Colin and Jonny Greenwood talk Amnesiac with La Stampa before Verona

Colin and Jonny Greenwood have told La Stampa that the songs on Amnesiac were written alongside those on Kid A. It is a second selection from about 20 songs, they say, and there are more, not yet recorded, that will end up as B-sides. The paper met them over coffee for its culture pages, ahead of the album's release on 4 June and Radiohead's concert at the Arena di Verona on 30 May. Its writers were played four tracks.

Colin traces the band back to what they listened to at 16: Elvis Costello, R.E.M. and the Waterboys.

For us nothing in our music has changed since the first album. We just use different colours each time.

Colin Greenwood¹

Their listening now runs to Charles Mingus, Miles Davis and the Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum. Kid A, which went to number one in America, disappointed people with fixed ideas of what the band should do, and the brothers are carrying on regardless. Reminded that R.E.M. now name Radiohead as an inspiration, they answer that they are not such technical musicians.

Asked whether “You and Whose Army?” is aimed at Tony Blair's government, they say they stand outside politics and hold music higher. Their faces, they add, do not appear in the “Pyramid Song” video. And when the paper suggests rock is dead, they agree, as long as painting is dead too, jazz dies every five years and journalism is a bit dead as well.