This fall, Radiohead reissued both albums as the multimedia project Kid A Mnesia. Maybe we still haven't caught up with that rapidly changing world. Maybe it's a testament to these albums' prophetic vision that 20 years later, they feel just as relevant. Radiohead captured that feeling in Kid A and Amnesiac. His big idea was that the anxiety and unease people in the West were feeling in the late 20th century was due to the fact that technology was developing faster than culture: We could not keep up with the lightning-fast advancements in communication, transportation and entertainment. Yet everywhere we looked, it seemed like our leaders were throwing coins in a wishing well.Īround the same time, a Polish philosopher named Zygmunt Bauman published a book called Liquid Modernity. Wall Street soared while people worked more hours and made less money. We were told this new thing called the internet would revolutionize the world and improve our lives, yet we heard about the planet warming and genocides happening in faraway places. For many in America, everything felt possible, yet very little felt right. Like many other millennials, I spent the awkward transition from childhood to young adulthood in the years when the 20th century was becoming the 21st. They gave me language for things I was feeling, but couldn't express. But they were also hopeful, articulating feelings that felt complex and adult. These albums were weird: They oscillated between harsh distortion and soft intimacy, held together by a sense of dread and alienation. I listened over and over, until the discs were too scratched to play and I had to buy new copies of each. The images were eerie and haunting: digital snow-capped mountains dotted with blood, a hunched being looking claustrophobic in an all-red room. The covers of both albums, created by longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood, matched the music I had heard the night before. The very next day, I bought Kid A and its companion album, Amnesiac, on CD. I'll swallow till I burst." "Here, I'm allowed everything all of the time." I recognized exactly what Thom Yorke, Radiohead's lead vocalist, was singing about. Radiohead? "Creep" Radiohead? "Karma Police" Radiohead? I turned my attention back to what I would learn was the song "Idioteque," from the 2000 album Kid A, and focused in on the lyrics. "Radiohead!" replied one of my friends, shocked that I didn't know. I stopped and listened intently, and everything else faded into the background as the song cast its spell.
The glitchy synths popped through the speakers. What sticks with me to this day is a moment before the actual concert started, listening to the pre-show music. The band that brought me to the show has since drifted from my memory. I don't remember the exact date, even the year. On a freezing night in the early 2000s, I stood in a packed crowd at Washington, D.C.'s legendary 9:30 Club with friends who were, like me, barely old enough to get past the bouncer. Singer Thom Yorke (second from right) says that as much as the albums Kid A and Amnesiac channel the dread that loomed over their moment, they are also full of hope that another world is possible.
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