Critics split on Kid A after Capitol keeps advance copies locked up

Kid A has been in the shops since Monday in Britain, on Parlophone, and since Tuesday in America, on Capitol. Capitol would only let journalists hear advance copies with a publicist in the room, so Douglas Wolk reviewed it for The Village Voice from a copy taken off the internet, and apologised for the high and low frequencies the encoding had shaved off.

Fans, Wolk points out, had the songs long before the record. The band try material out on stage and put up with concert MP3s, and as soon as the tracklist was announced someone gathered live versions of almost every track into a set ready for Napster. Cleveland Scene remembers that for OK Computer Capitol mailed critics advance tapes glued inside personal stereos. This time the label has been sending cease-and-desist orders to radio stations playing the music without permission.

Slate's review digest found the early American notices mostly kind, with a charge of self-indulgence creeping in. Pitchfork gave it a perfect 10.0, and Simon Reynolds, in Spin, calls it Radiohead's bravest and best album, neither the career suicide nor the self-indulgence it will be accused of. Cleveland Scene calls it a fiasco of childish self-indulgence and suspects the hype has gone to the band's heads. Richard Cromelin, in the Los Angeles Times, sits between them on two and a half stars out of four: pleasant on the ear, but on ground other experimental record makers have already covered, and no leap of the kind Bowie made with Low. He calls it a side trip and hopes it stays one.

The missing guitars are the common thread. The Chicago Tribune notes that they only come back with “Optimistic”, five songs in, and bring no anthem with them. Wolk reports that their absence has angered half the alt.music.radiohead newsgroup, though he reckons most of the album was written on guitars. In Britain, Keith Cameron gives it 7 out of 10 in the NME, finds “Idioteque” its saving grace, and decides the band are scared to commit emotionally.

The record comes with no printed lyrics, and David Fricke notes in Rolling Stone that fans are already disputing what Yorke sings in “The National Anthem”. The Hartford Courant's critic, after a weekend with the CD, found a second booklet hidden behind the tray.

The release-week reviews