KID A

After The Bends, they were this generation's U2. After OK Computer, they were this generation's Pink Floyd. And after Kid A, they were this generation's.... um... gosh... well I guess we'll just have to call them Radiohead and speak of them in their own terms. And that my friends, is exactly the effect the band were after.

Radiohead cared about being a serious band. It's why they refused to play their first hit Creep for years, because they weren't interested in maintaining a hits-based relationship with their audience. It's why each of their first three albums reached further than the previous one. And it's why they became absolutely sick of comparisons and expectations and deliberately set out to break them by releasing an album that was a giant middle finger to what the industry and fans anticipated.

Uncomfortable with suddenly being annointed the saviour of rock and roll in the unseemly critical frenzy that greeted OK Computer, and acutely aware that whatever they followed it up with it would not be as well received, simply because that generally doesn't happen twice in a row, they decided to abandon the direction entirely and create something new and unconnected to their past. This had been done before (in fact REM had done it the previous year with Up, though that was far more accessible than Kid A) and has been done since but arguably never in such an abrupt and unsympathetic fashion. I say unsympathetic because Kid A does no hand-holding for people who came up on Just and No Surprises- it coldly dumps itself in your lap and if you can't handle it, "Well that's what Coldplay's for" is its attitude.

This was probably the most controversial record release I personally experienced. If you weren't there at the time, it's hard to capture just how upset and shocked the thousands of people who were just mad for OK Computer were the first time they heard Kid A's title track. Many, myself included, at first thought it was some bizarre April Fool's, that this wasn't the real album. When it sunk in that it was, many of us called it Metal Machine Music II- Radiohead had, deliberately or otherwise, made an unlistenable sack of garbage.

And yet you've seen that five star rating.

Because all the problems we were having with Kid A were due to our expectations. If you confront the music on its own, you find an incredibly rich and wealthy vein of things to get lost in here. The terrifying Idioteque, which cleverly and perversely inverts the musical language of raves to indicate how we all fiddle while Rome burns. The mystifying title track, where a children's music box, tribal drumming and a treated voice should spell complete disaster yet somehow end up as a sort of soothing chill-out number despite being vaguely ominous at the same time. Everything In Its Right Place where Yorke sings the stupid line "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" over the sort of cheap electronic pianos you had to play in school, yet produces and details the track in such a way that it becomes warm and hypnotic. The brutal The National Anthem which besides having one of the best bass lines of all time, deploys a Stax style horn section- and boy did old Radiohead fan's heads spin when those horns came in on the first listen back in 2000, what were they DOING?- and not only did it blend with the feeling of over-confidence which leads to suffering the music was creating, but the horns managed to sound like a group of people stuck in an elevator going insane and eventually eating each other- apparently the direction Yorke gave the musicians. Time and again, Radiohead do something that shouldn't work, couldn't work, and make it work by hitting just the right balance of set-up and atmosphere that with repeat listens you accept their disregard for "the way songs work" and things begin to flow into each other.

The incredibly beautiful How To Disappear Completely, where Radiohead absolutely nail the art of the slow number, after having fumbled this on OK Computer. Morning Bell's pretty and sparse melodies. A number which sounds like the band just playing together long after you've stopped expecting one in Optimistic, yet perversely sounds like it was recorded very roughly and raw on old-fashioned instruments in the midst of this electronic and very fussed over album. Another such song, though more haunted and eerie in In Limbo. The almost danceable song about divorce (I think) Morning Bell which has some very nice keyboard work. The beautiful and sad and very affecting closer Motion Picture Soundtrack.

Yes there is Treefingers but like Fitter Happier, I tried removing this from the album and found something missing. I don't mean the knowledge the track wasn't there, but the band having the balls to put in three minutes plus of uncomplicated synthesised chimes and just say "Hey whatever" to their fanbase. Treefingers is not brilliant (it's nice though) but it is part of what made the album so interesting and the sheer creativity of what else is around it just manages to keep the album in the five star area.

Not for everyone- those who like good old fashioned melody and harmony and real instruments (much of the album and the next one is Jonny and Thom fiddling with their knobs- the knobs on their equipment you dirty boys- while the other three got increasingly frustrated at not being required to actually play guitars or drums) will find this an alienating and difficult and perhaps unrewarding listen. But if you like to be challenged or are a little perverse or seek music that intends to be an artistic statement rather than something to enjoy, Kid A is a must try.