First reviews of Radiohead's Amnesiac welcome it with reservations

The first reviews of Amnesiac are in, ahead of its release on Parlophone in Britain on 4 June and on Capitol in America the day after, and all of them like it with reservations.

Jon Pareles, giving it three and a half stars out of five in Rolling Stone, finds only one song played the old way. On “Knives Out” the five are a band in a room, playing in real time. Everything else has been filtered, programmed or isolated. For Pareles, Radiohead have gone further than they did on Kid A. There they dropped the guitar band; here they are dismantling the song itself, until Yorke's voice is almost the only trademark left. He thinks the album slightly padded, with stretches that could pass for Kid A leftovers, but decides that most of its indulgences turn into advances. His picks are “Pyramid Song”, “You and Whose Army?” and “I Might Be Wrong”, which has a bluesy guitar lick of a kind Radiohead rarely play.

Victoria Segal gives it 8/10 in NME and has no time for the idea that this is the album of ordinary songs held back from Kid A. Whatever Yorke says about the record standing alone, to her it is Kid A continued, and the single “Pyramid Song” is no sign of the band going soft. She too names “Knives Out” as the nearest thing to the old guitar sound.

Slant Magazine also takes the two records as a pair, and not all of this one works for it. The instrumental “Hunting Bears” is hard going, and the big-band closer with Humphrey Lyttelton's trumpet, “Life in a Glasshouse”, sits oddly; “I Might Be Wrong” and “Dollars & Cents” win it back.

The warmest notice is the Los Angeles Times's, on Sunday 3 June: three and a half stars out of four for a record richer and easier to love than Kid A, with a rock-blues guitar lead, a real drum kit and a stronger vocal from Yorke.

The first notices