How do you follow up a revolutionary album? With an even more revolutionary one.
Kid A
Radiohead
33
In the wake of 1997’s OK Computer, Thom Yorke had begun to resist the idea that he was in a rock band at all. Radiohead were, with some stress and shouting and madness, going to throw away the rules altogether; in turn, Kid A became their second revolutionary act in as many records.
“Every artist or musician will go through a period where you have to think again about what you’re doing.”
Thom Yorke
Radiohead
With its seasick sequences and Yorke’s multiplied vocal lines folding in and over and around one another like an Escher sketch, “Everything in Its Right Place” is both taunt and gambit—a little wink from the band that had gone from “Creep” to these so-called creepy sounds. That was simply the start. The demented bass and howling horns of “The National Anthem”, the operatic tremors of “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, the refracted guitars and babbling circuity of “In Limbo”: Radiohead found new space to explore on every track. Each was anchored to a hook—however obscured—before setting off into unfamiliar terrain.