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Thom Yorke's musical persona seems like a moth drawn to the porch
light of what Cat Power's Chan Marshall calls "the psychological
horror of being the 'lead singer.'" His fey voice fluttering with the
buzzing inconstancy of quickly-beaten wings, Yorke liltingly lets
loose with wracked-man wailings across almost the entire set. His
slurred, sobby singing is the spiritual constant of an album that
exists happily as an unhappy cousin to the dour, divide-the-troops
turn of Kid A. Recorded "on location at the same time" as that
album, Amnesiac charts similar waters, its bizarre and
beguiling pop songs swimming in a strange sea of sound, equal parts
lulling waves and dangerous rips. There's not a no-brainer rock song
here, and the record is essentially chorus-free. Most of the songs
come together in a similar manner, with simple, rich piano chords
joined by escalating measures of sonic detritus, soon gathering to a
sort of climax that ends (usually) with the song itself. The spirit
of Syd Barrett seems to loom over this record more than either of the
previous Radiohead longplayers, and that's not a bad thing at all.
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