Amnesiac

Avec Kid A, les tetes chercheuses d'Oxford imposaient au rock une de ses plus grosses secousses, de celles dont la magnitude n'est que trop peu souvent atteinte. A telle altitude, rares sont ceux qui se sont aventures. Sans etablir de palmares a la hate, on se bornera a citer, dans un registre pas si different, Rock Bottom de Robert Wyatt voire le meilleur de Sonic Youth. En partant de ce postulat, difficile de succeder a Kid A. Et pourtant. Une fois enfoncees les portes de l'inconnu, impossible de revenir en arriere. Banalite, securite sont des termes desormais bannis du vocabulaire de Radiohead: le groupe caracole en tete du peloton, les suiveurs ne les apercevant plus desormais que de tres loin.

Car le projet est ambitieux: revolutionner le rock sans presomption, poser les jalons d'un nouveau millenaire naissant tout en sachant rester abordable meme si le groupe s'autorise tous les delires comme jouer en public avec les ondes Martenot avant la sortie du disque. Alors, si certains titres naviguent dans les memes eaux que celles du precedent album, le reste surprendra, encore une fois. On croyait Thom Yorke lasse des guitares, eh bien non, les riffs de "I Might Be Wrong" et "Knives Out" demontrent le contraire et devraient mettre tout le monde d'accord. Ailleurs, ce n'est qu'inventivite, modulations synthetiques, vocoder, arrangements bastringues, cuivres, hautbois. Radiohead synthetise la modernite de OK Computer et Kid A… c'est-a-dire la modernite de son epoque. Comme nul autre. --Herve Comte

Most people hate this album and think it's garbage. Sure, it WAS on the cutting room floor of Radiohead's studio, but thats the beauty of it. They cut out most of the angrier songs of Kid A.

Think of this album as you looking down on something or someone with pure disgust. Making you want to spit on that person or object. Wait, don't. Listen for yourself and create your own image of what the album means.

I have this feeling that this album will someday have the same social identity as The Catcher in the Rye. Someone's going to kill someone else and their going to say that Radiohead's Amnesiac inspired them.

As the band says, "Kid A is like watching a fire from afar, Amnesiac is like being in that fire yourself." Or something to that effect.

5 stars.

Corey.


My favourite cd ever   July 15, 2004
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

The songs on this are all so beautiful, but alas, this is Radiohead's least understood album. My theory is that anybody who likes Kid A, but not Amnesiac just hasn't listened to it enough. I have to admit that I hated some parts of this album when I first listened to it... Hunting Bears, Pulk/Pulling Revolving Doors, and Dollars & Cents being the main reasons. Well I now see the folly of my ways. Every song has its purpose and is unbelievably pure and wonderful. Listening to this album is a religious experience for me and when I hear of Radiohead fans who don't like it I feel extremely sorrowful for their lost souls. Buy this! Listen to it in the right setting and get into it. There is so much beauty pack inside that you will want to cry, and feel euphoric all at the same time. Even if you don't feel it to a religious extent, this cd will make you stronger as a person. Big claim? Listen to You and Whose Army and let yourself really get into it. A must have!


I'm a Reasonable Man   July 12, 2004
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

There seem to be various and sundry reviews about Amnesiac: those that claim it to be the most astounding example of Radiohead's brilliance, and those that were less impressed by the collage of texture it presents. So, I offer more noise to the already confused clamor by examining the points of contention.
Well, I don't really see Amnesiac as a sequel to Kid A, but the two albums are obviously linked (hence, the revisted 'Morning Bell' as title cut). Many of the songs, such as 'I Might Be Wrong' and 'Knives Out,' first appeared during the Kid A tour and were probably penned around that album's production. Apples from the same tree, you could say.
While Kid A was a cohesive whole where each song led into the other, Amnesiac is more a complilation as each song exists in independent musical space. The crunchy bass textures of 'Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors' provides a claustrophobic backdrop to the processed vocals, while the thick piano chords of 'Pyramid Song' are adrift on ambient synth swoops and orchestral strings. 'Life in a Glasshouse' takes a trip to the swing era with a horn section, while 'Like Spinning Plates' plays the background backward while Yorke sing the melody foward but makes it sound backward with phrasing (confused yet?). One thing is for sure: there's a lot going on in every track!
I think Radiohead was trying to expand their creative boundaries here (if they have any :) by trying different approaches and techniques. The focus seems to be on the production methods and sound textures, as if they wanted to see what they could come up with. As a result, some songs are great (like 'Knives Out,' one of their most straight-foward melodies highlighted by clear arpeggios) and others fall short (like 'Hunting Bears,' a guitar instrumental which is just kind of "there," although it's very similar to the melody of 'I Might Be Wrong,' so maybe I'm missing the point).
All that being said, Amnesiac is a good CD that any Radiohead fan or fan of avant rock will want to pick up, and most will find it a satisfying 45 minutes; however, if you're looking for the conceptual and thematic sweep of OK Computer or Kid A, I'm afraid you won't find it.


misunderstood   July 11, 2004
Pyramid Song is one of the most quietly beautiful songs EVER.
That being said, I find the rest of this album slightly harder to understand as a single unit than Kid A, which cannot be touched or repeated even though these songs were made at the same time. Maybe that's because this album really just doesn't fit together as well, although many of the songs have textures which Kid A made familiar. There are songs that stand out, like the last one, the reworking of Morning Bell, and Dollars & Cents (which really had to grow on me), and Pulk/Pull Revolving doors. I really like You and Whose Army because it kind of looks forward to we suck young blood, the way it crescendos. Spinning Plates is cool and trippy and Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box is very calm and well constructed; in short, all the electronic songs are well done. But the other rock tracks: I Might Be Wrong and Knives Out, are pretty good, but feel lacking somehow in placement or maybe they just aren't as great because they've kind of been done before, or maybe my instinct is wrong.
It's like Kid A was made for the middle of the night and Amnesiac was made for facing dawn, with bits of the past still lingering and affecting the present but everything having a different tint to it and being a little bit easier to do. Amnesiac is not Kid A part two, it's more like Kid A's brother. With each Radiohead album, it gets harder to categorize them in relation to their predecessors, so just listen to it and see what you think.