It would be easier to accept this if the record was better than it is. This, inevitably, will disappoint the legions awaiting another guitar-based record (that is, after all, what they were explicitly promised), but what were they expecting? This is an album recorded at the same time and Radiohead have a certain reputation to uphold. Since Radiohead designed Kid A as a self-consciously epochal, genre-shattering record, the songs that didn’t make the cut were a little simpler, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Amnesiac plays like a streamlined version of Kid A, complete with blatant electronica moves and production that sacrifices songs for atmosphere. That, however, ignores a salient point - Amnesiac, as the album came to be known, consists of recordings made during the Kid A sessions, so it essentially sounds the same. At the time, people bought the myth, especially since live favorites like “Knives Out” and “You and Whose Army?” were nowhere to be seen on Kid A.
Faced with a deliberately difficult deviation into “experimentation,” Radiohead and their record label promoted Kid A as just that - a brave experiment, and that the next album, which was just around the corner, really, would be the “real” record, the one to satiate fans looking for the next OK Computer, or at least guitars.
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