In the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, personal encounters, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, funerals, phone conversations, Instant Messenger transcripts, emails, personal accostings, and late night interludes turned sour where I’ve had to defend Kid A, I’ve never been able to get over people’s violent reaction, their fear of art, and their general…incredulity. Sure, Kid A—like Amnesiac—is difficult to the point of ear-bleeding. And, like it or not, it has become a poster child for unconventionality. But it’s not music to parade its own unconventionality; no, then it would be forgettable, like a soundscape on a hard-drive. The problem most people will have with Amnesiac is what they had with Kid A: they’ll assume that Radiohead knows something they don’t, are flaunting it in inscrutable “musical” messages, and only a critical cognoscenti, forcing themselves to “like” it, will feign its mastery. Don’t get me wrong, initial befuddlement is a natural reaction. Here are my initial notes upon my first Amnesiac spin:
 

But those are natural sentiment for a band of savants like Radiohead. I left The Bends unlistened to for two years after I bought it, was indifferent to OK Computer for the first three months of our “relationship,” and force-fed myself four months of Napster before I knew Kid A was not indulgent sounds from off the deep end. I’ve let down on almost all these initial Amnesiac sentiments slide, and have ingratiated myself its Burroughsian cut-ups and platitudes to decadence and insanity. But I am not a slave to Radiohead, even if they’re the reason I write about music, the reason I seek out the influences of influences, and a reason as good as any to have an ear-drum—all because OK Computer got me through a spell and convinced me of the hidden and convoluted beauty of the introvert. So I have to ask myself: is Amnesiac what Kid A was thought to be? And, could it potentially be…bad?

Ignore the boasts from the rhythm section declaring the albums distinctly different; Amnesiac could easily play as the second disc to a double album. (It’s the Magical Mystery Tour to Kid A’s Sgt. Pepper’s.) But Kid A was relentless in its cohesiveness, and even if its songs were not apparently of The Bends’ or OK Computer’s quality, at the end of the day, you were left more of an artistic statement that left and indelible and idiosyncratic—but necessitated—statement. 

And if you acknowledge that Amnesiac is the first Radiohead album in a while that is not a concept album (or a concept of something), that it exists on the upswings (“Like Spinning Plates,” “Life in a Glasshouse”—“Pyramid Song” might be the most lush and perfect collection of sounds the band has produced since OK’s “Let Down”) as much as it does on the down swings (“Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors,” “Hunting Bears”), them you have to acknowledge that a band that has withstood pressure from the Discerning Listener’s ears for half a decade and have proved beyond expectations time and time again,  could possibly over-think its music, cut it to parcels, ebb those of its quirks, and paste it together and make it a hollow and fragmented shell.

Don’t worry: Amnesiac isn’t that hollow shell at all. It soars again, it’s syncopated enough to indicate the fractured minds the made it, and immerses listeners in its scope. It’s sweeping and layered enough to stand high with classic Radiohead and unlike Kid A, it’s a more human and humane album, vocally and emotionally. But scan up the page to see the quantitative rating: I gave it only four clefs. Before Amnesiac, I could never imagine a day where I’d give Radiohead anything less than the perfect five clef rating for their pristine, genuine music. Shallow consumer measurement or not, it’s a problem I don’t think that Amnesiac knows it has.  

But by that same token, time might save the savants, and I might come around.