommended exigesis. As for the multimedia stuff, I approach it in a way reminiscent of what a former Voices editor used to say about the Dead: I won’t listen to music I need to do drugs to appreciate. Similarly, if the music can’t stand on its own…