Pitchfork gives Amnesiac 9.0 as the release-week reviews split

Ryan Schreiber has given Amnesiac 9.0 at Pitchfork, which scored Kid A a perfect 10.0 last October. He still calls Kid A Radiohead's defining achievement. He blames the running order for keeping alive the idea that the new album is a b-sides collection in disguise. His favourite moments come at the very end, “Like Spinning Plates” and above all “Life in a Glasshouse”, a New Orleans funeral piece with trombone, clarinet and Humphrey Lyttelton's trumpet. “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” strikes him as forced, and he catches “Knives Out” borrowing a guitar line from “Paranoid Android”.

Dale Price, at Drowned In Sound, was slightly let down by Kid A and likes Amnesiac far more, scoring it 9 out of 10 for its tunes, its guitars and its proper singing. His picks are “I Might Be Wrong”, “Like Spinning Plates” and “Morning Bell/Amnesiac”. Michael Hubbard at musicOMH treats the two albums as halves of one double album; for him “Life in a Glasshouse” alone is worth the price and “Pyramid Song” makes the record essential.

Amnesiac came out in Britain on Parlophone on Monday and in America on Capitol on Tuesday, and the American papers are just as divided. Michael Gallucci in Cleveland Scene had heard talk that this would be the more melodic, mainstream record of the pair, and can barely tell it from Kid A. The Morning Call in Allentown treats it as a coda to three records at once: “You and Whose Army?” for The Bends, “Pyramid Song” for OK Computer and “Hunting Bears” for Kid A.

The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale finds it as unsettling as Kid A but sketchier than anything the band have made, with the scattered feel of a rarities set. It also wonders whether “Pyramid Song”, with its picture of drowning, is a tribute to Jeff Buckley, who drowned near Memphis, a city with an arena built as a pyramid.

The release-week reviews