"Hey, for $12 I’ll give you Radiohead."

Kid A reviewed by Chris Karoli

Three months from now, every reviewer currently sucking on Radiohead’s Kid A will wish more than anything they could wipe their lipstick from Thom Yorke’s buttocks. Pop music reaches a new low, as the most passive-aggressive band ever to sell a million records follows up their only real effort with a load of complete bollocks.

Radiohead spent the latter part of their 18-month stranglehold on rock criticism filming Meeting People Is Easy, a 90-minute wad of self-martyring dead-tech Eastern European posturing set against decent live performances. Every second of this film oozes monolithic self-importance and underscores the band’s complete absence of a sense of humor about their situation. It’s pop music, and no matter how many fancy old analogue organs you sick on that G/G-flat change, it’s been around for decades. True, Thom Yorke has a gorgeously metallic and unnerving whinny, and yes, OK Computer turned mainstream pop on its ass for a little while. Human League did the same thing in 1981, and countless bands have replicated this feat – with the help of small independent record labels like Capitol – ever since.

Why are Radiohead where they are now? Because in 1993, they were Bush, peddling second-rate wannabe grunge with all the sincerity and flair with which Oasis cover Lennon/McCartney versions. Pablo Honey is one of the top ten crimes against humanity committed in the 1990s, pushed out of the top five by Bush’s Sixteen Stone and the Oklahoma Bombing. And now Thom Yorke’s trying to make up for it by shilling for the third world. How about a single then, Thom?

"Idioteque," a startling approximation of what Richard D. James could come up with in about fifteen seconds, is the closest thing to interesting on this record – but only on first listen. Subsequent attention reveals a shallow, uninspired and intentionally boring plod through some sort of haphazard mantra "Women and children first," which when started and stopped gives us the secret message "If I asked you to kill me." My answer would have to be No.

Radiohead are so pissed off to be where they are, and it’s hilarious. There’s nothing better than watching a bunch of spotters suffer the suss: when you sell a million records, you’re a pop band. And try as they might to confuse, bemuddle and/or alienate their fanbase, they’ll attract twice as many poseurs to their ranks with this thickheaded, obstinate pile of vim. It’s up there with The Cure’s Pornography in its utter inability to deter a lightweight pop band’s success or to lend them any credibility. Opening with the now-predictable Nature Movie keyboards and leading into a surfeit Boards of Canada song, the dreamy featherweights in Radiohead are looking to fuck with you.

The funniest thing is how much less respect I have for OK Computer now... it’s the best they could do, and they’re not only confirming their/our worst fears, they’re trying to worm out of their obvious responsibility by waxing obtuse. Radiohead are not releasing singles or videos, and generally wasting this planet’s resources in pressing this CD at all. Thom’s so concerned about the plight of the third world that he’s cutting down their forests to release music he paid no attention, in order to take money from an audience he doesn’t care about. If only he was honest about the position this puts him in, maybe it’d be funnier, but his and the group’s seriousness about the affair spoil everything. We’re supposed to be impressed they spent 373 days recording one song, rather than marvel at how much money they wasted and/or how completely retarded that is. Not likely. Oh, and word comes down they’ve got a second album’s worth of outtakes coming out soon after – aren’t you just flipping in your knickers over that? I’ll bet you a million thousand dollars it sounds like The Bends – a shallow, calculated effort to sweep away their half-assed, half-hearted stab at thee, Kid A.