Amnesiac

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This article is about the Radiohead album. For information about loss of memory, see amnesia.

Amnesiac
Studio album by Radiohead
Released	June 4, 2001
Recorded	January 1999 – late 2000
Genre	Art rock Electronic music
Length	43:57
Label	Parlophone Capitol
Producer(s)	Nigel Godrich, Radiohead
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Pitchfork (9.0/10) link Slant Magazine link Stylus (B) 9/1/03
Radiohead chronology
Kid A (2000)	Amnesiac (2001)	I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (2001)

Amnesiac is the fifth studio album by the English band Radiohead. It was released on June 4, 2001 in the United Kingdom and on June 5 in the United States and Canada, debuting at #1 on the UK charts and #2 on the Billboard Top 200. Seen as the furthest departure yet from the arena rock style and heart-on-sleeve songwriting of the band's early career, Amnesiac nevertheless has more audible guitar than its direct predecessor Kid A, and unlike that album, it spun off several singles. Like Kid A, it synthesizes influences of electronic and ambient music, and incorporates jazz.

Contents 1 Recording and relation to Kid A 2 Track listing 3 Clips 4 Singles and reception 5 Special edition 6 Song facts 7 B-sides 7.1 "Pyramid Song" singles 7.2 "Knives Out" singles 8 Release 9 External links

[edit] Recording and relation to Kid A

Both Amnesiac and Radiohead's album Kid A, which was released eight months earlier in 2000, were recorded in the same period. Most songs on Amnesiac were recorded during the same recording sessions that produced Kid A ("Life in a Glasshouse", however, was recorded with the band of jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton in late 2000, after the release of Kid A). This has led some to refer to Amnesiac as a "b-sides" album or as "Kid B", although the band has said the two albums should be considered separately, as "twins separated at birth." Amnesiac also includes a different version of "Morning Bell", a song from Kid A.

According to guitarist Ed O'Brien, "We had to come to grips with starting a song from scratch in the studio and making it into something, rather than playing it live, rehearsing it and then getting a good take of a live performance. None of us played that much guitar on these records. Suddenly we were presented with the opportunity and the freedom to approach the music the way Massive Attack does: as a collective, working on sounds, rather than with each person in the band playing a prescribed role. It was quite hard work for us to adjust to the fact that some of us might not necessarily be playing our usual instrument on a track, or even playing any instrument at all. Once you get over your insecurities, then it's great."^[1] (For more detailed information on the recording sessions, see Kid A.)

While explaining the decision to release two albums rather than one, singer Thom Yorke said, "They are separate because they cannot run in a straight line with each other. They cancel each other out as overall finished things... In some weird way, I think Amnesiac gives another take on Kid A, a form of explanation." He continued: "Something traumatic is happening in Kid A, and this is looking back at it, trying to piece together what has happened." About the differences with the previous record he says: "I think the artwork is the best way of explaining it. The artwork to Kid A was all in the distance. The fires were all going on the other side of the hill. With Amnesiac, you're actually in the forest while the fire's happening."

Yorke said, "I read that the gnostics believe when we are born we are forced to forget where we have come from in order to deal with the trauma of arriving in this life. I thought this was really fascinating. It's like the river of forgetfulness. It may have been recorded at same time... but it comes from a different place I think. It sounds like finding an old chest in someone's attic with all these notes and maps and drawings and descriptions of going to a place you cannot remember. That's what I think anyway."^[2]

The album is dedicated to "Noah and Jamie", sons of Thom Yorke and Phil Selway, respectively, who were born between the release of Kid A and the release of Amnesiac.

[edit] Track listing

• All tracks written by Radiohead.

1. "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" – 4:00
2. "Pyramid Song" – 4:49
3. "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" – 4:07
4. "You and Whose Army?" – 3:11
5. "I Might Be Wrong" – 4:54
6. "Knives Out" – 4:15
7. "Morning Bell/Amnesiac" – 3:14
8. "Dollars and Cents" – 4:52
9. "Hunting Bears" – 2:01
10. "Like Spinning Plates" – 3:57
11. "Life in a Glasshouse" – 4:34

[edit] Clips

[edit] Singles and reception

The album's lead single was "Pyramid Song", except in the United States where "I Might Be Wrong" was a radio-only single. "Pyramid Song" was Radiohead's first single since 1998's "No Surprises", as their prior album, Kid A, had spun off no official singles. The song reached #5 in the UK, one of the band's highest chart positions. The second single on both sides of the Atlantic was "Knives Out", which reached #13 in the UK and #1 in Canada. Again, unlike Kid A, music videos were produced for both singles, by Shynola and Michel Gondry, respectively. Two separate videos were made for "I Might Be Wrong", one by Sophie Muller, and an Internet-only release by Chris Bran.

While Kid A garnered much critical attention, Amnesiac is sometimes viewed as the less accomplished of the two works. It has been criticised for a lack of cohesion. Some critics and fans even refer to this fragmentation as a deliberate device used by Radiohead to escape the formula of their previous work. Nevertheless, the album was received well by most critics and nearly reached Kid A's sales (debuting lower in America, but with more copies sold in the first week), marking the band's continued musical explorations as commercially viable to a mass audience. The album appeared to cement Radiohead's status as one of only a few modern UK pop artists able to achieve consistent success in the US.^[3]

Amnesiac was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2001 (which it lost to PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, an album on which Yorke had appeared the previous year in a duet with Harvey). Like Radiohead's three previous releases, it was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Album.

Radiohead wrote the songs of both Amnesiac and Kid A in the studio, without regard for live performances, which had to be developed and arranged later. The band had played many of the songs that had already been recorded and would end up on Amnesiac during shows in 2000 to promote Kid A, but they had not toured widely outside of Europe since 1998. In 2001, Radiohead's Amnesiac tour also reached North America and Japan. Several months after the release of Amnesiac, I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings was released, instead of a previously planned "I Might Be Wrong" single. This "mini album" had recordings from the tour, including Amnesiac tracks "I Might Be Wrong", "Morning Bell" [closer to the Kid A version live], "Like Spinning Plates" and "Dollars & Cents". "Like Spinning Plates" was particularly noted for being a departure from the song's studio version.

[edit] Special edition

In addition to the standard release of Amnesiac, a special edition album was released. This consists of a red hardback book, like the book pictured on the album cover. The book is styled as a library book from "Catachresis College Library", with the CD inside the book cover along with library slips and date stamps, some of which reference Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. The book featured many pages of art designed by Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke, who went by the pseudonym of "Tchocky" when credited. In 2002, the special edition album won Donwood and Yorke a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package.

[edit] Song facts

For more detailed information, see song articles.

• "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" was originally known as "Po Pad" several months before the album came out, when Ed O'Brien described it to the media as "upbeat". The song may sample a gamelan recording at the start.^{[citation needed]} The band used auto-tuning, a process usually employed in dance-pop songs such as those by Cher and Britney Spears, to give an unnatural tone to Thom Yorke's voice. The song received some rare live interpretations in 2001 with the electronic sound replaced by a fuzz-guitar riff, such as in the band's session for Canal+. Yorke sometimes dedicated the song live to those caught in traffic gridlock on the way to their concerts. Reviewers of Amnesiac who had been expecting the band's "return to rock" thought the opening lyrics relevant: "after years of waiting / nothing came / and you realize you're looking / looking in the wrong place / I'm a reasonable man, get off my case".^{[citation needed]}
• "Pyramid Song" was originally performed on solo piano by Thom Yorke at the 1999 Tibetan Freedom Concert. During the Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, the band and coproducer Nigel Godrich fleshed it out into a symphonic pop song (and ultimately a single) with lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood playing Ondes Martenot and jazz-inspired drums from Phil Selway. The strings were arranged by Greenwood as well, and played by the Orchestra of St. Johns in the same recording session where the parts for "Dollars & Cents" and Kid A's "How to Disappear Completely" were set to tape. O'Brien said in his diary that the band felt this song was their best work to date, which had been previously said about "Lucky" in 1995.^[4] The song was frequently played live in 2000, to good reception, and many fans were shocked when it did not make the track list of the first album from the sessions, Kid A. The song's lyrics reference several other songs, including the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and Tom Waits' "Clap Hands", while Thom Yorke said the music was inspired by Charles Mingus' "Freedom". Yorke commented in 2000 that he had been reading Heaven's Mirror by Graham Hancock, a book about ancient civilizations, which may have provided some inspiration for the song's title. It was originally titled, "Egyptian Song" and known by fans as "Nothing to Fear".
• "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" is the only song on Amnesiac that has never been performed live (apart from the Amnesiac version of "Morning Bell"). It was created by severely manipulating a discarded, unreleased studio recording of "True Love Waits",^{[citation needed]} an anthemic ballad - legendary among fans - that has only been aired by the band in live acoustic versions since the mid-'90s. The resulting song was seen by some to bear a resemblance to experimental drill n bass and IDM artists such as Squarepusher, Modeselektor and Aphex Twin - all favourites of Yorke - with radical vocal effects again created using pitch-shifting.^{[citation needed]} The lyrics appear to continue from a line in Kid A's "In Limbo", about "trap doors that open".
• "You and Whose Army?" was primarily inspired by 1930s vocal group The Ink Spots. The band and producer Godrich were trying to achieve a period sound as in music heard on the radio in that era, first trying vintage microphones. Ultimately they settled on Yorke singing through an egg box (through his cupped hands live) to create a muffled effect.^{[citation needed]} The song's instrumentation is mostly acoustic- piano, upright bass, percussion. Electric guitar is also played, and heard in the climax on the live version. Yorke said the lyrics had begun as personal song but it became a song about Tony Blair.^[5] Lines like "you and whose army? / you and your cronies" may have referenced recent New Labour scandals and the 2001 election that nearly coincided with the album's release (though the song was written over a year earlier), while the phrase "Holy Roman Empire" was echoed in the album art depicting the West as a Roman Empire. However, the brief song winds down quickly after climaxing, and reviewers described the tone as defeated rather than an inspiring political protest.^{[citation needed]}
• "I Might Be Wrong" is one of Radiohead's most blues-driven songs, and it was seen as one of the most guitar-based on Amnesiac, although it is also heavily electronic in the studio version. The song's lyrics were said by Yorke to be about his personal relationship (unlike most Radiohead songs of the time) and had been written on a beach, watching the "waves go out, come in again" as described in the lyrics.^{[citation needed]} The song has a "false ending", with a guitar solo and drum machine, before Yorke returns with a wordless falsetto. It is also one of Colin Greenwood's more distinctive basslines.^{[citation needed]}
• "Knives Out", with ethereal, melodic guitar parts inspired by Johnny Marr of The Smiths and also bearing a resemblance to the first section of Radiohead's own "Paranoid Android", allegedly "took 373 days to record".^{[citation needed]} In reality, the band was working on other material at the same time. According to Yorke, "We just lost our nerve. It was so straight-ahead. We thought, 'We've gotta put that in the bin, it's too straight.' We couldn't possibly do anything that straight until we'd gone and been completely arse about face with everything else, in order to feel good about doing something straight like that. It took 373 days to be arse-about-face enough to realise it was alright the way it was." Yorke said the song was about "cannibalism".
• "Morning Bell/Amnesiac" is another version of a song that appeared as track 9 on the band's previous album Kid A. This version actually predates the other one, according to the band.^{[citation needed]} This time the instrumentation is acoustic, centred on organ. The added title "/Amnesiac" may not just be a reference to the album on which the song is found. Yorke said this version had been written, recorded on minidisc, and lost in a lightning storm. He tried and failed to reconstitute the song (perhaps yielding the Kid A version) but a year later, he suddenly remembered it.^{[citation needed]}
• "Dollars & Cents" references the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, a turning point for the anti-globalisation movement, with lines like "it's all over the streets tonight". The lyrics of "Dollars & Cents", however, rank among the most impenetrable on an album which included no printed lyrics in its liner notes. Many words are obscured in the studio recording, and Thom Yorke usually blurs and changes them live. Musically, the song took heavy inspiration from jazz composer Alice Coltrane. The basic track was recorded at an endless jam session in the otherwise fruitless Copenhagen sessions of early 1999 (see Kid A). Colin Greenwood, whose bass riff anchors the song, was experimenting with a sampler months later and began playing Alice Coltrane string parts over the Radiohead rhythm track,^{[citation needed]} giving his brother Jonny the basis for writing an original string arrangement that was recorded with the Orchestra of St. Johns.
• "Hunting Bears" is a brief instrumental (and one of only two such tracks to appear on the band's full length albums, along with Kid A's "Treefingers"). The song has been seen as reminiscent of "ambient" material such as mid-'70s work by Brian Eno.^{[citation needed]} The title may reference the "modified bears" found throughout the Kid A-era artwork and blips (the band's "logo" had however changed by the time of Amnesiac to a crying minotaur). The phrase "we're going hunting for bears / la la la we're not scared" also appeared in a story written by artistic collaborator Stanley Donwood and found on the band's website prior to the album, referencing an incident of racial hate crimes.^{[citation needed]} The band played the song live several times on solo guitar, as an outro for "The National Anthem". The earliest track list of Amnesiac sent to the press did not contain this song, but had "Cuttooth",^{[citation needed]} which was ultimately left off the album to become a B-side on the "Knives Out" single.
• "Like Spinning Plates" was apparently created by playing the backing track from "I Will" backwards. ("I Will" was one of the songs the band worked on during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions, but it did not see recording and release until 2003's Hail to the Thief.) Yorke then wrote a new, electronic song, "Like Spinning Plates", around the reversed melody. He then reversed the recording again so that his vocals also were backwards. Yorke learned the backwards vocals, sang and recorded them over the backing track, and reversed the track once more. Finally, Yorke sang the song forward again for the final take, mimicking the distorted sound of his manipulated vocals in the verses. Another explanation is that the track may have been influenced by Can's song "Oh Yeah", from their 1971 album Tago Mago, which had similar reversal effects.^{[citation needed]} The band frequently mentioned Can and other Krautrock acts as influences on their music. The subsequent live version of "Like Spinning Plates", also found on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, reimagines it as a stark piano ballad.
• "Life in a Glasshouse" is another track on this "electronic" album with entirely acoustic instrumentation, apart from an opening sound effect. For this track, however, the regular band was not present, apart from Thom Yorke, who was joined instead by British trad jazz veteran Humphrey Lyttelton and his band, composed of trumpet, clarinet, trombone, drums and perhaps other instruments.^{[citation needed]} The old version of "Life in a Glasshouse" was an acoustic guitar demo by Yorke, heard in a 1998 sound check in the film Meeting People is Easy. As with Kid A's "Motion Picture Soundtrack", the song was reimagined with new instrumentation; the band got in touch with Lyttelton, who agreed to perform on the track after hearing one of his grandchildren's copies of Radiohead's OK Computer. It is thought that unlike the rest of the material on Amnesiac, this song was not completed during the Kid A sessions but was recorded late in 2000 after the release of Kid A.^{[citation needed]} The song has been performed only once live, with Lyttelton's band on Live... with Jools Holland.

[edit] B-sides

As the first Radiohead album with commercial singles released since 1997's OK Computer, the band's Amnesiac era also yielded many new B-sides to the singles. These were largely composed of tracks recorded during the Kid A/Amnesiac sessions which did not make the cut for either album. Several of them, such as "Cuttooth" and "Kinetic", are referenced frequently in guitarist Ed O'Brien's studio diary of the sessions. "Cuttooth" was apparently an important song during these recording sessions, to which Radiohead devoted much time, only being left off Amnesiac at the final stages.

The following B-sides were released on Amnesiac singles. See song articles for more information:

[edit] "Pyramid Song" singles

• The Amazing Sounds of Orgy
• Trans-atlantic Drawl
• Fast-track
• Kinetic

[edit] "Knives Out" singles

• Cuttooth
• Worrywort
• Fog
• Life in a Glasshouse (full version)

[edit] Release

The album was released in various countries in June 2001.

Country	Date	Label	Format	Catalog
United Kingdom	June 4, 2001	Parlophone	CD	CDFHEIT45101
United States	June 5, 2001	Capitol	CD	CDP 7243 5 32764 2 3
United States	June 5, 2001	Capitol	CD	CDP 7243 5 32767 2 0 (special edition)

[edit] External links

• Feature and Interview on Amnesiac: Simon Reynolds, "Walking on Thin Ice", The Wire, July 2001 (archived at Follow Me Around)
• Feature and Interview by Nick Kent on Amnesiac: "Happy Now?", Mojo, June 2001 (archived at Follow Me Around)

v • d • e Radiohead
Thom Yorke • Jonny Greenwood • Ed O'Brien • Colin Greenwood • Phil Selway
Discography
Albums: Pablo Honey • The Bends • OK Computer • Kid A • Amnesiac • Hail to the Thief • TBA
EPs: Manic Hedgehog • Drill • Itch • My Iron Lung • No Surprises/Running from Demons • Airbag/How Am I Driving? • I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings • COM LAG
Singles: "Creep" • "Anyone Can Play Guitar" • "Pop Is Dead" • "Stop Whispering" • "My Iron Lung" • "High and Dry"/"Planet Telex" • "Fake Plastic Trees" • "Just" • "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" • "Lucky" • "Paranoid Android" • "Karma Police" • "No Surprises" • "Pyramid Song" • "Knives Out" • "There There" • "Go to Sleep" • "2 + 2 = 5"
DVDs: Live at the Astoria • 7 Television Commercials • Meeting People Is Easy • The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time
Related articles
Nigel Godrich • Stanley Donwood • Dead Air Space • Covers of Radiohead songs • Rare songs • Trivia
Other projects
Bodysong • The Eraser • Spitting Feathers
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