Radiohead's Kid A baffled me at first... but now I love to listen

Radiohead's Kid A baffled me at first... but now I love to listen
David Staples - The Edmonton Journal - 4 November 2000
Thanks to Simon for the transcription.

The strangest pop recording to come along in several years, Radiohead's Kid A is also the top-selling album in Canada this past month.

The huge sales are astonishing, considering that the music world has been dominated by the likes of conventional hitmakers Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.

Kid A is far from being such simple and perfectly sweet pop. It's a highly experimental album. Upon my first few listens, it came across as a jumble of bizarre sounds and fractured patterns, a bland and screwy record, with few guitar hooks and oddball but barely audible lyrics, such as: "We've got heads on sticks, and got them toothpicks/We got heads on sticks, but you go in circles".

The album is also a departure for Radiohead, a band of five British musicians, ages 28-33, best known as a guitar-heavy rock band. Their last album, 1997's OK Computer, was relatively straightforward, full of loud and catchy riffs and drumbeats.

Radiohead on Kid A, Part 1: "The trick is to try and carry on doing things that interest you you, but not turn into some art-rock nonsense," says bassist Colin Greenwood in Q magazine.

Art-rock nonsense is exactly how Kid A sounded to me but, slowly, after giving the disc another chance or two, the album grabbed me to the point that I now love it without reservation.

Curious about my own change of mind—though I suspect I'm not alone, here—I call two experts, Dr. Norman Weinberger, a professor of neurobiology and behaviour at the University of California at Irvine, and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, author of Flow, a book about peak human experience.

My initial adverse reaction to Kid A, it seems, was a normal adult response to strange new stimuli, Weinberger says, having to do with the subconscious areas of the brain.

When we are children, our brains create these structures to simplify things so we can makes sense of the world's complexity. The structures are difficult, if not impossible, to change later in life. One extreme example, Weinberger says, is by the time a Japanese infant is six to nine months old, a structure is in place that will forever keep that individual from being able to distinguish between the 'l' and 'r' sounds in the English language. No matter what, 'lemon' will always sound like 'remon', and 'aurora' like 'aulola'.

Similar structures form so we can interpret music, Weinberger says, but these structures also make new sounds seem strange, even threatening.

Radiohead on Kid A, Part 2: "I'm a guitarist and suddenly, it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums.... It's scary—everyone feels insecure," says Ed O'Brien in Q.

For a rock band, the challenge is to move no faster than its listeners' ears can handle, Csikszentmihaly says. "Unless you are able to differentiate the pieces that are put into the work, unless you relate them to your own experience, the art is a jumble and doesn't mean much.

"Every [musical] group has to worry about not being too redundant, repeating themselves too much, or being too experimental and surprising people too much. One is boring, the other confusing."

At first, it is simply not possible to listen carefully to a strange new recording because you don't know what to listen for, Weinberger says. "All you're doing is comparing it to what you already know, and saying, 'No, it's different. No, it's different. No, it's different.'

"You have to force yourself to try to listen, and then you actually start to listen for things and you finally say 'Oh, I see what they're doing!' The more you listen, the more you understand."

Radiohead on Kid A, Part 3: "I sometimes feel like there's a sixth member of the band sitting listening to what we're doing, and every time we've done something, he shouts 'Bored now!'" Jonny Greenwood in Q.

Funny, after being utterly baffled by Kid A, it now sounds like the perfect Radiohead album, the only album the band could have made right now. I tingle at one thrilling song, "Morning Bell", and weep at the power of another, the haunting song "Kid A", the strongest emotional reactions I've had to an album since Moby's Play.

Listening, it seems, does bring understanding, not to mention bliss.

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