Kid A

Certain Songs #1776: Radiohead – “Idioteque”

March 18, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

So I’m currently sitting in a jury assembly room, which is a stressful situation during the best of times — I think it’s important to do my duty as a citizen, but I hate the uncertainty and the potential disruption to my daily routine — but of course, these are the polar opposite of the best of times.

Certain Songs #1775: Radiohead – “Optimistic”

March 17, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

Of course, Kid A wasn’t all bleeps, bloops and blorps; bedeeddles and woobles. Mostly, yeah. But just as “Electioneering” served as the big-ass riff-rocker on OK Computer — complete with cowbell — so does “Optimistic” serve as Kid A’s token “normal” rock song.

And so “Optimistic” roars out of the gate with the guitars of Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood clangoring and clamoring against each other over a rolling and tumbling tom-filled Phil Selway beat while Thom Yorke “ooooooooooohs” over the whole thing before sliding into an opening verse that kind of belies the title.

Certain Songs #1774: Radiohead – “Everything In Its Right Place”

March 16, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

We are now as far away from Kid A as Kid A was from Remain in Light, perhaps the most trenchant example of a restless band changing itself this radically on their fourth album in 1980 that I can think of while writing this post. (I guess Sandinista!, too, though one might argue that it was more of an extension of the genre-bending of London Calling that a full-on reinvention.)

And while we’ll get to Remain in Light in a couple of years — assuming we don’t all die of Covid-19, in case you’re wondering about my mood right now — it does seem weird that Kid A is now 20 years old, because it sure doesn’t seem that old, does it?