Radiohead's Amnesiac splits three US reviewers, who agree on one song

Three more American reviews of Amnesiac, following the first notices, disagree about almost everything except “You and Whose Army?”. Billboard, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the Badger Herald all pick it out.

Billboard's review of 16 June, signed BB, tells its readers to pay no attention to critics impatient with Radiohead for not stepping back from the experiments of Kid A; dropping formula, it argues, makes the band more relevant. It finds no single for rock radio, nothing even on the lines of “Optimistic”, but plenty of tunes. Most of them sit in the middle of the album, from “You and Whose Army?” to “Dollars and Cents”, which it takes as Thom Yorke's contempt for the values of the new world order. Its last word is that Radiohead are a rock band with something to say, in a language they made themselves.

The Sun-Sentinel, on 22 June, calls the record a step back and a disappointment, made of stale leftovers that were not good enough for Kid A. Even so it rates “You and Whose Army?” the album's high point, likes the guitars on “I Might Be Wrong” and “Knives Out”, and wonders whether a double album, or a shorter wait, would have saved the rest.

Zeke Campfield, writing in the Badger Herald, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student paper, on 27 June, rates Amnesiac as the missing step between OK Computer and Kid A. “Dollars and Cents”, for him, is a quiet attack on the music business, EMI, the band's own label, included. And “You and Whose Army?”, building the way “Exit Music (For a Film)” does, may be the most beautiful song Radiohead have written.