Radiohead

After the whirlwind of acclaim for OK Computer, Radiohead tried to escape the hype by hitching a ride through the cosmos -- or at least that's what Kid A would have us believe. As Thom Yorke's wails sound belted from the insular surface of the moon ("How to Disappear Completely"), opaque textures of twinkling music boxes ("Kid A"), bustling horns ("The National Anthem"), fanciful harp ("Motion Picture Soundtrack"), crystallized hums ("Treefingers"), dissonant reception ("Everything in Its Right Place") and plenty of unidentified flying clatter orbit this otherworldly masterpiece.

The first track on Radiohead's fourth album is called "Everything in Its Right Place."
Actually, nothing in the song sounds like it is in its proper place. An electric piano marches
in arrhythmic circles, crisscrossed by the wheeze of an asthmatic synthesizer and
intrusive bursts of machine babble. The watery croon of singer Thom Yorke seeps in and
out of earshot like whale song. And the words, such as they are, just hang in the... More >

I guess the fools who ceded these bummed-out Brits U2's world's-greatest-rock-band slot actually did care about what bigger fool Thom Yorke had to say as well as how he made it sound. Why else the controversy over this bag of sonics? Me, I'm so relieved Yorke's doing without lyrics. Presaging too damn much but no more a death knell for song than OK Computer was for organic life, this is an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty. Alienated masterpiece nothing--it's dinner music. More claret? (Grade: A-)