Radiohead have been acutely detached from the supposed joys their position commands for so long now that the predictably difficult 'Kid A' should come as no surprise.
From a rudimentary group of indie upstarts, thrown under the global microscope by 'Creep' and through the seismic meisterwork of 'OK Computer', the band have found themselves rapturously installed as visionary deities. But as far back as 'Creep' - "what the hell am I doing here, I don't belong here" - the band have been bobbing in stormy, acidic waters, scarred by the realisation that puking commendations and platinum discs are, for them, abhorrent.
Such a conundrum turned Yorke into "a f***ing mess" after 'OK Computer', and has consequently spawned the 'Emperor's New Clothes' reinvention of 'Kid A', a cryptic but brilliant record, radically stripped of Radiohead's supposed musical strengths and charged throughout with a feverish desire to subvert and, perhaps, alienate.
The album opens with the soothing electric piano patter of 'Everything In Its Right Place', and lyrically ushers in 50 minutes of chronically dislocated commentary on the state of Yorke's mind. Discarding base musical structures from the off, the track builds - despite the idyllic connotations of the title- into a gorgeously intense mantra, punctuated by Yorke's casual but ruptured "yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" refrain.
Yorke's effortless misery is of course nothing new, but musically on 'Kid A', the band have torched virtually every other signpost previously planted. Throughout guitars are left to gaze at the anthemic and melodic Travis/Coldplay meal-ticket, replaced instead by a claustrophobic mesh of 21st century sonic progeny, as electronic, cut-and-paste dynamics are smeared over a skeletal Radiohead framework.
Electronic structures feature heavily on 'Kid A' and work brilliantly amid the disembodied vibe. Yorke's well-publicised championing of Warp Records Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards Of Canada - goes way beyond simple de rigueur nudges, as is shown on the stunning title track, the rather less disarming Brian Eno-esque ambient journey of 'Treefingers' and the magnificent 'Idiotique'.
The track 'Kid A' is a mass of electro fx and atmospherics, rebounding beats and music-box daydreaming, with Yorke's whirring robotic whines "rats and children follow me out of town" - just two of the angst-ridden soundbites that relentlessly litter the album. 'Idiotique' meanwhile is the album's most deconstructed Radiohead track. Crunching and crumbling rhythms bounce against a welter of ricocheting coins, while Yorke carries the melody with his voice. His angular lilt projects the track along a precipice of psychotic delirium - "'...women and children first'... 'this is really happening'...'I laugh until my head comes off'...take the money and run'..."
Quite how the rest of the band coped with 'Kid A''s comprehensive volte-face is unknown. Rumours of recording paralysis are already legend and one track is known to have taken almost a year to record and doesn't even make the album. There have even been suggestions that this is virtually a Yorke solo album. That he drove the record artistically is unquestionable - has it ever been any other way - but the rest of the band are healthy accomplices, albeit having probably swallowed considerable initial bemusement.
Either way, the fact that Radiohead's career has been built on a foundation of posturing guitar vitality can be virtually disregarded with 'Kid A', with their role heroically debunked throughout the record. For example, while 'The National Anthem' is driven by a revving fuzz bass, it ends in an astonishingly disfigured squall of deranged horns and truncated drums. Equally, 'How To Disappear''s lightly feathered acoustic guitars may provide some relief, but there is a nagging undertow of menace as strings and trumpets escape, Yorke again propelling the song with a torrent of paranoia. Only 'Optimistic', with its jagged, stuttering guitars, sounds anything like old-school Radiohead, but a tribal, rolling rhythm and Yorke's inescapable extemporisation diffuses any throwback nostalgia.
'Optimistic''s 'chorus' - "you can try the best you can, the best you can is good enough" - provides the album's only real concession to stable human emotion, one of the few complaints that perhaps should be levelled at this record. There are no sharp lyrical insights or politicised sniping from Yorke, but instead, as perhaps suits the musical climate, a seething maelstrom of woes and whines, grimaces and shrugs. Amidst the clamouring musical jungle, there is no beacon leading the way, only graphic but random snapshots of Yorke's apparent 'condition'. Appropriately, with 'Motion Picture Soundtrack', the album closes in a similarly bereft mental state - "I will see you in the next life" - but again, as a wash of harps and a Heaven-beckoning angel chorus floods the track, the celestial music leads the way.
'Kid A' is self-indulgent, chronically over-wrought and an inherently wilful stab at relinquishing Radiohead's by-proxy crown. It is also an audacious triumph that despite the baffling, impenetrable shield, is like a coursing virus given the opportunity to infiltrate your system.
However, if Radiohead were hoping such an obtuse left-field path would relieve their head-squeezing pain, they should think again. 'Kid A' will not dampen their aura. Rather, by delving their 'art' deeper and deeper, while remaining so tormented, they will continue to drive the fervent media hyperbole, propelling their mythical position.
But there is no going back now.
