Radiohead - Kid A (Ballads)

It’s been too long. Maybe certain things had to end. I like to think that it means other things could begin. I remember the days when writing used to be my near driving force on a day-to-day basis. Now I feel I’ve been looking for other things and yet, I still come back to it. But maybe it has to feel like a real investment of time, rather than a laboring task. I wrote a poem almost a month ago but it wasn’t anything legit: raw, unfiltered, jagged, jaded. And actually, it (writing) is about the music and having fun with it. Still, I don’t feel like I need to burden any more heady writing about it all here; if you stay past this paragraph then here’s to more posts, soon.

I remember being home, after school, in my room blasting this entire album. I vividly remember the moment when “How to Disappear Completely” moved me and how I felt so immediately entrenched in the moment. There I was, standing in the middle of the room with the speakers directly in front of me – singing along, as loud as I could (people may or may not have been home i.e. it didn’t matter) – and how amazing that felt. Music nerd in all of us, it’s one of those musical moments that will always be locked in. After the first three songs of this intense (yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon) album, the entire band decides to hop into the backseat for a drifting, string-laden, epic ride. There are still explosions, they just build, they stir and they grow before unloading. Throw in the blistering vocals, sweetly solemn at the beginning and grippingly forceful as it all develops – perfection in song crafting if there ever was such a thing.


I’ve been running a lot the past two months. I was fortunate enough to go to ACL in October (made in more ways than one possible by my sweet love) and after recovering from it I took to the new routes near our place. Kid A deserves its own post so this is just about the two killer ballads. Two stellar songs that are rightly in my top TEN songs by Radiohead (which I imagine would be some kind of monster list) and they are also not the most likely options. The last one, “Motion Picture Soundtrack” is what sounds most to me like vintage Radiohead but sparkling and utterly devastating. I love the bareness of the beginning and the vast hugeness of the ending and how it’s contrasting against Thom Yorke’s bitter, unapologetic lyrics about fake love in the movies. It isn’t a moment to be celebrating but the stark sadness that prevails is some kind of magic. Obviously for most diehards, it’s the pouring music and how it reigns over everything when suddenly, it just all goes away. The extreme emotion is beautiful – and now, once again, enclosed in a new room I can enjoy the music all over. Same as it ever was. - Bryan