Sunday, 16 August 2009
Milking the cow until the teat falls off!
The final selection of Radiohead reissues are about as much use, and as complete as, a fart in a bucket.
Kid A and Amnesiac are largely the two sides of the same coin. Written and recorded at the same time, the two albums are the twins of the same musical pregnancy, seperated and left to live their own lives. Amnesiac suffers slightly from being the younger brother the perception being it is made of out-takes and not very good songs. This is nonsense. Kid A is a brave new direction that sees Radiohead abandon the guitar-led tremelos in favour of a welding of the rhythsm and sounds of Warp and match them with Yorke's unusual vocals, a melding of man and machine where the man slightly has the edge. Amnesiac follows the same template, a new direction for the band, and successfully so.
Kid A was a bold step, in so much as Radiohead abandoned, albeit briefly, singles. Songs such as Idioteque are brave new steps on vinyl for Radiohead, abandoning the formula that could have generated them with easy money for no musical innovation. Radiohead took the brave path, and tried something new. They could've fallen flat on their face. That they didn't and didn't sound like a mid-life crisis reinvention circa the Great Grunge Wars of 1991 where Bon Jovi became 'dirty' is a testament to ability and talent.
The two albums really are part of the same whole and should be seen only as companion pieces, not seperate entities. One could argue that each should have different selections and running orders, that the records are in a way, slightly schizophrenic, split personalities that would've benefit from seperation into two distinct stories, and you would be right. But they are in themselves, both, valid artistic statements with no shortage of integrity or vision.
Third album, Hail To The Thief came a couple of years later : it takes the musical experimentalism and new directions of the previous two albums, and forges them into a concentrated whole. It neither broke new ground, nor spoilt the narrative. Radiohead created in this a stuttering, paranoid whole, obsessed with the end of times, the final days of fiddled Rome, and tried to envisage this post-millenial tension with a record made of dead ends, watching eyes, wolves at the door and other portends of doom. There were fragments, moments of dark horror, the sound of a child watching Doctor Who behind hands over fingers and knowing that it was real. The Daleks were just a manifestation of a more real terror The Commies. Living in the shadow of the bomb. Hail To The Thief is the soundtrack to a disappointment, the prophecy on the horizon.
What is truly baffling is the bonus tracks are, once again, shattered into pieces and fragmented out. The concert that appends Kid A and Amnesiac is a complete, and passionate one hour from French television after the release of the second album. Nonetheless, the concert is broken into two parts, and the songs divided into their parent albums. Instead of a Radiohead concert, you get a random assortment of songs lacking any cohesion. And since it was broadcast on French Television, you might expect the television broadcast on the DVD that accompanies them.... Well, you'd be wrong. I might be wrong. But I'm not. If you want an hour of vibrant Radiohead recorded live, it's spread across the two CD's. Or, you could downlaod it as it's out there on the blogs already. The callous and heathen mutilation of the material is lacking in even a moments thought.
Not only that, but the bonus tracks are frankly, very incomplete. Alternate versions of songs on compilation releases are absent despite being EMI having free will to incomplete them. Whilst EMI have clearly spent time and money licensing radio broadcasts and sessions, they've left anything interesting off the list. Covers of Can's The Thief and Neil Young 's On The Beach were performed at Warrington, and for the BBC in 2003 : other songs from the same recordings appear here, but not the cover versions that haven't yet been released. Why? And not only this, but the bonus songs are presented without a moments thought as to how they may sound when listened to as a complete experience.
The shows they are taken from are mutilated, cut to pieces, kids cut in half, torn apart by demons, and abandoned as roadkill with no care. If these releases are EMI's funeral farewell to Radiohead, they could at least bury the records with dignity instead of leaving the corpse in the road.
The three song DVD that comes with Kid A is pointless. There's more there available. Use that space
The 10 song DVD that accompanies Amnesiac is servicable, but again, there's so much space unused, and the whole of that Paris concert that is licensed and available spread across the two CD's in bits - still remains in a vault visually. What a waste. How these can be regarded as bonus editions when they are assembled with no artistry, no coherency, and no consideration is fairly incomprehensible.
The DVD that accomapnies Hail To The Thief is no short fumble, but then again, two years ago, when the first batch of exploitative reissues surfaced, EMI made a point that you could watch a streamed 'Hail To The Thief' concert as part of the sets selling points. Where's this concert on the 'Hail To The Thief' DVD? Nowhere. This is the sound of a slapdash, half-bothered attempt to put together some vague appetisers to fool the majority of the public and assembled without any consideration for either what is actually available or what makes any form of musical or artistic sense, validity, or cohesion. The sound of a goal being missed as administrators devalue the art.
Sure, it's a fairly hefty bonus package and assembled with some decency, but it is, by any standard, an incomplete package assembled with no thought for what could provide a truly outstanding release. Why be great, when you can be good? Must try harder.Only registered users can write comments.
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