Pros: Picks up where "Kid A" left off, but with some true gems.
Cons: Picks up where "Kid A" left off, but with some real stinkers.
The Bottom Line: "Amnesiac" sounds like Radiohead trying to go back to their roots & learn from their old mistakes. They're still making a slew of new ones and not fixing old ones.
Donlee_Brussel's Full Review: Amnesiac by Radiohead
It’s about seven months after Radiohead’s career hit a peak commercially with their fourth full-length release, Kid A. The band’s first chart-topping album sold 207,000 copies in the U.S. its first week and garnered a Best Album Grammy nomination. The remarkable aspect of Radiohead’s success is that they did it all without any real singles or videos in an age where TRL is one of the key components to making it big.
Amnesiac picks up where Kid A left off with "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box." Ed O’Brien describes it as, “A particularly upbeat and 'poppy' track for Radiohead [with] a trippy, dance backbeat and a pounding kettle drum.” On the song, Thom Yorke speaks as a returning prodigal son flipping off all the naysayers like myself who didn’t have eargasms while listening to Kid A, telling us, “I'm a reasonable man, get off, get off, get off my case.”
From there, we get the lead single (for the UK and Canada) off the album. "Pyramid Song" is disputably the best track off Amnesiac, and what Thom Yorke himself told Ed he thought was, “…the best thing we've committed to tape, ever.” It opens with a "Rabbit in Your Headlights"-like piano intro, with Yorke taking us on a journey through his Styx river (a reference to Egyptian mythology). When Phil Selway’s drums, Thom’s bass, and Johnny Greenwood’s string arrangement come in, building to a marvelous crescendo after the second verse with Yorke singing over and over again, “There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt,” you know this is as good as the new Radiohead gets.
Natch, the band follows it up with "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors." Along with "Hunting Bears" and "Like Spinning Plates," these three tracks off Amnesiac represent Radiohead at their "Treefingers" worst. With these three tracks, we get more backwards spun vocals and beats (a.k.a. More ProTools abuse), more sci-fi sound effects, and more inferior imitations of bands like Slint and For Carnation.
However, none of those compare to the ultimate self-indulgence on Amnesiac. The band has the gall to remake a mediocre track off Kid A. A more atmospheric, and overall superior to the last version of "Morning Bell" appears on this album. But if a Kid A redux was really necessary, it definitely should’ve been the acoustic version of "Motion Picture Soundtrack" with the cut third verse.
Thankfully, the aforementioned are the only missteps on Amnesiac. Subsequent "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" is "You and Whose Army?," a track that up until the 1:49 mark is deadly dull. However, when the drums and piano kick in, and Thom’s sedatives wear off, "You and Whose Army?" becomes the kind of battle song the band used to concoct easily (read: "Talk Show Host") with Yorke chanting, “We ride tonight!”
Next, we have the first U.S. single off the album, "I Might Be Wrong." It’s a traditional rocker with Ed playing some rousing, bluesy guitar over an electronic drumbeat, thus once again showing the band’s affinity for melding genres can sometimes have great results. "I Might Be Wrong" is Amnesiac’s "Optimistic," easily the most accessible track, both lyrically and musically, to mainstream audiences. It’s even complete with a mellow coda just like "Optimistic"
If it wasn’t about cannibalism, one might also say that "Knives Out" is as close to the old, conventional Radiohead sound as the band gets on this album. They spent more than a year working on the song. And with its delicately smooth guitar arpeggios, listeners can definitely hear the time and effort that went into this track. The lyrics sound like the theme song for Mike Tyson or the movie Ravenous. The song is undoubtedly one of the more provocative tunes to sing-along to with an infectiously catchy chorus.
"Life in a Glass House" serves as Amnesiac’s finale, and what a fitting closer to this chapter in the Radiohead discography it is. The song features jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttleton and his quintet, giving the track the sound of New Orleans funeral music with a full brass section. This is of course coupled with Thom Yorke’s lyrics that Lyttleton described as, "very surreal, rather like Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale." The soaring '50s jazz riffs beautifully complement the band, making Life in a Glass House an ethereal climax for Amnesiac.
Radiohead's last three albums are best analogized to the first three seasons of The Sopranos. O.K. Computer is the equivalent of the first season: Groundbreaking, original, brilliant. Kid A equals the second season: Over-hyped, overrated, and not really half as good as the first. Finally, Amnesiac is like the third, current season of The Sopranos: Perhaps trying to go back to their roots and learn from their old mistakes, but still making a slew of new ones and not fixing some of the old ones.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.