It’s almost the end of 2015. Radiohead has released “Spectre” and their next full-length album appears to be slated for an early 2016 release. To call Radiohead’s work prolific would be selling them short at this point. After over 20 years of making music, the question isn’t “Has contemporary music been influenced by the angelic whinings of Thome Yorke”, but rather “to what extent?” When I think of Radiohead, I think of them at their most polarizing periods of influence: Kid A and In Rainbows. I used to run the gambit of assuming that both of these works were produced by talented gentlemen who had found a succinct way to channel their creativity while breaching new ground in the music ionosphere. But now, I can’t help but see either of these albums as wholly Radiohead-esque, as though they could not exist had they not been made at the right time in the right place at the right pattern.
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Chronologically, it would probably be best to start with Kid A, but for my purposes, I’d rather assess what In Rainbows is, was, and continues to be. One of the most significant things anyone can say about the album is that it was one of the first of its kind. Pay-what-you-want as a concept seems so simple and intuitive to the generation that was raised on the internet, especially in the wake of bandcamp and other forms of self-made music streaming. In 2009, however, music was still at some odds with consumerism and piracy in the wake of the internet. While yes, iTunes had found its demographic, most of the relevant music listening community either held steadfast to a physical copy collection, or deviated from the entire discussion and chose to pirate music of interest. It was still a tenuous discussion to talk about music as though it were a profitless commodity that was obligated to a generation, though it was also difficult to hold someone completely accountable for all music they wanted to consume via micro-transactions.

This is not to say that Thome Yorke rode in on his horse Johnny Greenwood and the two of them with three other squires managed to completely solve the cancer debacle. It would also be hasty to call this a revolution of how music was viewed in terms of art and commodity. What it in fact ended up signifying was a major change in the perspective many would take when thinking about album sales and piracy. None of the members strictly needed any money, certainly not after their success with prior album-label releases, so what purpose is served by charging for conventional pricing and distribution? Release music however you see fit, and should that be as freely as you can, so be it.

At first, many would say this is a slap in the face those who would choose musicianship as an art for a means of survival. As time has shown, this has had the exact opposite effect. Music being produced at low cost for little profit is now an acceptable means of expression. Low-fidelity was an existent genre, but in this sense, it almost faced a revivalism in the wake of viral self-production. The stigma behind music success and production had been removed because of In Rainbows’ smash success, so in this sense, it could be argued as one of the most significant albums to be made in the decade.
As we turn the discussion to the albums’ contents and song-crafting, it’s clear that much of this was a vanity project. Between “Nude” floating around as an unrecorded live performance track, the off-the-cuff atmosphere of “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, and the rule-bending “15 Step”, nothing about this album feels as though it was fussed over. At the same time, this album was nothing short of a calculated strike. King takes queen in art form. It’s impressive how the musicality manages to deny this. In Rainbows is exactly the right kind of album to be released at the time it was. Not too soon, not too late, just in the midst of a cultural fire that needed sating.

Thematically a recurring idea within In Rainbows, is a destruction of planning. When we look at songs like “House of Cards”, “Nude”, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, “Jigsaw Falling into Place”, an overarching concept is the unraveling of expectations and desires. This ranges from small interpersonal relations to something as large as self-perceived piety. There’s something on your mind when you listen to this album, but you’re not sure what, and when you get to the end, you feel as though you never had a question to begin with. Far be it from me to see one of the most timed albums be so cavalier in its approach to planning. Remove oneself from expectations, and you dismantle the means to your own unhappiness. If this is all getting too deep, stop me now, but you’re balls deep in this as is. The assassination of metaphorical and literal blueprints ties directly into what Kid A’s entire meat was about.

As we look further back to Kid A, we also have to address what predated that as well. OK Computer is likely the most radio-friendly album the band has ever put out, and has in-turn been their most successful commercial endeavor, back when commercial success was still an accepted goal for the group. In response to this success, the demand from audiences and labels translated into immense artistic and personal pressure for the band. When we look at Kid A, we see a response to this pressure. It’s not uncommon to see an artist deviate from their accepted sound landscape for the sake of exploration and experimentation, but rarely is it done in the artist’s peak in sales, popularity, and (some would erroneously argue) creativity.

Calling Kid A a departure from Radiohead’s previous sound implies that there was a destination in mind that had been sought out. Nothing in the music life of Radiohead up to that point suggested that they had even considered going down the route of electronic music. The most we’d seen was the presence of synthesizers to capture tones in songs like “Fake Plastic Trees”, and the B-Sides to The Bends and OK Computer had shown that Radiohead was more interested in exploring accepted sounds than breaing new ground (i.e. the way “Maquiladora” harkens to a Frankenstein’s monster combination of Definitely, Maybe and Sixteen Stone’s sound). Kid A was a car driving with no place in mind, just anywhere away from home. Anyone who has done their homework on the album can find multiple quotes of various members of the band rejecting the reality of the monetization of their art, to the point of even thinking how to change their musical styles of comfort and removing common instruments from their recording sessions. I do not write this with the interest of regurgitating what Wikipedia can inform you.
Kid A possesses a unique vulnerability to it that is rarely seen in the same capacity and intensity. The songs on the album come from very personal and intimate personal tales, like “Everything in its Right Place” and “How to Disappear Completely”. These are songs written from the perspective of someone retelling trauma in a false dissociated manner. Even on a song like “Treefingers”, which contains no lyrics, there is still an underlying sense of a warm ethereal ambiance. It doesn’t serve as a breather track, nor can it be considered an interlude. It is its own concept and explored theme. Compare this to “Fitter Happier”, which almost seems pedestrian in its attempts to briefly compact an idea of disenfranchisement through forced robotics. One song with no words can mean so much more than something comprised of nothing but repeated aphorisms. None of Kid A feels as though it’s trying to outdo the previous sound established by Radiohead. Kid A is about responding to the wear and tear that has come with that sound, and as such, it sounds distant from it out of necessity.
Getting to the heart of what Kid A truly is, we can say that it’s emotion captured into a little over forty minutes. Everything about it feels right-brain seizing control from the left. Looking at a song like “Optimistic”, which is probably the most approachable out of any of the tracks on the album, the lyrics on it are nonsense in the most basic understanding of what that word means. The lines don’t flow together in any logical cohesion. The final, repeated line in the song is “dinosaurs roaming the earth”, which fails to be in the ballpark of any other presented ideas on the album. Still, the heart and rigor that the song is performed with create an emotional line to it that can’t be rightfully dissected. When Yorke sings “If you try the best you can”, even though it’s a line that’s had no preparation in the song, it feels correct in that moment. Emotion overtaking logic can also be seen on “Idioteque”, with frantic and anxious lines about paranoia and being torn between fear and anxiety. This is complicated by Yorke’s strained and falsetto-heavy delivery, unintentionally demonstrating his mastery as a vocalist. If Kid A is about anything, it’s about wanting separation from the responsibility that comes with art.
Tying together Kid A and In Rainbows, we can see that they represent Radiohead at their most dynamic periods. If In Rainbows is a calculated strike, Kid A is a whim made in spite of all sensibility. They both represent musical apexes for the band, but more importantly, they represent juxtaposed themes. For everything that one is, the other is the antithesis. When Radiohead is talked about positively, I always see these two albums at the top of the dialogues. This is true back when both were freshly made, and still now. It is interesting to compare these two albums being made by the same band with a 9 year gap between them. How can a band go from lamenting the violation of dreams and ideals that come with making plans in Kid A to tauntingly singing about how nothing ever goes as planned in In Rainbows?

I don’t have the answer, and I don’t think anyone does. Not the members of Radiohead themselves, not any of the Pitchfork staff, not a single soul has the ability to say what changes a group of persons so drastically in under a decade. Maybe that’s part of the enduring magic behind listening to an album like Kid A or In Rainbows, listening to something greater than the sum of its parts and the experiences that built it up to that very moment. That’s what draws people to Radiohead on some level. The vast array of the human experience shown on their discography can almost guarantee some level of universality. It would only make sense, then, that the most standout parts of that history would be the lowest and highest emotional resonance points.