Day After Day #71: Idioteque

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Idioteque (2000)

After the successes of their albums The Bends and OK Computer, Radiohead had become one of the biggest bands in rock. OK Computer had redefined their sound and they were being hailed as the natural inheritors of the mantle that U2 and R.E.M. once held as a Very Important Band. Critics and fans alike were anticipating the band's next album to see how they would once again transform guitar-based rock.

But there was just one problem: Radiohead had no interest in doing that. The band was burned out and felt like other bands were copying their sound. Singer/songwriter Thom Yorke suffered from writer's block and became disillusioned with rock music in general, choosing instead to listen to electronic artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre. 

The rest of the band wasn't buying it at first, especially when Yorke was bringing in fragments of songs with no guitars or drums. There was a lot of time spent in the studio experimenting with electronic instruments like synthesizers and sequencers, as well as with using effects on their guitars to create synth-like sounds. It took a while but finally the songs began to take shape by early 2000, and in April of that year, Radiohead had completed 20 songs. Eventually, they decided to release them on two albums, starting with Kid A in October 2000.

This was at the height of the popularity of Napster, the file-sharing service that allowed users to share/steal MP3s. Radiohead decided not to release any singles or videos and did very little press for the album. But the album leaked on Napster months before its official release. I was working at Webnoize, where we were writing about the impact technology like Napster was having on the music industry, and we were using it for "research purposes." I heard some of the Kid A stuff before its official release and it was wild.

The band incorporated a wide variety of electronic and other instruments, as well as vocoders, strings and horn sections. In addition to electronic acts, influences on the new sound included Krautrock acts like Can, jazz artists including Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, Talking Heads circa Remain in Light, and Bjork. For someone expecting OK Computer 2.0, it was probably a major disappointment. 

The song "Idioteque" grew from an improvised sound collage that guitarist Jonny Greenwood put together using '70s-era synths, found sounds and samples; Yorke took a short section and wrote lyrics based on that. Yorke's lyric-writing process was much different than on previous albums. Inspired by David Byrne's haphazard lyrics on Remain in Light, Yorke would take phrases and then pick them from a hat to put them together. Amazingly, it works.

"Who's in a bunker? Who's in a bunker?/Women and children first/And the children first and the children/I'll laugh until my head comes off/I'll swallow til I burst/Until I burst."

The song sounds like it's from the year 3000, not 2000. For the second verse, the synths drop out and Yorke sings over the electronic percussion, seemingly about climate change.

"Ice Age coming, Ice Age coming/Let me hear both sides/Let me hear both sides, let me hear both/Ice Age coming, Ice Age coming/Throw it in the fire, throw it in the fire, throw it on the/We're not scaremongering/This is really happening, happening."

The band rearranged the Kid A songs to play them live. They ended up doing just a few North American shows in small venues, and also played on Saturday Night Live, where they did "Idioteque" and "The National Anthem" in two of the best performances that show has ever seen. 

The critics were split on the album, some loving it and others trashing it, but by the end of the decade, it made most best-of lists. Kid A topped the U.S. Billboard 200 and the UK Album chart and was top 10 throughout the world. The rest of the songs recorded during the Kid A sessions were released on the album Amnesiac in May 2001; it included more of what one would consider traditional Radiohead songs along with experimental sounds.

I saw them on the Amnesiac tour at Suffolk Downs of all places and then a few years later in Mansfield (the venue formerly known as Great Woods and many other names) on the Hail to the Thief tour. Radiohead is a terrific live band.

Radiohead released one more album for EMI before self-releasing their seventh album, In Rainbows, as a "pay what you want" download. This naturally freaked the industry out; the band later released the album as a CD through the traditional retail route and it went to #1 in the U.S. and UK. The band has only released two albums since, the last one coming out in 2016, but the group's members have been busy, releasing solo projects and working with other musicians. Yorke and Jonny Greenwood formed The Smile with drummer Tom Skinner and have released two excellent albums that feature a decent amount of guitar, don't ya know.