“Amnesiac is so underrated!”
If you’re unfortunate enough to have been in close proximity to any Radiohead fans, this might be a phrase you’ve heard before. For the average Muse-loving, R.E.M.-adoring alt-rock fans, Radiohead’s Ok Computer is a must-listen album. However, in their discography also lies an experimental masterpiece that revolutionised their sound, pushing the boundaries of alternative rock. Only three years after Ok Computer, Radiohead released Kid A.
From the addictive opener, “Everything in its Right Place” and the beautifully dreamlike “How to Disappear Completely” to the foreboding “Idioteque”, Radiohead’s fourth LP takes the listener on an emotional journey. Being a great example of musical cohesion, even “weaker” tracks like “Treefingers” and “In Limbo” are given room to flourish.
However, during the same recording sessions, the songs that would eventually comprise Amnesiac were made. Radiohead considered releasing both albums as a double album but eventually decided against it. This, along with some blatant overlaps, for example, “Morning Bell/Amnesiac” and “Morning Bell”, often raise the question of whether Amnesiac is just “Kid B” or a “leftovers” album.
A lot of tracks in Amnesiac seem to attempt to provoke similar emotions to tracks in Kid A. For instance, despite sharing few instrumental and lyrical characteristics, “Pyramid Song” and “How to Disappear Completely” are both soul-touching, dreamy pieces that stand out as anomalous pieces in their respective LPs. Both “Kid A” and “Pact Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box” are heavily experimental in their use of sound effects and soft electronics. And “Life In a Glasshouse” shares its bizarre experimental combination of trumpets and electronic music with “The National Anthem”.
Despite these commonalities, there isn’t enough overlap to consider Amnesiac a “leftovers” album. Yes, the background music in “Morning Bell/Amnesiac” does sound suspiciously similar to the untitled piece at the end of Kid A. But if we turn to KID A MNESIA, we find that “Morning Bell” also has an “(In The Dark Version)”. Three versions of the same song? “Morning Bell” seems like a strong example of a concept Radiohead investigated but never fully gained closure over.
As for the similarities between the individual tracks… there aren’t many. Both are experimental albums, made by the same artist, at a similar time. Of course, there will be some (very few!) similarities–it does not mean one is a “leftovers” album. The two albums overall sound very different from one another: Kid A explores an eerie relationship between human warmth and robotic cold whilst Amnesiac, for a larger part, is void of humanity.
A large part of why “leftovers” is the term used to describe Amnesiac is that Kid A is widely considered a far greater album. Unlike in Kid A, there are definitely several “filler” tracks. Songs like “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” and “Hunting Bears” stand out in this regard. Also, remember that emotional journey that Kid A takes the listener on? Yeah, that doesn’t happen in Amnesiac. Although the music is relatively cohesive at times, the journey itself is disjointed. The album constantly jumps from beauty to eeriness to discomfort without any order to the chaos.
Nonetheless, the band members have explicitly rejected the idea that Amnesiac is just “Kid B”, Thom Yorke claiming that the albums came from two different places. Amnesiac sounds and feels quite unique so, although I don’t regard it as one of Radiohead’s greatest pieces of work, the term “leftovers” does not fully capture the more nuanced relationship it holds with its older sibling.
Instead, it feels like Radiohead was not fulfilled by Kid A (or at least some of the ideas) and tried to build off of this dissatisfaction with Amnesiac. Songs like “Pyramid Song”, “You And Whose Army?”, “I Might Be Wrong” and “Life In a Glasshouse” are, in my opinion, some of the band’s greatest songs. And, these very unique songs that–though they would not themselves fit into Kid A–take intriguing, experimental risks to a Kid A standard electronically, vocally and lyrically. It’s just that most of the album unfortunately doesn’t.
So, is Amnesiac just “Kid B”? Probably not, but it’s not an album entirely in its own right either. But I guess the final question is: is it “underrated”? That verdict I will leave up to you.
“Radiohead en Barcelona, Daydream Festival” by alterna2 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.