PopMatters: The Art of Falling Apart: ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’—Separated at Birth
“Both albums are like brainwashing, insular symphonies to a painfully reactive public awareness. The music doesn’t drive outward but, instead, falls inward, bouncing along the various fractured feelings of its singer and his mates. While ‘The National Anthem’ may suggest that ‘everyone is so near/everyone has got the fear’, the reality is that Yorke feels like a misidentified Pied Piper, the ‘rats and kids follow me out of town’ tenets of the Kid A title track pleading his case to be set free. This could be the main reason why the reaction to its release was so incredibly strong. Newness and novelty can help, but there is more to it than a differing direction. Kid A sounds like the start of a surreal psychological dissertation. Amnesiac occasionally comes across as whining.”