At the peak of his success, Thom Yorke went silent.
In 1997, his band was on top of the musical mountain with
an art rock masterpiece, but all he could think is that guitar music
was dead.
And now the world was waiting for their next album, and he had nothing.
Every recording session was a failure. They went back again and again.
The band was split. Some wanted to make guitar-based music that made them famous.
Others thought Radiohead might be done.
Then Thom Yorke disappears into a country house with a piano, and he walks out with
the kernel of an idea, the start of an album that would define the
decade and predict the future.
Everything.
This
is Kid
A.
Everything.
Everything. Everything.
I'm Adam Maness.
And I'm Peter Martin.
And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast.
Music. Explore.
Explore, brought to you today by Open Studio.
Go to openstudiojazz.com for all
your jazz lesson needs, Peter, because big day?
Well, I was going to ask you. I thought you might say biggest day.
Am I shaking right now?
I'm shaking a little bit.
You've been electric all day, scurrying around here like
an axonial.
My skin has been buzzing-
Your skin is glowing
... all week. Everything feels more vibrant.
The colors of the trees are unbelievable right now.
They are. Well, it's spring. Actually, that sort of just happened.
Don't yuck up my yum, buddy. I feel like my feet hasn't touched the floor
since Monday morning.
Yeah.
Peter, I am so stoked that we are listening to Radiohead's 2000
masterpiece, Kid A. Buddy, this record, for me, is so
important. It's a huge album in my life.
Yeah.
Huge album in my life.
I'm so excited to experience this with you.
We've been talking about this, but it's such a
joy to have. And I know this is not your only record.
No, not at all. Man, I was
just so knocked over by this. I was 20.
I hadn't listened to as much music as I'd listened
to now.
Yeah.
And it was the fact that a band could change this much.
This band changed from what they started with, thinking about Creep and all this
stuff from when I was driving around High Ridge.
"Cause I creep."
And now I'm walking down-
Yeah.
... 22nd Street. No, that's a good Creep.
I'm walking down 22nd Street-
Yeah
... and I've got
Morning Bell going in my ears, and I'm like, "What is happening?"
Yeah.
"What is happening? This is amazing."
Would you say, did it
maybe subconsciously open up the poss... I mean, you're 20 years old.
We always feel that one minute we're like, "The world is everything." The next
minute we're like, "I'm done. Everything's too late." But did it open up
sort of musical
or artistic possibilities?
Yes.
Did you feel like, "Oh my God, the
cloud's clear. That mountain is way bigger than I thought it was"?
For sure. First of all, just the feeling tone of this.
The melancholic tone of this
had been ringing in my ears already from people like Elliott Smith, from people
like Brad Mehldau-
... who I was already a massive fan of-
Yeah
... who we'll talk about as well, has a Radiohead thing too.
Stereolab, people like that, that have this sort of bittersweetness about their
music. This is the ultimate melancholy album.
Yes.
This is the ultimate rainy day, driving around at night album.
If you are down, you put it on,
and you either feel more down, or you're like, "Okay.
Well, at least other people have been down."
Yeah.
You feel the connection to humanity through it.
And then also, man-
Oh, man, the connection. Absolutely.
100%.
Absolutely.
Even though it's an album with a lot of machines.
Right.
You know what I mean? But it's a very human story that is being told musically
here.
Yeah.
And then also, some nerdy music things. You know I'm a harmony geek, right?
Yeah.
In the same way that Stevie Wonder informed my sort of taste of modal
interchange, this has a whole other thing of modal interchange, which I'll go into
nerdy stuff later about what that is. But they use it a lot different.
They use it more like Schumann-
Yeah
... or Brahms or someone like that.
And it works in this way. Or like John Williams, like that feeling, right?
Yeah.
And man, I was like, "How can a rock band do
this?"
Mm.
And be so popular.
It was really... I mean, it's kind of like how when we talk about Steely Dan, like
how do they keep getting away with putting these jazzy chords in these huge pop
songs?
Right.
And with this, I feel like, how do they keep getting away with this?
Right.
They're putting actual interesting stuff in the harmony, and as a harmony
nerd, I was just elated about this album.
Oh, that's so great. So I was
30, or nearly 30, maybe 29. No, that's not
right. Wait, 2000. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
And when this record came out, I didn't
even notice it for some reason.
Yeah.
Just for whatever reason. And so
I did hear it some, and I was aware of it, but mainly because of Brad Mehldau.
Sure, yeah, jazz superstar at that point.
Well, I was not a jazz... I was sort of at the tail
end of my hardcore... No, I was a few years
past that. I was playing a lot of music. I was recording.
And it wasn't that I wasn't still exploring stuff, but it was a big deal.
I wasn't exploring everything that came out.
But what I'm so excited today, and I have been listening to this record the last
few days, but I kind of backed off a little bit.
I've heard the whole thing a couple of times.
But I sort of backed off because I wanted to experience it sort of as you as
my guide. And I think that that can be for a lot of people because we think, look,
we know there's going to be a lot of people on here that are like, "This is my
jam," or are like, "It's not as good as OK Computer," or whatever.
There's a lot of exposure to this.
Oh, there's going to be a ton of argument in the comments about what the best
Radiohead album is.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's go back in time a little bit. Let's start with the start of it.
So I was around for all of these. The very first Radiohead album that was
really on our radars, at least, was the album called Pablo Honey.
It came out in 1993, and it produced this-
That's when Pablo Escobar came on the scene, too, I believe.
Pablo Honey produced what some might call the white people anthem.
Right.
Patrice O'Neal might call the white people anthem.
Oh, Sweet Caroline. Got you.
It's Creep. You probably heard it.
Yeah.
It's their first big hit. It was a huge hit.
When you were here before.
It's an unbelievable song. It's a great album, actually, but it sounds a lot like
all the other stuff that's going on around there, right?
It sounds a lot like all of the alternative, not all of it, but in a
vein of the alternative music, especially coming out of Great Britain at that time.
Would it be considered alternative rock, or was that later they called it that?
No, it's definitely alt rock.
Alt rock.
For sure.
Some people have defined Radiohead as art rock.
I think that becomes more obvious as they continue.
And maybe with Kinney, a little bit of precursor to math rock.
We're going to talk about that maybe.
Ooh.
No?
Maybe a little bit.
Okay.
Here's the part everybody wants to hear.
Oh, yeah.
You're so f*****g special.
And I'm a creep.
There we go.
Yeah.
If you haven't seen, there's a great clip on YouTube of comedian, RIP, Patrice
O'Neal riffing on Creep. Just look it up. It's unbelievable.
Okay. I'm driving around. I wasn't even driving yet.
I was just an eighth grader coming into freshman year, going to marching band
camps-
Mm-hmm
... and being in the back of old Honda Civics-
Yeah
... while people were shooting darts out of the front seat, and I'm like, "Am I a
grownup? I don't know what's going on."
'95, though, I'm well into high school, and this comes out.
This is from The Bends. Bends is an unbelievable album. Great songs.
This is High and Dry. Another big song for them.
They're already a very popular band at this point.
Yeah. These were number one hits, right?
I don't think these were number one hits-
Oh, yeah
... but they were-
But they were big hits
... they were big hits. I'm not sure about that actually.
Rock hits.
Yeah.
This is '95?
'95.
Okay.
Two chumps in a week, I bet you anything.
Beautiful melodies. Thom Yorke, who's the lead singer-
Right
... has a very distinctive voice.
Yeah.
It's kind of brittle. It's actually more-
It's not quite falsetto, but it's upper range, right?
Is that considered falsetto?
Falsetto? It's not really falsetto.
No.
It's kind of like a mixed voice, but he's just got a real delicate-
It is, yeah
... real quality to it that has a lot of that
pathos.
Yeah.
Okay.
Ethos as well.
So...
That was '95.
That was '95. '97 comes out, and all of a sudden, everybody who is into
Radiohead and into music in general is like, "Here's Radiohead's
album, OK Computer." And is like, "Oh, something's happening."
Mm.
"Something is changing. This is different."
And you can tell on this track, Paranoid Android. First, the name alone.
Paranoid Android. Starts with that electronic sound.
Right, but then goes right to the guitar.
There's computer voices on this album.
Right.
It's the first taste of a real dystopian or-
Yes
... skeptical look at the future.
Yeah.
As good as it gets.
This melody.
And I'm trying to get
somewhere.
That harmony.
Yeah.
Very hip.
From all the anger.
Programmed drums really well. That's programmed, right?
So good.
I don't know.
Man, the mix.
Oh.
Yeah.
Put some headphones on from this album.
Shout out to Nigel Godrich.
Yeah.
God tier.
What's there.
I mean...
No. No, I mean, we're getting into-
Yeah
... that sort of Stevie Wonder harmonic territory-
Yeah
... of the voice leading inside of all these things is like, you're like, "Oh,
there's some real sophistication happening."
Yeah.
This isn't just, no offense to someone like The Offspring or something
like that-
... other alternative rock where it's like, okay, we're putting some power chords
together, or maybe there's some droning stuff.
This is like, holy smokes, there's some real, dare I say, English
harmonic sophistication-
Yes
... à la Benjamin Britten and people like that happening.
Same album, this happens, and I just want to play Exit Music for a while.
This would end up at the end of a couple films, as would a cover I'm about to play.
This is still from OK Computer, still from 1997.
This might as well-
This is called Exit Music for a Film, right?
Yeah. And it might as well be-
Is that the title?
That's the title.
Exit Music for a Film. Might as well be Chopin, honestly.
Is that Yorke on guitar or the other guy?
I doubt it. Maybe.
From your sleep.
We're drying off
your tears.
Today,
we escape.
We escape.
Sus.
Mm-hmm.
Picardy.
Major. Right.
Pack your bags.
Do one more verse just to get to this part where you can see the harmonic
sophistication blooming even more.
You
can hear them growing.
Yeah.
Every album is getting a little bit more rich.
The textures are getting a little bit, harmonically, not just production-wise,
which is also happening.
Yeah.
But in the music itself, and the depth of the songwriting.
Yeah, and the texture of his voice.
Oh, exquisite.
He's not
the world's greatest singer.
No. But it's so-
Breathe
... gorgeous.
Keep breathing
It's some kind of
synth
vocal thing.
Don't leave.
Oh, is that the-
Synclavier?
No. Maybe. What's the white one with the
tapes?Little tape machine.
Ooh.
Okay.
That's beautiful.
Man, there's elements, and we're going to hear this on Kid A too, I was thinking
about with Thom Yorke's voice. He's always doing the lead
vocals, right?
Yeah.
You know Fado? I believe I'm saying this correctly, the Portuguese style of music.
Yeah.
I think Fado, or maybe it's Fazioli.
Apologies in advance.
No worries.
Obrigado.
But, it's a beautiful style of music that goes back hundreds of years,
and I know it influenced some up in what became the UK, and
I don't know exactly how that happened.
But Fado is, I think it basically means sad.
Yeah.
And this music is so beautiful, but it's all got this very, I don't
want to say morose because I think morose means something a little different.
Melancholy is a great word for this.
Melancholy, yes.
There's a feeling of just like, ugh.
Yeah.
You know?
But even if you don't hear, and when I'm hearing Fado, I
don't understand the lyrics because they're in Portuguese, but I don't understand a
lot... Well, this I hear, when we're getting into Kid A.
Kid A is hard to understand.
But you feel it in his voice.
Yeah. You get the nuances.
And then the harmony, which you've been pointing out, is so...
But it's got this tinge of, like melancholy has, of optimism.
Yeah.
Which with these unexpected majors and stuff when you think it's going to go to
minor.
100%. There's a lot of hope in the melancholy-
Yeah
... which is interesting. I brought out "Exit Music" there from OK Computer because
that came out in 1997. I was a senior in high
school.
Yeah.
And my hero at the time, besides yours truly, my co-host here,
was Brad Mehldau.
Yeah.
I was a young jazz pianist. I was playing on the scene here-
Yeah
... in Willie Akins' band in St. Louis. I was obsessed with Brad Mehldau.
He's making-
That was his Warner Brothers days
Well, he's in the-
He's in the height of like the Art of the
Trio.
Yeah.
On Art of the Trio, Volume 3, 1998, he covers "Exit
Music."
Wow.
And this is when my ears perked up a little bit of like, too, of like, oh, wait.
If this incredible, sophisticated jazz pianist that I know
knows his s**t-
Yeah
... thinks that this rock band's music is good enough to put on one of these
albums-
Yes
... it kind of elevates it for me. It's kind of like an endorsement from a-
Absolutely
... really keen expert on the music.
Yeah. Validates.
Not only that, but this is absolutely gorgeous-
Yeah
... this cover of it. It's 100% beautiful, as is all of the Art of the
Trio volumes. We
got to do Art of the Trio volumes.
Is this from at the Vanguard?
No, this is a studio one Art of the Trio.
I think. I think this is one of the studio ones.
I remember hearing him play this at the Vanguard, though, live.
It was in a set. He also, by the way-
With Howard, Corey, and Larry
... he covers "Paranoid Android."
Yeah.
Quite a bit. Brad Mehldau. He's got a great arrangement of this.
As do a lot of people, which we're going to find out.
Yeah.
Okay. So here's-
Man, he did the "Paranoid Android" on the,
was it Live in Tokyo?
That long version of it-
Yeah
... is great.
Hey,
if you love sitting with an album, really hearing it, Open Studio is where we go
deeper. We've got lessons, courses, and a community of musicians
who love this stuff as much as you. Come find us at
openstudiojazz.com. That's openstudiojazz.com.
That's openstudiojazz.com for all your jazz listening needs.
Back to the show.
So OK Computer was this major success.
Yeah.
It was a critics darling. It was a commercial success.
Some critics called it the album that saves rock, which is going to be ironic here
in a minute. And there were really, really high expectations
for Radiohead's next album.
And was it their biggest hit until... I mean, except for "Creep" obviously.
Oh, yeah.
But I mean-
No, it was a huge hit.
It was a huge hit, right.
And this, along with a grueling touring schedule, was too much for Thom
Yorke at the time. In November 1997, after performing a
show in Birmingham, England, he had a breakdown.
His bandmates asked him if he was okay-
... thank you, but he couldn't respond.
He said, "I always assumed that it was success was going to answer something, fill
a gap. I was so driven for so long, like a f*****g animal.
And then I woke up one day, and someone had given me a little gold plate for OK
Computer, and I couldn't deal with it for ages." We've heard this story before of
like, you think it's going to fill the hole-
Right
... and it doesn't fill the hole.
Oh, only one gold plate?
No.
It's not platinum.
But everybody who hasn't had monster hit albums is like,
"Well, let me find out for myself first."
That's right.
By the time they sat down-
"Hey, buddy, being rich is hard." "Really?
Let me see."
Yeah. By the time they sat down to write their next album, Yorke's breakdown had
become a creative block. He actually had writer's block for two years.
Here's Thom talking about it a little bit.
Every singer's problem.
At the end of OK Computer, we finished touring, and
I
was sort of trapped in a series of sort of-
Sort of
... in my own particular labyrinth.
Yeah.
And
followed by this weird sort of monologue, criticism,
everything I did,
which
became from being sort of propelled into this weird
state where people were projecting things onto me in a
particular way, which
I didn't have the right sort of support mechanism to deal with it.
Mm.
And
so I internalized a lot of it, and it sort of, kind of shut me down.
And so whenever I tried to write something, whenever I sat in front of
any instrument,
I sort of froze. I had this sort of thing in the way, this
little voice going, "Me, me, me, me, me."
I remember sitting
endlessly playing the riff for "Everything in its Right Place,"
like a sort of trying to meditate my way out of it and not being able to.
Mm.
Until eventually,
I'd sort of stopped for a while. We were in Cornwall a lot, and I was
walking around-
Cornwall. Beautiful
... absorbing the landscape, being in the sea a lot, and I
just started drawing and absorbing the landscape and-
What an English thing to do
Everything.
Everything. Everything.
Everything
in its right place.
In its right
place. In its
right place.
In its right place.
Yesterday
I woke up sucking a lemon.
Yesterday I woke up sucking a
lemon. Yesterday I woke up
sucking a lemon. Yesterday I
woke up sucking a lemon.
Everything. Everything.
Everything.
Woo. In its right place.
In its right
place. In its
right place.
Right
place.
There are two colors in
my head. There are two
colors in my head. What,
what is that you tried to say?
What, what is that you tried to say?
You know what doesn't happen?
No, just... Yeah, it's right there.
What is that you tried to say?
It's the little kick.
What is that you tried to say?
But that's been there since the very beginning. The second measure.
What is that you tried to say?
Tried to say.
Pull back.
Filters open.
Pulls back.
It's a 10-beat cycle here.
Yeah.
I always hear it as five.
One.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
One.
Yeah.
Two.
But yeah, with the bass drum.
It's a masterpiece, man. This was made by just Thom
and Nigel Godrich. I should say before we go too far,
Radiohead is Thom Yorke on vocals, keys, bass, synth, Johnny
Greenwood on lead guitar,
Colin Greenwood on bass, Ed O'Brien on guitar and backing
vocals, and Phil Selway on the drums and drum machine,
and really the huge part of the band is Nigel Godrich.
Another huge part of the band is artist Stanley Donwood, who has done all of
their cover art. Plus, we'll get into the art later-
Yeah
... with the Kutcher months. It's unreal how much art is involved with
each one of these, especially the later albums, but especially this period,
Kid A and Amnesiac.
Which one of the Greenwood boys did, the Greenwood brothers, did the
PTA movie last year?
So Jonny Greenwood is frequently a collaborator with Paul Thomas Anderson.
Okay.
Most recently did 'One Battle After Another' but has also done the scores for
'Phantom Thread,' for 'There Will Be Blood.'
He's an amazing musician.
Yeah.
Amazing musician.
Him and Thom are an incredible duo.
But honestly, the whole rest of the band, Ed O'Brien is amazing.
Phil Selway's amazing.
Colin. They're all great artists in their own right. It's great.
And has the personnel stayed? I know they all went to prep school
together, right?
It's all stayed the same.
It's all stayed the same, which is great.
Okay, I have some things cued up here that I want to play.
Mostly-
And did you say Thom did the whole...
He was the only one involved with that first track?
Thom and Nigel.
And Nigel. Okay.
Yeah. So I want to get into here.
Ooh.
All this stuff going on.
Menacing.
Oh.
Let's back it up just a little bit.
Yeah.
These are all the background vocals-
Yeah
... with effects and things.
Yeah.
Some vocoder on there, eh?
I don't know what they're using, honestly.
I know they have a whole bunch of-
At the beginning already. Yeah.
Oblo.
It
gives the whole album all of these things, especially this track.
It gives those sort of background synth
samples. They're using a lot of samples.
Yeah.
They have that pad, that synth pad, where Jonny Greenwood
live will be affecting Thom Yorke's voice-
Mm.
... as they're going.
But it just makes for such a
rich palette. Let's
hear that kick drum. Oh.
It's a heartbeat.
That's it.
Right.
This is all it does.
But think about that speed, like it being a heartbeat. It's not like boom, boom.
But it's also not a relax, like
it's going
It's telling you about something that's going to happen.
You're a little bit on alert
It feels like, and especially in 2000, this is definitely one of those albums that
we take-
We just made it past Y2K, barely.
Yeah. And it's one of those albums that's been so influential on a whole generation
of musicians that we just take it for granted, these kinds of sounds.
But it was, at least in the popular culture-
Yeah
... not certainly in electronic music circles.
A lot of these things were already a bit dated that they were doing.
Yeah.
But like in popular music, Radiohead as a band really brought this over
the finish line with Kid A into the mainstream consciousness, especially the way
that they used it. This song, "Everything in Its Right Place," has been covered
again by Brad Mehldau.
This is killing.
That's Larry, right?
Yeah. Jazz musicians love Radiohead, by the way. That's Larry Grenadier on bass.
Jeff Ballard on drums.
Ballard.
Oh, he's got the C extension going-
Mm-hmm
... on the E string.
This is from Anything Goes, the album. Anything Goes, Brad Mehldau Trio.
Larry's such a monster, man.
What a musician.
Little crossover with Brown Sugar. He played on that as well.
He did.
Yeah.
Yeah. The C is strong.
Ha.
Baby.
Yeah, that's good.
Ooh.
It's a little bit slower.
A little bit slower.
Yeah.
So that's Brad Mehldau. Also, another great Gen X ah
jazz pianist has covered this in a very interesting way in a mashup with Herbie
Hancock's "Maiden Voyage." This is Robert Glasper.
Pitch perfect shout-out.
This is from his Blue Note album, In My Element, which is a very, very good
album.
Hmm. Let's take it up to D, eh?
Woo. I never noticed, so he took this from five and put it in six.
Five, six. One, two, three,
four, five, six. One, two,
three, four, five.
That's great.
Pretty creative.
One thing, like you were showing, I was just wondering if we could hear the
original just for a second, because rhythmic, like when you broke it
down with all the stuff happening in there, and then
harmonically, how it's setting the tone for what is to
come-
... and just such a vibe. There's something I just noticed as we listen to it
rhythmically with that big five, if you feel it like that, that I think
is just genius, because there's a lot of anticipation.
Yeah.
And so with that, of course, the bass drum is very-
It's holding down.
Yeah. But if you play it again, I think
two, three-
It's a Prophet-5 synthesizer, by the way
... oh, Prophet, yeah. Five, one, two.
But you get .
Like
there's that constant syncopation.
And of course, there's
the stability, but then there's the movement, like-
Yeah
... the pushing forward of it is fantastic.
Yeah.
And then because there's no drums on this, and you keep thinking it's going to be
And it's not.
Yeah.
It doesn't need that.
I want to hear it.
But the way it builds, the harmony and the rhythmic, and then the
the very
simple melodic turns and movements.
See if we can catch some of those background vocals.
Mm.
It's almost like on a
turntable.
I always thought that was Kid A.
Kid A.
I don't think that's what he's saying.
It sounds like Kid A.
Maybe it's Kid A.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's
barely hanging on by a thread.
Yeah.
The cracks.
Yeah.
They're going to come back in.
Man,
this is...
So this Prophet II, they're just going to open up the filter.
Yeah.
And that sound is kind of backwards-looking, right?
Yeah.
That's like mid-'70s, late '70s. But to
me, this record, as I was listening to it the last few days, not only
did it sort of take me back to the early 2000s, but I think this was
a record that was really looking forward.
There's sounds, certainly electronic sounds, that they're sourcing from the
past, but I think this has a lot of angst and
kind of-
Surveillance society-
It kind of-
... political upheaval
... predicts the future a little bit.
Yes.
Environmentalism.
It does. For sure.
Yeah.
And then we think, "Oh, that's been around forever." No, not really.
But a foreboding kind of environmentalism.
Digital corporatism is in this.
Yes. Yeah.
It's all part of it.
It started with "OK Computer," for sure, but this really solidified like-
Yeah
... that sort of like, "Oh, what are we doing?"
"What are we walking ourselves into?"
Yeah.
Which,
in 2026, feels like we're all like, "Let's walk right into it now."
Well, we survived it-
... kind of, and it's getting worse.
Like the heads of tech companies are like, "Yeah, it's probably going to kill us
all." "But we're going to do it anyway."
Like, "Don't worry, we've got a place in New Zealand-"
We got it. Yeah
... a doomsday shelter.
Next up is the title track. The second track is the title track, and the whole
album, there's no skips. This is "Kid A."
Mm.
It's like a lullaby for-
For a little-
... for a little-
A kid that's-
... alien robot.
A kid that's been implanted with...
I love the drums here. I think-
Oh
... maybe modular synths? I don't know.
In the comments, let us know how often and egregious we're
wrong on the technology on this.
You talking about the drum machine?
Yeah.
Oh, that's great.
I know Jonny Greenwood was using, at this point, was using modular synths for
stuff.
Yeah.
Dystopian.
That's vocoder.
This
combination now of the electronic drums and-
Yeah
... Phil Selway.
That's vocoder. It's got to be, right?
I don't know. It's some kind of vocal effect.
It's got to be. Yeah.
I read somewhere that they had some kind of ancient version of a vocoder.
Oh.
Like a really old, like the first version.
Vocoder is ancient.
They sourced in Egypt from a pyramid.
One thing I want to point out, though, is there's so much on this whole album.
There's all these incredible production things happening, obviously.
But the core musicality of it, the orchestration principles,
even as we're swimming in waters that a lot of us might not have swam in,
especially if you're 20 years old at this time.
Mm.
There's some familiarity with how they're
crafting these songs, and I think that's what really cracked the code.
Like I said, some electronic musicians were nonplussed by this album because they
were like, "Yeah, we've been making these sounds for over a decade."
Right.
But I think it took a band that had already had some honestly
popular music success-
Mm
... to take some of this stuff, put it together in a way that a
mainstream kid from Missouri at the time could be like, "What is
happening? What is this?"
Right.
And then I go out and I buy a Boards of Canada album.
Then I go get into Aphex Twin. It takes
that big band sometimes to... We've seen it again and again, man, to
push you over the edge on some of these sounds and be sort of the pioneer.
That song, "Kid A," one of my favorite covers of it is by
Chris Thile and The Punch Brothers.
Yeah.
Check this out. Bluegrass quintet.
Mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, bass.
To
give the bass that sort of robotic-
Yeah
... tone. I think it's just brilliant.
Okay, next up is "The National Anthem."
Really the first time we hear Colin Greenwood, the bass player, on this whole
album.
Mm.
Also, Peter, think about how much space resides on this album.
Yeah.
And it's not just like, "Here's the verse, here's the chorus."
It's just like a lot of-
Yeah
... we're going to sit here.
Even how they pulled out the drums for those second sec. Oh.
I mean, this track,
I mean, the whole album, with headphones,
we're going to talk about that later. Incredible.
Incredible headphone album.
Yeah.
I mean, the baseline is the melody, right? That's the melodic content.
We're 90 seconds in.
Wow.
The publishing company, I
see why they were sweating.
Yeah. The record company?
Everyone. Everyone around here.
Everyone is so
near,
so in love. So in love.
I'm going to skip ahead just a little bit.
Get some horns in here.
Oh, yeah.
I skipped ahead too far.
Here we go.
So in love.
Yeah.
Little bari sax.
Come on.
A lot of Charles Mingus in this one.
Very Charles Mingus. And I mean,
that baseline, actually, this is now when the trombone...
Do we know who this is on trombone?
No, we don't know.
He's a killing trombonist.
Yeah.
But,
like that, I remember when I was first listening to this, I was like,
There's kind of this
bluesy part-
It's major, isn't it?
... I don't know. But when the trombone player came in, he definitely was like, He
was like-
Yeah
... he completed that.
No, Thom Yorke has said that Charles Mingus is, the complete Town
Hall concert, is one of his biggest influences on the album.
Along with Miles Davis' B*****s Brew, which you can hear all over this as well.
For sure.
And he loves, Alice Coltrane as well.
Right.
You can hear all that.
Ah.
These chords, man.
Man. Crunchy AF.
Pulling the drums out.
Woo.
Man, is there some Flea in... Wait.
Yeah, Flea influence-
Yeah
... or was it the other way around?
Thom Yorke and Flea are in a band together.
Okay. Oh, well.
Yeah, so
cross-pollination. That's not Flea, but yeah.
No, but I mean, that's a very Flea-like... I could totally see Flea playing that.
Coltrane.
Trumpet.
No, but it's got that like-
Right
... Coltrane, late period.
Yeah. No, I was thinking, that could be Flea too now.
Yeah.
We got to hear toward the end. The chords at the end are unbelievable.
Oh, sacred.
Oh.
Okay, hang on.
It's seriously hard not to play every second of this. I'm sorry, man.
I mean-
I'll try to be more efficient.
I'm here for it.
Little
Eric Dolphy in there.
Oh.
Just unleashed.
Ah. Bring the whole band back in.
It's the national anthem.
That's a bit of a Beatles thing, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's a little bit of a Sgt. Pepper's-
March out
... White Album vibe. So Peter, what are your thoughts so far, man?
I know this is kind of a bit of a discovery for you.
Yeah. I
love this record. I mean, this is like-
Hey, we got him.
No, no.
We got him.
I was a little bit-
Hey.
It wasn't unexpected because you and a couple other people that I
really respect
love this album and hold it in very high esteem.
So I knew it was going to be-
No, I'm so glad
... great. I just didn't know if I was...
I'm telling you, it's such an exciting thing for me to, and I'm just at
the beginning of exploring this, but you truly can have this
discovery of, not everything, but that's the thing.
If everything is discoverable at any time, then nothing's discoverable.
Yeah.
But,
that's the endless well of music. And I've never gotten caught up in like,
"Oh, you haven't heard this yet?" I'm like, "I got a lifetime to listen."
Yeah, man.
You know what I mean? You can-
I'm looking forward to saving stuff.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I-
I'm saving stride piano for my 80s.
I love stride piano.
Listening to it or mastering it.
I'm just not an expert on it.
Right.
And I'm going to get there some way.
Like heroin. I'm saving my 90s for that because I figure that's a good time to-
That's a great time to do it.
But I mean, it's like... And you know what?
If I don't get to some things, that's cool too.
Because, you know... What's that?
No, nothing.
No.
Don't get to age 20.
Yeah, no. But I'm saying like, if there's
Brahms, I've actually heard of him.
I even played some. But that's one composer that I know I like, I
know I love, that I just haven't really delved into. But I'm going to.
It's fine, dude. It's fun to explore.
You know what I mean? It is.
It's fun.
It is fun to be able to look forward to something, you know?
It's great to have friends too that recommend stuff to you.
Yeah.
And for sure, when you say you like something, it puts more weight on it for me.
Yeah.
I'm like, "Oh, I've never really checked that out, but I'm going to check it out.
If Peter likes it, it's probably worth checking out."
Yeah. No, I mean, and the biggest thing, like I said, this is great here and here.
We have some great speakers, but they're up, they're separated.
Man, if you get a chance, check out this, especially if you're doing it for the
first time. I was lucky that I just happened.
I was like, "Wait." When I first started listening to this the other day, I was
like, "Let me get some good headphones." And then I went and got my better ones,
and then I was like, "Oh, my." It was like a revelation.
Yeah.
And I know that sounds like a nerdy thing, and you're just like, "No, you love the
music, even if it's coming out of an AM radio."
It's like, yeah, but this record, there's great stuff on it, but when you get
this happening-
It's a great headphone listen
... it's a big part of the artistic-
Honestly, I think-
... tutelage that it gives you
... it's one of the reasons why it's aged so well, and one of the reasons why it's
so beloved, is because this did come out not too far
away from the release of iPodsYou know what I mean?
Right.
And headphones going in.
Right.
I know we had Discman, and I was certainly listening to this on a Discman, but this
would've been one of the first albums I uploaded to my first iPod.
Right.
You know what I mean? And walked around listening to it digitally, which also was
weird back then.
Yeah.
It made you feel like what's going to happen if music is free-
Right
... and I can just download it for free?
Well, and this is 2000.
And this isn't talking about it.
Right. And this is during that time when there was so much angst
about that.
Yeah.
And I don't know if they actually say it, but I could feel it on this record.
I remember that time, which is music going to be free?
So
everything can be downloaded in low quality, everything's going backwards.
Kids don't understand how much that sort of devalued-
Napster, yeah
... it devalued music and musicians because you used to have to literally own a
piece of it, a physical piece of it.
Right.
And it could only fit so much into your life.
Literally fit its space, and all of a sudden we went overnight to, I can fit
every song I've ever heard onto this little thing.
Right. But this was actually before that, though.
This was during that time when-
Just before
... you could download where you had to have some technology.
So there was almost an access thing, too.
Because it was like, well, yeah, of course you could still buy it, but pretty soon
you're not going to be able to because there was no coordination with the labels-
iTunes or anything
... Apple. Yeah, none of that.
None of that.
So, there was very much a thing of music is going to die and it's not going to
matter because the environment is
falling apart because we don't take care of it.
And if Y2K, we barely made it past that.
But then the
election where
the Supreme Court... There was so much crazy stuff going on then.
All right. I got some horns separated out here.
I mean, straight dominant seventh.
Let's demonstrate a dominant seventh chord for three minutes.
Yeah,
the trumpet will pick up. Just come in as this fat Kansas City blues.
That's a good solo.
Yeah.
That's so good.
Man, it's like a cacophony.
It is.
It's great.
It's meant to be. It's meant to be like that.
Yeah.
Check this out, too, Peter. This is just for you, buddy.
This is Me'Shell Ndegeocello and Chris Dave.
Oh, I was going to say, I was like, wait, I didn't hear this on there.
You make it feel so good.
Is that Me'Shell playing?
I think so.
I never heard this.
Everyone.
Everyone around here.
Everyone is so near.
What's going on here?
It's actually amazing that Radiohead stuff has been covered as much as this,
because on first blush it's so personal.
It seems different, yeah.
It's very otherworldly in a way.
Yeah.
At least this record.
So specific to the production and the synthesizers.
Yeah, it's not the kind of thing .
Come on, let's do it, brother.
Yeah. Well, don't do it like that.
All right, next up is Thom Yorke's favorite song. Check this out.
If you could pick one song that you'd like to be remembered by, what would it be?
"How to Disappear and F**k You Day."
Why?
Because it's just the most beautiful thing we ever did.
Is 1,000% gorgeous.
Oh, inspired by
R.E.M
Mm.
That day.
That's not me.
I go.
Where
I flick.
I walk
through walls.
I float down the living
room.
I'm not
here.
This isn't
happening.
I'm not here.
In a little while.
It's so pretty.
The strings are so pretty.
I'll be
home.
How did Coldplay not get sued for stealing this sound? Damn.
Man, listen to the other albums that were released in 2000.
Eminem, "The Marshall Mathers LP." OutKast, "Stankonia." When's the "Stankonia"
podcast happening, Pete?
D'Angelo, "Voodoo."
"Voodoo." Of course, 2000.
Coldplay, "Parachute." Jay-Z, "The Dynasty." Nice.
Joshua Redman, "Beyond."
Joshua Redman, "Beyond."This
climaxes to such a beautiful place.
This isn't happening.
That haunting guitar-ish... I think it's a
guitar.
I'm not here.
Struggling
with
no
speaker.
Just crunchy chords everywhere.
I don't want to stop, man.
Fly
away.
Such great
attention to the big form, right? The
architecture of the big-
It just keeps-
... form
... blossoming.
Yeah.
I mean, listen to where we are now.
I'm not here.
Great choice for the strings there.
This isn't
happening.
Man.
I'm not here.
When he goes up with it.
I can't stop it, Pete. I can't stop it.
Where
I go.
It's haunting.
Unbelievable.
Isn't that great?
Wow.
Unbelievable. Just so gorgeous.
I get why he's so proud of that.
Yeah.
That is harder than it looks to do something-
Oh, is that?
... that is that beautiful and that simple and a great song.
That's a bit of a little Buddhist anthem there that apparently the rumor has it,
and I'm not sure if this is totally true, but- ...
legend has it that the lyric is inspired by a mantra that R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe
gave Yorke to calm his anxiety on the OK Computer tour. "I'm not here.
This isn't happening."
There's itself.
That's a good mantra.
We mentioned ambient music-
Mantra
... and we certainly get it in the next track, "Treefingers,"
where we just chill for three minutes and 42 seconds.
Yeah.
Series of sounds.
I mean, this could be a Brian Eno track.
When this came on at home, Kelly Martin, who's a yoga instructor, was like, "Oh, I
love this."
Her ears perked up.
She was like, "This is good for my class."
These are my favorite moments on this album, actually.
These moments in between, and the moments of rest that they
have,
make the
hyperactive horns the climactic-
Mm
... moments of the song.
It's the form, right? It's the balance and the form of the whole album.
Every great album we've known, it's like...
So this is Brian Eno
influence, you said?
How could it not be?
Yeah.
I mean,
all ambient music, I think post-1980s-
Yeah
... would be.
Harold Budd, another one.
I think-
Lots of great ambient
... this kind of stuff, a lot of people-
Boards of Canada
they think, "Oh, this would be so easy to make this kind of stuff if you had the
right equip." But the-
No
... timing of how long are you sitting, that stuff has to be...
When that's not done well, it sounds like bad AI coffee house
jazz or something.
I actually don't know anything-
Coffee house ambient
... I don't know anything that's really great, which this is really great at what
it is-
Yeah
... that's easy to do.
Right.
Even things that seem... I mean, when I saw Chick-
It's supposed to seem... That's when you hit the next level, right?
Dude, the first time I saw, I literally watched Chick Corea play the piano.
Piano looked easy.
Right. Right.
It did. It was like, "Oh, that looks-
... super easy." He's smiling.
Right.
He's just super relaxed as he's doing it.
Eliud Kipchoge, as he finished the marathon in under two hours, was like-
Running looks easy.
I was like, "Oh my God, look at that little guy."
Go try it.
"He's just running."
Give it a shot. All right.
Have you seen Radiohead live? I got a couple questions for you.
Should I ask you an hour later?
Yeah.
You have. Live in New Jersey in 2000.
Okay.
Yeah.
Did you enjoy it?
Yeah. It was
transcendent.
So I have a couple questions from myself, but I have a couple from a friend, a
mutual friend of ours.
Okay.
Okay, so I'm asking for a friend.
Go for it.
Is this record pretentious?
No.
Okay. But does it get a little bit of a rap for that in-
Probably.
Yeah.
Okay.
In some circles. In some circles, it's commercial.
Do you think... Well, I already know how you're going to answer this, but this is
again, asking for a lot of people that would say, is this a betrayal from the
work they had, or is it the culmination, or is it a departure?
Oh, is this like Dylan goes electric?
Yeah.
No.
A little bit maybe, but no. I think it's more like, listen, you ever
been in an artistic spot where you're like, "What do I do now?"
Yeah.
We've all been there.
Yeah.
I mean, you hang around long enough, the thing that brought you there is
not really working anymore.
Right.
You're like-
You're right
... "What do I got to do?" And that's-
Right
... where the rubber meets the road of, well, how inventive are you?
Right.
And I think this is just Thom and the boys being like, "We're going to zag."
Yeah.
"You guys zig, we're going to zag and do this." And it worked for
them.
Yeah.
You know?
Oh, you're going to love this question.
Go for it.
This is right in your wheelhouse.
This is such a love affair. You're so happy.
Are you ready to just have your blood boil?
Go for it.
What genre is this?
We could say art rock. That's a good term.
Art rock.
There's so much art in this album.
Thom and his artistic partner, Stanley Donwood, have
done all of the art for all of the Radiohead albums-
Yeah
... I think, from the beginning, from "Pablo Honey." And this is
a masterpiece of cover art.
It's not just cover art.
Are you saying that's called art rock if there's-
No
... artistic vision on the cover?
This is art school rock.
Art school. Gotcha.
This is school for artist kids, right?
Right. Fancy rock.
Yeah.
Prep school rock.
Yeah. This is not angry mosh pit rock.
This is rock for
people who have been to a museum or 100. You know what I mean?
So it's not pop, even though this was a big hit.
It's a popular-
It's a hit record
... album, but no, it's not pop music-
... at all. But anyway, man, when they were recording this in one of the many
venues they did, apparently they had this big house, and there was a
mezzanine that
Stanley Donwood, the man who does all the art, had his own space-
Ah
... was making art for this album as it was happening, being recorded below
him.
That's cool. Yeah.
And Thom is part of this. They met in art school.
Thom is part of the process of making the art, although I think Stanley does a
big chunk of it. But all of this from "Pablo Honey," but
this period of "Kid A," "Amnesiac," "Hail to the Thief" is
unprecedented. I think it's such good album art. You'll see later in my review.
We're going to talk about it because I got one more question for you.
Yeah.
Is this
Radiohead's...
I'm thinking about different records that we've done somewhat recently.
Is this Radiohead's "Sign of the Times?"
Ooh.
Or maybe "Black Messiah?"
Yes.
We haven't done that yet.
We haven't done... Yes.
Or "A Moon Shaped Pool" even.
I would say this is more... Hmm. That's a great
question.
But you know what I'm saying, where a lot of really diehard-
Yeah
... fans would say, like, "Finally they've gotten to who they
actually are."
They did great, cool stuff, but like-
Yes. This is the turning point. I think some people would argue "OK Computer" was-
... the album before this, because there's the kernels of this, but this is when it
just fell off the cliff of just like, we're here, and we're going 100 miles
an hour down the hill.
Mm.
You know what I mean? We're doing this. Really, really doing this.
Yes, this changed them. I think it kind of changed a lot of
mainstream listeners and turned them on to new things.
I know I'm one of those mainstream listeners.
Mm.
And it affected a lot of people. We've heard jazz musicians,
bluegrass musicians-
Yeah
... R&B musicians-
Yeah
... hip-hop musicians cover this already.
Yeah.
It's iconic at this point. It's legendary, for sure.
Yep.
Peter, we're getting into my favorite run.
"Optimistic," "In Limbo," "Idioteque," "Morning Bell." Four songs in a row that
could not be better. We've had already with "Everything In Its Right Place," "Kid
A," "The National Anthem," "How to Disappear Completely," and that little
amuse-bouche-
Yeah
... that palate cleanser, "Treefingers." Such a great first part of the album,
but the back half of every good album that we've ever reviewed-
Yeah
... is like, remember "Bad," Michael Jackson's "Bad?"
Right.
Remember how that ends-
Ah
... like in this incredible way? This album has one of the best
ending runs of any album-
Yeah
... we've ever did, in my opinion.
Well, I only know 1% of what you do about this record, but I actually have my Apex
moment and my Desert Island tracks coming up, right in this-
... thing. So I guess I know a little something.
This is "Optimistic."
Yep.
Ooh. Ooh. Ooh.
Ooh.
Flies buzz around
my head. Vultures circling the dead.
Picking up every last
crumb.
The big fish eat the little ones.
The big fish eat the little ones. Not my
problem if we're sung.
You can try the best you can. You can
try the best you can.
The best you can is good enough.
You can try the best you can. You can try
the best you can.
The best you can is good enough.
Thank you. That's all.
Woo.
This one's optimistic.
This one went to market.
This one just came out of the
swamp.
This one drops the payload. Fight
for the animals. Living on
air-
This counter melody here
... and fire.
Brilliant.
You
can try the best you can.
Mm.
You can try the best you can.
Yeah.
The best you can is good
enough.
You can try the best you can.
And we can't go past four minutes till later.
The best you can.
I'll pause it here. I feel like we have stuff to come up again.
So this is where, I was talking about Stevie Wonder and modal interchange and how
this was, for me, a lesson in modal interchange as a young
musician, and this track in particular, and the one after it, "In Limbo."
First of all, to me, "Optimistic" and "In Limbo" are
like "Superwoman" and "Where Were You When I Needed You?"
Yeah.
Which is one track-
Connected. Right
... right? These two tracks are connected in my mind.
Yeah.
I can't listen to one without listening to the other.
But they play right into each other, too.
They play right into each other.
I love that.
They're in the same key, or they at least have the transition in the same key.
But this has, the bulk of this-
Right? Has the
So for our listeners who aren't musicians, we're going here between D
minor
and D major.
Yeah. And that theme has been introduced several times on
this album already.
So it's already ringing in your ears, right?
That's not uncommon in classical music and in jazz-
Yeah
... but is uncommon in modern popular rock music.
Right.
And that's
the basic version of this.
They're about to get even more like
all of this stuff.
Yeah.
And this is again, where sort of the Schumann comes out.
Right.
The Schumann situation.
With all the root movements.
All the inversions, all the root movements.
That
kind of like Paul McCartney-ish thing.
But it's more sophisticated than any of that.
And then that
which happens over these chords, Peter, this
Mm.
Woo. Yeah.
Sorry, that should've been F sharp there.
There it is.
Mm.
Yeah.
It's just gorgeous, man.
The whole thing, the orchestration, the harmony is so, so pretty.
Okay, I'm going to throw something out there real quick.
Okay, sure.
Because-
Yeah
... and then I want you to get back to this.
I'm about to make a sweeping generalization.
Yeah.
But I think that European rock, pop,
R&B, any kind of musicians that's doing something in the sort of popular
sphere, do a better job of connecting with
the sort of indigenous culture there.
Like,
we're hearing things in like Old English-
... classical music, but even before that, that they've connected with-
In their DNA.
Right. Now, there's definitely Black American music influences.
For sure, 100%.
You hear that.
There's Miles Davis, there's Charles Mingus-
... there's Alice Coltrane.
But in America, like we've, not all the time, I mean, you can find brilliant
examples of this in bluegrass and fiddle music and stuff.
But in general, we've gotten totally...
We're the beneficiaries of Black American
music and this culture that's affected pretty much everything great,
in my opinion-
Yeah
... that's come out of it. But like, otherwise, we got disconnected from all that
stuff. All these people that are like, "We're going to play white music," but
they're not going back to the great stuff from Europe or
whatever. They think that they are.
No.
And so it got disconnected from that.
And this is kind of like, it's stunning to kind of hear that connection with
the popular thing on top of it.
I kind of wonder if they would even hear that.
I know. No.
How English it feels to us. Because when I think about this-
Because they're not disconnected from it
... I think about English folk music.
Yeah.
But I also think about the choral tradition in England.
Yes.
Like we mentioned Benjamin Britten earlier, but there's-
Yeah
... literally scores of amazing English choral conductors-
Yeah
... choral composers, choral arrangers.
And then you throw in Walt Whitman and like-
Oh
... the poetry and the prose and how that's, you can hear it.
Man. Anyway.
So I wasn't off base with that?
No, you're-
Okay
... totally on base with that. I totally agree.
And I want to caveat that there's a lot of exceptions to that, of course.
Yeah, of course.
But this is what we're looking at.
But this is why this sort of blending of, like you said, Black American
music with this sort of island in the middle of off the west coast of
Europe.
Yeah.
This is where Led Zeppelin kind of has their own thing because there's this weird
"Lord of the Rings" vibe-
Right
... to the blues all of a sudden.
And you're like, "What is going on?" But it kind of works. It's kind of awesome.
Okay, after that-
Koto King.
My apex moment is also in here.
But I think it's later than yours, but the next track is-
Oh, you're talking about the... Okay, well, good. We'll circle back.
Freaking unbelievable, my man. In Limbo.
Nice. Oh.
Turn it up.
Woo.
And this is such great placement on that.
We're right in the middle of the album, right? Like just the second half.
It is. It like splits the album.
Yeah. Yeah,
seven out of 11.
The triplets against the 16th.
Yeah.
Second.
Which doesn't really reveal itself at first.
Those changes there, right?
Right.
Woo.
Woo. That's haunting.
Know this, you have me.
Trapped doors that
open. I
spiral down.
Ugh. I want to live here-
... for a year.
Oh, yeah.
The sound of the guitar, too, is-
Yeah
... amazing.
The guitar and drums on this is like the most,
I don't want to say organic, but like,
okay computer kind of sound.
Yeah, for sure.
You know?
Look at you, talking like an expert already.
Three hours ago, I-
Like an okay computer sounds-
... didn't know the difference between-
... dreamy sky
... R.E.M. and Radiohead. Now I'm splitting them.
You want to go to Coachella?
Yes. It was last week.
I do want to go.
I lost it.
Great melody here.
They're not playing this at Coachella, just to warn you.
Don't bother hurting
me. I've lost
my way.
There's a couple of good ideas fully developed and committed to for the whole...
I've lost my way.
That rhythmic thing is...
Woo.
You live in your fantasy.
You live in
your
fantasy.
Man, and this mix
on the headphones,
like-
Oh, it's great
... the drums are so present, but they're kind of in the back.
Yeah.
They're not as present as the vocals and the guitar. Oh, man, it's so great.
Have I become that guy? "Oh, you got to listen to it on the cans, man."
It's a great headphone listen.
I love this part here, the vocal thing that happens.
So much Thom.
It's like they just keep restarting Thoms.
Yeah.
It keeps rebooting.
Thom with an H.
Reboot Thom.
Okay, computer.
All right. I just got to talk about a couple things here.
So what's happening here? So first of all, we've got this six-beat
phrase of this sort of
that starts this track.
And again, this is all kind of in this
minor Dorian thing, right?
Yeah.
By the way, we're coming off of "Optimistic," which is in the key of D with that D
minor, D major.
Yeah.
So our ears are already tuned. That's the thing, the band keeps prepping you.
Yes.
They keep prepping you for about what's to happen.
And there's even prepping from earlier tracks-
For sure
... on these musical concepts.
And then they go from D minor to C minor.
Now, if you don't know anything about music theory, you're like, "That seems like
maybe D and C are close together."
Right.
But for two minor keys, it's very jarring.
Then they head back to that sort of-
They're not closely related
... E minor. They're not closely related.
And the way they pull it off. So this here
is like this C minor, G
minor over B flat, E flat major, and this sort of
E minor with the minor 6 in there-
Yeah
... with that C natural in there. And then the melody over that, the
It's just so haunting. Like you said, haunting.
And I think that really captures it.
And then, but every time-
It's foreboding, too
... Foreboding.
Oh, man.
And then they go back to that .
Every time they go back to that first section, you're just like, "Ah."
Yeah.
Just going to groove out on it. Man, it is a stroke of genius, this track.
Absolutely.
It really is.
Absolutely. This is, I think, I actually don't have it as my desert island track,
but I think it's... And I don't have it as my apex moment. Well, part of it is.
I'm giving that away. But I think it's somewhat of the, what do you call it?
It's like the apex of the album. It's the meat.
Not that there's any fall-off after this, but it kind of
starts to decay in a beautiful way from here
to the end of the album. And by decay, I mean it's the same thing, we talk about
melancholy, foreboding, angsty.
Yeah.
I mean-
Oh, yeah. For sure
... upheaval. All these kinds of feelings. There's beauty in that when you hit it.
That's what I get from this track. I'm not just like, "Oh, this is a dark album."
That's the most trivial way of looking at it.
But it's one thing to play something to make a record that's just beautiful from
beginning to end, but there's another thing to say, we're going to enter...
To me, this album is such a mood. It's such a vibe.
You're entering into something that's not as easy to make
incredible and beautiful, and they nailed it.
And then they go from that to this.
Newsflash.
"Idioteque."
I thought it was idiot tech.
Idioteque.
The textures.
Yeah.
Each chord is this different texture.
It's that combination of very analog synth sounds and just
very specific electronic
The drums on this are-
Yeah
... insane. This is a modular synth.
I think a modular synth, like the synth-
Oh, right
... with the wires coming out.
Oh, wow.
Peter, where you-
Yeah
... that Jonny Greenwood is working.
Man, this
Woo.
Who's in the
bunker? Who's in the bunker? Women and
children first
His voice on this is presented totally different than anything we've heard.
It's very direct, very clear, very unaffected.
Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive?
Who's in the bunker? Who's in the bunker?
I haven't seen you in months. You haven't seen enough.
You haven't seen enough. Weapons in my head comes
off. Women and children first.
Children
first. Children. Still I love.
Everything all the time
So gorgeous, dude.
When I hear all of this, I hear
they did the work.
Yeah.
They went the hard route.
Yeah.
There's so much detail.
Ice age coming.
Oh, yeah.
Then they both sigh. Then they both sigh
All that stuff rattling around.
Yeah.
Ice age coming. Ice age coming. Throw
it in the fire
Ice age coming.
You and I are not experts in how to make electronic music like this at all.
But think about how much meat-
Don't count us out, sir. Just because we haven't done it doesn't mean we're not-
We could. We
easily could.
We could.
No, but think about how much meat there is for nerds like us, theory nerds or
people who know about-
... chords and stuff, and melodies, right? There's so much in there.
There's also stuff for people who are in it for the lyrics-
Yeah
... or for the art, or for the production, or for the songwrite-- It's all there,
man.
Yeah.
Take the money and run. Take the money and run.
Take the honey
The whole track is unbelievable. I got a couple of things I want to check out-
Ooh
... with this isolated because there's just so much going on on "Idioteque."
Here's the drums.
Obviously, the drums are the
meat of this.
But I want to fast-forward a little bit to the second verse.
That bass drum is so...
It's aggressive. This is the most aggressive bass drum we've got so far.
It's high, too.
Listen to all those little details going on, though.
It's like a G.
Yeah.
But that's pretty high for Basie, right? I feel like...
It's very cool. And then you mentioned-
Ben loves the flat five.
He loves the flat five.
I mean the flat six.
Flat six.
No boss working, no boss shepherd.
Take the money-
Ooh, I love they leave that on
Take the money and run. Take the money and run.
Wasting all my time.
Wasting all
my time.
Mm.
Wasting all
my time. Yeah
Mm. Simply beautiful.
Mm-hmm.
Simply beautiful. I mean-
What a beautiful pass
... we're really cooking now. And like you said, now we're in this
home stretch of everything. Right after this, another
masterpiece, "Morning Bell."
Five-four here.
Minor.
I wonder if Mark Guiliana ever heard this drum groove?
I
think he might have. Minor to major here. A minor to A major.
Again, that's more of that modal mixture that-
Yeah
... for people who don't know a lot of harmony, is very, very rare.
It's why it sounds so unique. It's only things that Stevie Wonder likes to
do-
Yeah
... other very high-level, Earth Wind & Fire-
Kel Kim
... Kel Kim.
Yeah. But they have a very unique approach to it-
They do
... because it's very
front and center
for the harmonic flow. And it's always connected with the
melodic content.
Release me. Release me.
You can keep the furniture.
Bump on the head.
Down the chimney.
Release me.
Ben,
this is a remarkably cohesive album, considering
how the production is very different on a lot of these tracks.
Yeah. This is dry.
Yeah. He's so wet at different places.
The vocals are presented differently.
But very honestly, I think on everything.
The drum's very different. The bass, we haven't heard the bass like this since like
the third track or early on.
Release me.
Nice.
Why'd you pack the car?
Skip ahead just a little bit because this is great. This part.
Got the kids there.
Woo.
Got the kids there.
So that part is-
"Got the kids where?" We don't know what he's saying.
That part is another music nerd's paradise.
This is the sort of John Williams chromatic mediant, right?
So you've heard this in "Indiana Jones," you've heard this in "Empire Strikes
Back."
I think I heard it when I was in Indianapolis as well.
Just in the city.
Just in the city of Indianapolis. There's the-
Got the kids and I.
Got the kids
... E minor to G sharp minor, so they're a third away. They're both minor chords.
Again, just very, very rare that any kind of thing that's close to popular
music would even get that deep into it.
Yeah, because it'd be scary. And then there's no connector chord or transition or
anything, or approach.
Yeah. Exactly right.
Yeah.
But that's how John Williams uses it, too.
Yes.
He'll use that in that way of just like, dun, dun, dun,
Bob DeBoo.
Right.
Where that-
You're just going somewhere, then you're coming back.
Exactly.
By the way, so the next album after this was an album called "Amnesiac." It came
out the very next year. All the songs on "Amnesiac" were from these same sessions.
They basically could have done a double album.
Yeah.
"Amnesiac" is also a banger. It is also a masterpiece.
If you like this, you will love that.
Which do you like better?
It depends on the day. But what's so cool about it is that on "Amnesiac," they
do another version of "Morning Bell."
Mm.
Half step?
Chromatic mediant. So-
Is that a half step higher?
Yeah, it's a little detuned, but-
Oh, okay.
But they lean into... I'm going to nerd out.
This is really the nerd-nook here.
Got the furniture. Bump on the head.
So-
That's incredible because they did like a bunch of tracks-
Yeah
... and they put this on both of them.
So did you hear the melody, or the root movement on that was da, dun,
da, dun. In the original, it's all just on this A pedal, right?
It's all just-
The morning bell
... A minor to A major seven.
Morning bell.
In this, the A major seven shape-
Yeah
... without the A-
Yeah
... is C sharp minor.
Right.
And that's what they did on the "Amnesiac" version.
The morning bell. The morning bell.
Oh, like a second inversion.
Which is like a... No, it's like-
Of the C sharp minor
... it's a chromatic mediant.
Oh.
No, the C sharp is in-
No, I'm saying, but up at the top, you got-
Oh, yeah. I'm doing this. Yeah. But check it out, Peter.
This is the same as that interlude.
Yeah.
Got the kids and I.
Yeah.
So it's really the same. They kind of changed the chord progression for the
"Amnesiac" version. It's
such a brilliant move.
It's so cool. I'd geek out so hard and like, "Who thought of that?"
Yeah.
"Why do they do that? I don't know. Do I love it?
Yes." "Do I fully understand why? No."
Sue me.
Yeah, and it's-
I'm excited. I don't know if you can tell, buddy. I'm buzzing.
No, but it's also like for folks that are like, "What C sharp minor?
I'm tune..." No, don't tune out. This is
about like, what is the feeling? And you guys,
when it gets to that part, it's like, what is that human feeling that we have-
... that harmony. It's never, I mean, we're isolating it, yes, but
that's one of the elements. And everybody's just like, "I'll never understand
music." Hey, melody, harmony-
Yeah
... and rhythm. And we've talked about all this today.
This was kind of a lot of, in terms of the
elements of it, like harmony is just, it's striking if you understand this.
But I hope people are accepting as striking as it is just to hear it, because
that's the most important level.
Yeah.
But when you go in and find it, you're like, "Oh my God, this is genius." But
that human feeling that it gives you is stunning.
So speaking of humanity, we're going from all this electronic stuff-
Yeah
... and they end the album with "Motion Picture Soundtrack."
That's a
good way to get on a movie.
With the very organic sounds.
Yeah.
Sounds like that sort of like foot pedal-
Clavie?
... pump organ.
Yeah. A pump organ, yeah.
Clavie, yeah. You can hear something clicking.
Yeah.
You know?
But they didn't play this on MTV.
Probably not. Probably not.
It's so beautiful, man. It's such a great ending.
Help me
get back to
you.
Mm.
It's such a
simple but epic feel to it.
How many times did Stevie do this to us?
Right. Right.
In the album.
At the end, too.
Yeah.
Where you're like, you're here, but you're actually, emotionally, you're very
lifted.
You're elevated.
Yeah.
It's simple.
Maybe.
Mm.
I think you're
crazy.
Maybe.
Let's bring some Dorothy Ashby to it.
Harmonium. That's what that is.
Little Dorothy Ashby?
Little Alice Coltrane?
Apparently, that was Jonny Greenwood on the harp.
Yeah, no. It's not actually Dorothy Ashby.
No, I know, but he can play harp, too?
Who?
Jonny Greenwood.
Oh, Jonny Greenwood. Oh, wow.
Playing the harmonium. I think that's the name of the keyboard instrument.
Damn. Yeah.
Maybe.
Yeah, if you get it tuned at the right place, you can just keep doing that, I
guess. Not to oversimplify.
Shout out to all my harpist friends.
Crazy.
Choral.
Maybe. I think
you're crazy.
And I'm going to play right into the next track, because on the original CD,
which most of us got this on CD-
Yeah
... it was a
hidden track.
It was, right.
You remember those?
Yeah.
They wouldn't put it on the album.
It wouldn't be on there. But it was-
But it's a whole separate track
... still to go, right.
Yeah.
So you could fast-forward to it, yeah.
You could advance to it.
Is that a little half-diminished in there?
I think that was our first half-diminished.
I can't tell you how many planes I've been sitting on- ...
and this moment of the last track, I think this might be the most brilliant
way to end an album of the last 40 years.
Going from "Motion Picture Soundtrack" into this untitled track.
You're on a plane, you can't really hear much of what's going on here, especially
with
2000 technology, non-noise-canceling headphones.
Right.
And I feel like there might've been a little more space in the actual running
up.
Oh, it didn't go right to it?
I feel, I could be wrong about that, but-
Yeah
... someone put in the comments. Was there more space between "Motion Picture
Soundtrack" and the untitled,
hidden track?
I love that, because you used to be able to define, and I remember in mastering,
you'd be like-
... how many? Like two and a half or one.
Because it would kind of come out of nowhere, where you're almost half asleep by
the end-
... of "Motion Picture Soundtrack" and you're just like, "Whoa."
What a gutsy move to pull that out. First of all, to pull the harp out on the
last or the penultimate track to-
Bro
... pull out a new instrument?
No.
And the harp at that?
Peter, what do you got? Let's do some categories. Desert Island Tracks.
What do you got?
Okay. "Everything in Its Right Place" I think is an obvious choice.
Yeah,
it's a good one.
Can we just play the beginning? And before we play it, I'm sorry I messed up your
initial thing, because I didn't know we were going into it.
No, go ahead.
But I want to honor this as, I think, we should
do an Academy Awards. We're going to put on tuxes. You know what?
We're going to do that this year.
Award show?
We're going to do a little award show.
We should do a best of the pod.
Do you have a tuxedo? Because I have a Brooks Brothers tuxedo.
It's been a while since I've worn a tuxedo. You got a Brooks Brothers tuxedo?
I do, yeah.
Wow.
Custom.
But the thing is, I think this,
we've done some other albums. I think that this is one of the greatest starts to an
album.
Can we back up just a second about-
... the Brooks Brothers tuxedo?
Yeah.
You knew I was going to stop you on this, right?
Sorry.
That is a classic move, Peter. That's a great move.
Can I just say to the audience, if you're looking to buy a tuxedo, because think
about how many times are you going to wear a tuxedo?
Someone bought it for you. Someone smart bought that for you. You know why?
Brooks Brother, it's not trendy.
It's not trendy.
The cut is always going to be pretty conservatively-
Yeah. It's going to be old man
... straight down the mountain. And that's what-
But you're going to be an old man one day
Unless you're going to the Grammys-
Yeah
... and you want to really flash it up-
That's right
... for most events that you're wearing a tuxedo.
Peter, whoever told you that is a baller.
Thank you.
That's all I'm saying.
No, but I think that this is going to be up there if we go over greatest starts to
an album.
And I think this could win.
Pretend like you have... Go listen to this with headphones. Do yourself.
It is such a vibe. I tried it on four different kinds of headphones.
I'm not even an audiophile, my friend.
Do you know how many films have used this?
I mean, even we just saw, what's the one with Ryan Gosling that's out now?
The-
"La La Land"?
No.
Oh, that's the other guy.
No. "The Project Hail Mary"-
Oh, yeah
... uses this.
Yeah.
"Vanilla Sky" uses this. There's a ton of film and
television that have...
Sorry, I'm going to do it again, because you're right, now I'm ruining it.
Man, this is
so-Man,
the two different times and then the menacing but beautiful bass
drum, but also the foreboding and the foreshadowing.
I think it's a brilliant start.
I read in an interview when this album came out, I forget what magazine, it could
have been "Rolling Stone." It was probably on an airplane-
Yeah
... as I was flying back and forth from New York.
What, did you used to be a pilot or something?
No, man. We used to fly more. No, but Thom Yorke was interviewed
about this, and he's like, "We were driving around after the final
mixing of it-
Yeah
... listening to it in the car." Like you do.
Yeah.
If you don't know, when you're mixing and mastering stuff, you tend to go out to
the car, you go for a ride with it, you hear some sounds.
You got to get some fresh ears.
Hear how it sounds on the car speakers, which is important.
And he's like, "I was just sitting in the back seat, and then it came on.
I just started sobbing." And he's like, "That doesn't happen
every day."
Exactly.
Because it doesn't happen, especially when you're deep in it, working on the work.
But I think even he was probably like, "Holy smoke."
Yeah.
"What did we do with this?"
Yeah.
It's pretty special.
Yeah.
I agree.
Well, in a couple of minutes, you're going to hear us doing it. So, there you go.
My desert island tracks is actually the two, "Optimistic" and "In Limbo."
So, two.
The pairing of those. Well, no, they're one track in my mind, is what I was saying.
So, two tracks.
Okay.
Got it. Desert island track. Well, we do say desert island tracks. Apex moments.
Can you go to-
Yeah
... right before four minutes or right about four minutes or a little before on
"Optimistic," please?
Sure. So, four minutes or right before.
Yeah.
Let's see here.
Look at him. He's
cradling-
Oh, I know what this is.
I know what you're doing. But this is a good call.
Yeah.
Oh.
Because they haven't been on a groove like that yet.
Yeah. Well, and what happens after this, too.
Oh. This, and that's very rarely heard in this kind of music.
Yeah.
When I was listening to this and I first heard...
I'd never heard this track, and I was like, "Damn!"
Yeah.
The tempo shift.
But coming out of that groove that you then introduced to your four minutes.
And then
And this record-
The only fill on the album.
Yeah. This is not like a groovy feel, like feelgood kind of,
but man.
Oh.
Go on, Phil.
There's another Phil.
Is that Phil Collins?
Phil Selway.
But this is genius right here, what they do.
And it's already started, right?
Hold on, that's starting.
Go on, then.
What's going to happen?
What?
But the speeding up happened already.
I missed it because I was talking over it,
I think. But this, all the way to the transition to the next track.
It's funny. We rarely have the same apex moment. This would be mine as well.
From here to the next.
From here to the next track.
Yeah.
That transition.
Can we listen just to the first, just up to the
Woo.
Not only this, but then when the triplets come in.
Yes.
Because we're just like
Yeah.
We still have the
Man, so you've got like four different
grooves from that-
Woo
... that groove drop at four minutes on "Optimistic" up to here.
Yeah. Man.
Man, that's like... And you know what it is?
It's like you're at, remember they used to have the stage that turned?
Yeah.
But you're in the middle, and you're seeing this, and then you're like, "Damn." But
each one of the transitions just is dope.
For me, it's one of the-
So that's the same thing you had.
That's exactly-
Oh, that's awesome
... yeah.
For me, one of the great moments for me in music-
Yeah
... is that transition between those two tunes.
Fantastic.
Do you have any quibble bits?
I mean, dark, dystopian, but that's the point, right? It's not a quibble.
So I have zero quibble bits.
Yeah. Thermometer, what do you got? Oh, I see you.
Oh, damn. I did the same. Five.
Five.
But, I mean, I would have thought that going into this, I didn't really have a
reference point, but then I realized, I was like, "It's got to be a five."
Got to be a five.
Yep.
Accoutrements. The art on this is, I have 11 out of 10, because this is as
good as art gets for an album. I mean, really.
So what's the-
There's so much to it, Peter. There's books written about the art for this album.
So this is one to 11?
No, it's one to 10. That's how good it is.
This is by-
Okay
... Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, the cover art.
The cover is brilliant, but all of the other stuff to go along with it, paired with
"Amnesiac." They actually did a release about four years ago of, I think it's
called "Kid Amnesiac." "Kidnesia?"
"Kid Rock Amnesia?"
I forget what it's called, but it's like a combination of the whole thing, and they
did a whole showing of the art-
Yeah
... that they made, including the stuff that nobody had seen.
But there's books and books of art that they made for this stuff.
So if you include all that, it goes up to 11.
I mean, it's just mind-blowing how good the accoutrements are.
For every Radiohead album.
It's great. I give it a nine, just because I very rarely go 10, but.
Up next, what do you got?
I mean, it's 2000. I got "Voodoo."
So-
I got "Voodoo" coming right out of this, man.
It's so different, but it's so great, too.
You are not wrong, my friend.
Yeah.
So again, back it up. I'm 20. I'm moving to New York.
I'm walking around those streets of Manhattan. There are two discs.
I got the Manhattan Portage bag, you know what I'm saying?
Oh, yeah.
You know, the red?
Yeah.
And I got-
With the little badge on it. Yeah
... with the little badge on it. And I got my Discman in there.
There's not enough room for 10 CDs.
I probably got five CDs. You know what I got in there?
I
definitely have-
Thelonious Monk?
Well, I got some Monk in there. I've got some
Ahmad Jamal in there.
Oh, yeah.
100%.
I got some Brad Mehldau in there. I might even have a little-
... Josh Redman "Spirit of the Moment" in there, Peter.
I definitely did. But I also always
had "Kid A" and "Voodoo."
So what he means is he had two CDs in there, and those were the two.
I mean, they were always in there. Because I was always going between those two.
Yeah.
I actually consider them-
Can you imagine walking around New York in 2000 with those two-
Bro
... on a Discman? That's my happy place, man.
There's nothing better.
Nothing.
And by the way, sometimes the jazz would get swapped out for some Pharoah
Sanders or maybe some Velvet Underground.
We're walking around, we're listening to interesting stuff.
But dude, these two albums coming out in the same year, around the same
time.
Yeah.
Two things that both of them, I'd never heard anything like.
Yeah.
We'd never heard anything like "Voodoo," right?
We never heard a groove like that. I've never heard a bass sound like that.
Yeah.
I'd never heard someone sing like that.
I'd never heard synths played in this way on this album.
I'd never heard sort of melancholy captured so perfectly.
It was just incredible to walk around-
... with that music in your bag.
You'd be good on both those.
Yeah.
What do you have up next?
"Amnesiac." So the-
Okay. You want to stay in the vibe.
Yeah.
Got you.
Also, I just want-
Not wrong with that
... I really want people, if you like this, go listen to "Amnesiac." It's great.
Oh, we didn't do-
Is it better? What is it better than?
Oh. Is it better?
Because usually we do, is it better than "Kind of Blue"?
I feel like that'd be a little weird.
Sometimes we do, is it better than "Innervisions"? We could do that, maybe.
No.
Well, should we do, is it better than "Voodoo"?
I'm going to say no.
I'm going to say equal.
Again, because of this time.
Okay, so equal we can say. Okay, got it.
I'm going to say even.
Okay. Got you.
Peter, buddy.
But wait, we didn't do this. Oh, no, we did that.
I think we're good.
We got everything? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Don't we have eight categories?
This is what we got now.
I love this. We're talking about this album, Kid A.
It's like, if you get to the end, what a great ending. What a crap ending.
Do we have eight categories?
I don't know.
I thought it was seven.
Put it in the comments, how many categories we have.
We got cut off, man.
Man, thank you for going on this journey. What do you think?
Dead Air.
You're a fan.
I love this record, man. I'm a fan. Man, I'm about to go order
this on CD.
I love this, because it's not like you didn't like this album, it just wasn't-
I didn't know this album
... something that you would have been exposed to.
I didn't know. The thing is, all this kind of stuff, if it wasn't playing on the
radio or MTV or something, and I didn't have it, I didn't really hear it, man.
Yeah. This was very satisfying.
Thank you, man. This was great to experience it with you.
Thank you.
And our dear listeners.
Yeah. And dear listeners, let us know what other albums in this vein you'd like us
to cover, because we do
like this stuff, too.
Yeah.
We're not just-
Yeah.
It's not just 1972 around here.
Well, fine. Okay, computer.
Till next time.
You'll hear it.