Radiohead used to be a constant in my music listening, but aside from this series, I barely play them anymore. Perhaps I burned myself out on the first 6 records as a teenager & young adult--I remember feeling jaded on the band as early as 2006. Part of it was certainly not wanting to be perceived as one of those Radiohead fans. Part of it was In Rainbows not working for me & I just sort of fell off the train. I don't think I'm going to fire back up my fandom as major as it was in the early 2000s, but revisiting these albums for this series has been fun because they 100% hold up. Turns out, I had pretty good taste back then.
Amnesiac was the newest Radiohead album at the time I got into them, so it was the 1st one I discovered (along with The Bends). My mother bought me the deluxe edition as a Christmas gift. It came in a hardback book like the one pictured on the cover, with extra art, but I got sick (from eating too many sweets perhaps?) at the Christmas party that year & threw up on the book. It never cleaned up right so I ended up tossing it, although Radiohead would probably have approved of the vomit-stained version.
I never understood the criticism that this album feels like like Kid A part 2. I suppose I kind of get that for a band who had until that point changed so drastically with each record, this seemed like a relatively minor evolution that was tantamount to standing still. It is true that the 2 albums were recorded during the same sessions, but that doesn't make Amnesiac a collection of Kid A outtakes. The albums have distinct tones: Kid A is a dinner party on a lonely glacier that turns unruly when the guests have too much to drink; Amnesiac is the bleary eyed cleanup the morning after.
As for the "they sound alike" argument: yes, the overall approach is similar, with its murky sonic stew full of bleeping & blurping samples. But where is Kid A's version of "Pyramid Song," the huge piano ballad with the sweeping string arrangement? Show me anything on Kid A as avant-garde as "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," with its degraded tape-loop drum machine & robotic treated spoken-word vocals. Where is Kid A's New Orleans jazz funeral dirge like "Life in a Glasshouse"? That last song was the 1st one that really drew me in, back before I had the CD. Its mixture of elements was unlike anything I had heard, & it's even better in album context as an epic closer. I still think it's my favorite song on the record.
My major dig on this album back then was that "Dollars and Cents" sounds too similar to "Knives Out." Today, I half-agree with my younger self. Both songs have a similar bossa nova shuffle, but where the latter is driven by its shifting lead guitar figure, the former is bass-centric. Hearing the live version on I Might Be Wrong helped me realize this distinction. Aside from that, every song on this relatively short album sounds unique & adventurous. Even on an album that could be seen as an afterthought, the band is pushing their sound into new territory. These songs are the farthest thing from castoffs.
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