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Album Review
by SashaS
4-6-2001
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| 'Amnesiac' |
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Radiohead: 'Amnesiac'
(Parlophone)
Radiohead make music to put a spell on everyone
If memory serves right, Radiohead told us the followup to 'Kid A' would be a more mainstream album, more akin to the music they made in the past on 'The Bends' and 'OK Computer', And true, there's the hit single 'Pyramid Song' but that's about the extent of 'Amnesiac' as a mainstream offering. The album's title speaks volumes for the goodies we get.
And yet, it's the only course they can credibly continue on and not look back. Anything else would have been bowing to mass market demands. Thankfully Radiohead are not short of integrity, or obduracy, in this business where principles are as thin as budget toilet tissue. There really are very few bands so in command of their musical output and destiny as this Oxford outfit.
Radiohead are at ease journeying through lo-fi musings, exploring 'alien' soundscapes and scouring the inner and outer reaches of their imagination on their way through the early days of the new century. More of their jazz-Ieanings are evident too, with legendary trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton blowing on 'Life In A Glasshouse'. studio-bound, the 'Heads seem not to have borders per se, but are happy to report that Thom Yorke's world is still very tortured.
Those fortunate enough to have seen the band live last year at their handful of shows have heard at least two tracks -'Knives Out' and 'You And Whose Army?' Elsewhere 'Dollars and Cents' is delivered furiously and 'Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box' brims with violence, all songs and sounds gloriously different, and further proof that Radiohead are above and beyond the chatter and grind of the music business. Their music is quietly epic, valiantly sparse, sublimely poetic and frequently resembling life without an anaesthetic.
Hovering between beauty and loneliness, these songs cast a fragile web; just listen to 'Amnesiac/Morning Bell'to get amnesty for your emotions. 'Amnesiac' will put a spell on anyone not caught-up, like a moth to a flame, in the flickering mirrors of the election catwalk show.
(8/10)
SashaS
4-6-2001
'Amnesiac' by Radiohad is released 4 June on Parlophone/EMI
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