Radiohead Scores With Kid A

Oct. 3 -- Thanks to the rapturous reception accorded OK Computer three years ago, Radiohead’s fourth album (the first of two the band plans to release within the next 12 months) is without question the buzz album of the fall.

But Kid A is hardly the son of OK Computer or even the bride of The Bends; instead it’s an ardent and successful attempt by the British quintet to divorce and distance itself from its past and to reinvent both itself and our notions of pop music, using soundscapes rather than songs, and instrumental choices that are a far cry from the group’s previous forays into its own brand of guitar rock.

Perplexing and Utterly Fascinating

The guitars — at least in a recognizable sense — don’t even surface until the fourth song, “How to Disappear Completely,” and they’re used only sparingly throughout Kid A’s 11 tracks, including on the blustery “Optimistic” (probably the album’s most “traditional”-sounding track), the blissful instrumental “Treefingers,” and the rolling, avant-styled “In Limbo.” Mostly, Kid A is an album informed by electronic music (the group has cited Aphex Twin and Autechre among its touchstones), but it’s not an electronic album, bending synthesizers, samples, and other exotic tools to create sonic washes that range from the gentle — if disquieting — title track, “Everything in Its Right Place,” and “Morning Bell” to the cacophonies of “Idioteque” and “The National Anthem,” whose honking horns marry Charles Mingus’ jazz sensibilities to Morphine’s “low rock.”

Somewhere in there, frontman Thom Yorke sings — though not on every song — about alienation, relationships, and loss, but mostly he strings together images of dinosaurs, fish, and sitting around “sucking a lemon.” Radiohead’s next release is said to hew to more familiar rock conventions, but for Kid A’s purposes, Yorke notes in “Optimistic” that “you can try the best you can … the best you can is good enough.” And that is indeed the case on this odd, perplexing, and utterly fascinating collection.