Even if you don’t follow the ballyhoo surrounding Kid A, you have to at least enjoy the critical establishment scattering around to figure out the Right Phrase or the Perfect Comparison to use. (Reams of paper have been issued to list off comparison bands featured in any given review, and, aside from Aphex Twin, no two reviews have the same influence mentioned.) And who can blame the critics’ panic? Here is an album so intangible it borders on indulgent, so original it borders on inscrutable, and so genius it borders on insanity.…And now it’s my turn to describe it.

Kid A may be the first soundscape that doesn’t lay in the walls; it’s bold, and it must be listened to. It’s a masterpiece of muted free jazz imposed with an electronic rigidity, that manages to come out with a genuine sense of rhythm and ambiance. But the best thing I can think of to say about Kid A is this: It’s like a rambling homeless man on the street, uttering his derelict incoherences—only, curiosity gets your ears to perk, and the homeless man’s indecipherable ramblings over time gradually metamorph into a profound cultimation of Plato’s philosophies and Einstein’s scientific theories. There, I didn’t play it up, did I?

It’s hard getting passed the initial assumption, though, that Radiohead has finally indulged themselves and made the meandering, undisciplined soundscape they promised they never would. They’ve always been a band that promised that at the fundamental core of each song, would be a pop structure; a pop band with pop songs, who’ll layer them with such epic grandiosity, that sometimes they are mistaken for art- or prog-rock. Now: Radiohead has abandoned this sanctity. Their records no longer sound like they were recorded in galactic opera halls, but rather in the tunnel between death and the afterlife. They’ve become apprehensive about guitar, after having so well mastered sonic ability to make it outwordly. They’d rather let a song go on for five minutes instead of economically turning the verse/chorus/verse format into a giant crescendo. So in all these bold new sound frontiers Radiohead is exploring, abandoning almost all that they know…shouldn’t we follow them along?

During the OK Computer tour, Thom Yorke was fond of answering journalists’ questions of “How are you going to follow this up?” with a quote of Charles Bukowski’s, explaining his philosophy on how to live life: “‘Don’t try.’” And I don’t want to paint Kid A as the Next Coming of Christ record, a messiah masterpiece, or the culmination of forty years of pop music that leads to the epiphany that’ll make you an emotionally stable and content person for the rest of your life. Kid A has a distinct flaw, and it’s that Radiohead tried a little too hard. Thom Yorke buries his vocals under numerous effects, as if embarrassed by his ability to inflict sadness with any phrase. No song on the album still has that build-up, crescendo style, despite “The National Anthem” layering sounds brilliantly.  Melody is also sacrificed for rhythm. Then the guitars—no sonic laden sounds (the most guitar song on the album, “Optimistic,” is nicely crude while “How to Disappear Completely’s” guitar is played like a mix between a keyboard and Humpback whale). And possibly the best pre-studio Radiohead song, “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” is now sacrificed to the Almighty Concept Album God. There’s a definite conscious sense of reinvention and restraint to the album, but the sheer difference here, as opposed to other run-of-the-mill “experimental” records, is that Radiohead manage to pull it off naturally. All their songs portray a set of people who suffer through the day, and that the everyday rigors of the outside world are occasionally too much on the frail, intellectual introverts. So it’s no wonder that, just as bravely as they face the daily world, they face down the expectation of following up OK Computer the only way they know: steadfast bravery.

The joke was made when the album title was announced that it was a play on the “first human clone,” Kid A. And while anyone trying to pin a concept of a concept album for others to use is destined to perpetually hear the sound of his own voice, I still couldn’t stop myself from hearing Kid A as an album about the first human clone. “Everything in Its Right Place” opens the album with the abruptness of a test-tube lab, “Kid A” plays like the baptism for technology’s bastard child, “National Anthem” has an Ubermensch like rambunctiousness and confusion to it, and “How to Disappear” shows an outworldly teenage angst. “Side one” ends with “Treefingers,” an ambient instrumental track that cues the super-human’s aimless, Catcher in the Rye-style confusion. “Optimistic” then opens “side two,” with rumblings of Darwinian superiority (and adulthood prime’s cocky “optimism”) while “In Limbo” continues the aimlessness of a midlife crisis. “Idioteque” shows elder-age fear about death, and the song bleeds into “Morning Bell,” which has the docile acceptance of death. Then the quiet church organ and harp strains of “Motion Picture Soundtrack” cue a sad, calm and accepting death, ending with the last words of the CD: “I will see you in the next life.” At 4:15 on the last track, a hidden Sgt. Pepper’s-esque wall of sound comes up, ending with heavenly choirs. If you keep the CD on repeat, the technological process begins anew, and Kid B is born.

So Radiohead’s made an album of restrained emotionalism about life-long existential anguish in a mechanized society? Some things never change.

And while this interpretation has sustained me, I still can’t help feeling that I’m apart of the critical establishment’s collective attempt to grasp at straws to figure out this album. Because criticism, despite how it’s normally perceived as, is the attempt to celebrate what’s worth celebration. And whenever a critic listens to an album like Kid A and likes it as much as I do, they want only to do it justice; to summon any vestige of writing talent they might have and describe every contour of its broad, communicable beauties to the world just as they would a first kiss. So writing this, for me, has been the frustrating process of finding the Epiphany on an album so textured, you can stick random interpretations on a large dart board, and basically hit an accurate one on any try. And still—I can only guess: Kid A’s an album’s worth of Jonny Greenwood & Co. playing around with all the musical universe at their disposal. It’s an LP with two distinct sides to it. It’s the most accessible innovative recording since the White Album. It’s a quiet fifty-minute pop song. It’s about Roy Batty, the antagonist from Blade Runner. It’s the soundtrack to the post-apocalyptic Buddhist movie Terrence Malick has yet to make. It’s a schizophrenic’s sleepless night after the death of his estranged mother. It’s a robot suddenly gaining the ability to cry and smile. It’s, as one critic wrote, “a handwritten letter from somebody who’s spared his own life and wonders if he made the right decision.” And after listening to it long enough, it’s something that makes sense.

But here’s the Epiphany: Kid A is a beautiful marvel.