There comes a certain naïveté with being a Radiohead fan. We listen to music that makes no sense and lyrics that make even less sense, and maybe the only reason it makes any sense at the end of the day is simply that we want it to. Kind of like love, really.
But as with love, Radiohead's music stems from an untraceable origin, that of one man's mind. Because of the eccentricity of the music and the cryptic nature of his lyrics, frontman Thom Yorke has ascended to the upper echelons of the Rock Gods' Totem Pole, and it would be all too easy for a simple fan like myself to assume that he (they) can do no wrong.
If by some miracle, you have a tight enough grip on reality that you are aware of your fan mentality, and you'd like to come to grips with the illusion of there being a band so perfect they're practically inhuman, well, Amnesiac would be a pretty good place to start on the road to disposing of this illusion.
Just as it's tough to pinpoint exactly what it is about Radiohead's music that has grabbed me in the past, I find myself hard pressed to express why the disdain for Amnesiac. With their past (and future) albums, I always felt the sense that I was being taken on a "tour" of some strange musical metropolis. And when I listen to Amnesiac it's as if we're viewing it all from the safety of the Interstate going around the outside. The mood is so somber and unfocused, I don't feel an acute sense of anything.
Even on the most likable tracks such as the killer guitar anthem "I Might Be Wrong", there is that distancy where you feel like you'd like to be up close with the band on the roof of that big twisted building waiting for the aliens to take you away, but instead you are reverted to watching it from a car window.
"Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box" starts the album off on a techno note with a whirring backbeat, but soon grows repetitive, as is the case with a lot else here. This, however, is one of the few songs where the distancy isn't so bad. Thom starts to moan, "I'm a reasonable man, get off my case, get off my case" but it's all so much of a spectacle that there is almost no sense of urgency to it.
"Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" sounds more like a video game than a song, with a restless mid-tempo beat and the occasional sound of the video game hero picking up an item. (Bling!) "You And Whose Army" starts out promising, then morphs into something even better as a melodic tidal wave of piano chords break into the mix. But Thom's vocals drive me to insanity. No matter how awake I am, when I hear him start wailing, it makes me feel like I'm trying to get to sleep and I'm being disturbed by a faceless noise.
I remember once saying that the second song on Hail To The Thief sounded exactly like the music in the movie Big when Josh meets the Zoltar Machine for the first time. Turns out that Amnesiac has a rather cinematic piece as well, "Hunting Bears" which sounds like an old western guitar instrumental version of the music that plays behind Kumiko's dance in Karate Kid 2. It's not too bad, actually.
"Like Spinning Plates" sounds more like spinning nunchucks to me, but what do I know? The prospect of Thom singing backwards may be interesting to talk about, doesn't make it interesting to listen to. "Life In A Glasshouse" is Radiohead with the brass section backing them up, and quite frankly my dear, it sounds plum awful. This turns out to be another one of those that induces sleep deprivation. You get to the point where you know when the miserable high notes are going to break out, but by that point, you don't have the energy to bear anything so loud. Fortunately, the lyrics are somewhat interesting, for what little you can understand of them, particularly the last line: "Someone's listening in." It's all about the lack of privacy that comes with fame and how someone will always be watching if you throw too many stones.
I don't mean to skin this thing alive as if there were nothing redeeming to be found. "Knives Out" is undoubtedly beautiful with a double tech guitar attack (you can see I'm on a Chrono Trigger binge lately), an addictively fast beat, and a more wonderful, familiar Thom Yorke back at the helm to ease the burden of some unsettling lyrics like "If you had been a dog, they would've drowned you at birth."
I actually find the Amnesiac version of "Morning Bell" to be better than the Kid A version, but I'm sure that's only because I heard this one first, and this one sounds much like a recent R.E.M. attempt. It's more lush, the rhythm is more solid, and Thom doesn't sound like he's got his tongue hanging out of his mouth when he says "Cut the kids in half" By the way, I'm with David, I think that lyric alludes to divorce.
And then there's "The Pyramid Song".
I just don't know what to say. The music (which is mostly piano) reminds me of "A Water Prayer" by Deep Blue Something, which is a huge compliment if anyone wonders. Melodically, it swoops and it flies unpredictably enough as it is, but then to top things off, it pauses slightly after every fifth chord (Dear God, tell me I'm not the only one who saw that pattern) but not for long enough that you can make out a six-count, further upsetting the rhythm. A little percussion joins in later a la "Exit Music", but still leaves things complicated enough. Bad as it all sounds, this is an unbelievably gorgeous song, everything that Radiohead are celebrated for and then some.
So you got the good, you got the bad. What surprises me more than anything else is not so much that Radiohead lost their proverbial immortality in my mind with Amnesiac, but that they actually managed to regain some of it with Kid A. That never happens with me; normally a band slips up this much, and I'm off the wagon. So in a way, I almost sympathize with those who heard Kid A first and then went on to subject themselves to Amnesiac.
I still believe Radiohead are a brilliant group of musicians. But Amnesiac is the Achilles' heel I never knew they had.
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