(Parlophone)
Herald rating: * * * *
Review: Russell Baillie
It all starts with bit of a fib.
Through a haze of doleful keyboard chords and dessicated vocal noises, Thom Yorke enters repeatedly singing the line, "Everything in its right place ... "
Well no, it's not actually, and much of the rest of Radiohead's fourth album - the feverishly anticipated follow-up to 1997's OK Computer - is a sound that swerves between rearrangement and disarrangement, between sonic reinvention and see-what-sticks experimentation in electronica.
That's to a point where, when you hear something that is in its right place, like a Radiohead signature sound of Yorke's keening voice over a guitar (and this is a band of three guitar players), it's almost a bit of a let-down. Initially anyway.
But once the 10 tracks start to lock in, in their crazy paving-like way, Kid A emerges as an album with peaks and valleys sometimes as jarring and jagged as its alpine scene cover art.
One result of its peculiar dynamic is that on an emotional level, it remains elusive.
Still, Kid A is a fine old conundrum.
Lyrically, Yorke's unprinted words sound equal parts cut-up randomness and a deepening of the elegantly articulated paranoia of past works.
That's especially apparent around the beginning, when, after the aforementioned opener, the doodle of a title track chimes forth with Yorke's voice electronically treated into sci-fi unrecognisability.
Then comes the album's first rock moment, the bass-driven The National Anthem, which starts off sounding like it could have escaped the last Massive Attack album before descending into a jazzy cacophony of brass recalling Bowie's more honk-happy 70s moments.
How to Disappear Completely marks a return to - aah - melodic balladry of acoustic and gently decorative guitars.
And after Treefingers, a glacial Brian Eno-like ambient instrumental, the REM-like Optimistic also restores the idea of Radiohead-as-band.
In Limbo has an askew time-signature but not much else to remember it by, and that's followed by possibly the best track, Idioteque, all shuddering beats, high anxiety and Yorke singing rounds with himself at high altitude.
Then it closes in sweetly spartan fashion on the haunting Morning Bell, followed by the wheezing organ and hymnal tune of Motion Picture Soundtrack.
And so it finishes its confounding mission which isn't quite as vexing as it's been made out to be.
It is intriguing and some of it sounds disconcertingly brilliant. But just don't expect Kid A to get you right there as its predecessor did.
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