šŸ’æ How Good Is It Really šŸ’æ Kid A

Super surprised that no one has voted Treefingers for best track yet.

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Recall listening to R1 or XFM play it in full bang on midnight. I had no headphones that reached from my stereo to my bed and was living at home so it was preeeety quiet

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More genuinely, would probably given it a 7. Has 3 fantastic songs (Disappear, Idioteque, Motion Picture Soundtrack), a great sense of atmosphere and itā€™s clearly done very well but ā€¦ never have the urge to listen to it as a full album. Iā€™ll just pull out a few tracks now and then but Iā€™ve never been in a Kid A mood - and itā€™s probably their 4th or 5th best album overall for me.

The fact I was a huge Aphex Twin fan before I ever heard this probably doesnā€™t help. Iā€™m sure plenty of people in the same situation still adore Kid A, but for me the title track and Treefingers are so heavily indebted to him as to make them pointless, which instantly precludes it from masterpiece status

Have stuck Idioteque on really loud now though, as that is one of the most perfect tracks to have been made in the last 20 years.

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As a big fan of the Bends and OK Computer, Kid A left me so cold at the time. I listened to it a lot but it just never did anything much for me. But I also felt like it was maybe my fault and that I was maybe not mentally up to it. I could appreciate how big a change it was for them as a band and respect it. Maybe all I wanted at time from them was big choruses and angst to the max.

I think it always felt musically interesting but emotionally very cold. Iā€™ve never really clicked with anything theyā€™ve done since, even if I do respect their innovations.

Listening to it again now for probably the first time since then and I think I am appreciating it a bit more. Going to try to keep at it all week and see if maybe we can be friends after all.

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Genuinely havenā€™t.

Maybe itā€™s time.

I gave it a 7. More of a The Bends/OK Computer/In Rainbows kinda guy myself. Yā€™know, one of those scrubs who prefers it when The Radioheads do proper tunes.

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I remember it getting a lot of love at the time, I think it might have even been number 1 in the music forum end of year album poll

even In Rainbows? Thatā€™s the only ā€œlaterā€ album that truly grabbed me and sounds like it could have the same impact for you, as it is definitively not this

Yep

I think it does get love but I figure thereā€™s always a push back against late career stuff I guess.

Top album in the PJ Harvey HGATR thread as well. I stand by my choice

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Not as good as amnesiac/10

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Closer to the Beatles than anything it pretends to be, itā€™s got a couple of synths in it its not the disintegration loops ffs
7

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I remember hearing it for the first time and not getting it at all, except for How to Disappear. I remember persisting and each track sort-of clicking in turn. I read a lot of articles around the 20th anniversary a couple of weeks ago (and one really quite tetchy fb thread featuring a former reviewer from this site) claiming that it wasnā€™t actually groundbreaking and people who liked it just hadnā€™t listened to enough Autechre, but actually that sort of misses the point. Whereas Autechre are proudly impenetrable, Kid A actually made that other world of IDM and electronica accessible for a lot of people for the first time. By the time I had discovered all the stuff I discovered on the back of this, the music on Kid A had seared itself pretty deep. They may not have invented electronica, but they sure as hell introduced me to it.

Musically, if Iā€™m being completely objective Optimistic/In Limbo is a bit of a sag in the middle, but Iā€™m not being even remotely objective.

10

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Apples and oranges imho, kid a is at its heart just an arty rock album. Formative if youā€™re 17 or something when it came out but otherwise not a work of exception.

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8, gotta lose two points for treefingers, Kid A and Idioteque which I find boring

I guess thatā€™s pretty much what I was saying. It made that sort of thing accessible for someone who had never immersed themselves in that world before. As you said above, ā€˜closer to the Beatles than anything it pretends to beā€™, although I donā€™t necessarily think it was pretending to be anything other than what it was. I think that a lot got attached to it being a retreat from the mainstream by angry rock journalists who wanted them to become U2, but from what the band said in interviews around the time it was still an attempt to communicate and be understood. Amnesiac and TKOL are both considerably weirder anyhow.

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donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever listened to a Radiohead album.

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The actual recorded album I agree with some points above is too cold. The songs, performed live are a rare instance of where they shine better than the album. It is a brave record yet I think it is over regarded generally.

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Really donā€™t get the love for Idioteque, my friend is always shocked when I say this too but I just find it quite cliched, too long and the chorus is really anticlimactic to me, thom has an especially mewling delivery on the vocals there too which doesnā€™t help.

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