Radiohead | Amnesiac

I heard AMNESIAC in a Tower Record store recently and was impressed. I bought it and have listened to it and I think it will continue to be highly regarded as time goes by. It's pretty much a mood piece (a gray rainy-day type), but I like the mood. You may have seen the Rolling Stone headline about how Radiohead had to "destroy rock 'n' roll." Actually, the music here hearkens back to the past a lot--back to Snowflakes Are Dancing by Isao Tomita, Tubular Bells by Michael Oldfield, and maybe the Durutti Column--and, really, there's not much here conceptually that Bjork hasn't already done. I guess all the commotion just stems from this popular rock group making such a hard left turn away from their guitars and the style that made them popular. Ironically, the deviation has made them more popular. Radiohead is obviously doing a lot of things right. Some of the credit should go to Nigel Godrich, their engineer/coproducer. Even though they seem to work in different studios from album to album, this man always gets wonderful state-of-the-art sounds. The frequent comparisons to Pink Floyd aren't just based on the musical content here.

What I'd like to see happen next is Radiohead doing all the music for a movie version of C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength.

Originally posted to SteveForbert.com in August 2001.