Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac / Hail to the Thief Collector's Editions Review

Posted by Marshall Slayton on 09.28.2009

Radiohead returns with another round of reissues, this time with more experimental and controversial material. Are they worth a second look?



Kid A - Disc One
1. Everything In Its Right Place
2. Kid A
3. The National Anthem
4. How To Disappear Completely
5. Treefingers
6. Optimistic
7. In Limbo
8. Idioteque
9. Morning Bell
10. Motion Picture Soundtrack

Kid A - Disc Two
1. Everything In It's Right Place (BBC Radio One Evening Session - 11/15/00)
2. How To Disappear Completely (BBC Radio One Evening Session - 11/15/00)
3. Idioteque (BBC Radio One Evening Session - 11/15/00)
4. The National Anthem (BBC Radio One Evening Session - 11/15/00)
5. Optimistic (Live) (Lamacq Live In Concert: Victoria Park, Warrington, England - 02/10/00)
6. Morning Bell (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
7. The National Anthem (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
8. How To Disappear Completely (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
9. In Limbo (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
10. Idioteque (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
11. Everything In Its Right Place (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
12. Motion Picture Soundtrack (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
13. True Love Waits (Live) (I Might Be Wrong - Live Recordings)



Amnesiac – Disc One
1. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box
2. Pyramid Song
3. Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors
4. You And Whose Army?
5. I Might Be Wrong
6. Knives Out
7. Morning Bell/Amnesiac
8. Dollars And Cents
9. Hunting Bears
10. Like Spinning Plates
11. Life In A Glasshouse

Amnesiac – Disc Two
1. The Amazing Sounds Of Orgy
2. Trans-atlantic Drawl
3. Fast-track
4. Kinetic
5. Worrywort
6. Fog
7. Cuttooth
8. Life In A Glasshouse (Full Length Version)
9. You And Whose Army? (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
10. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
11. Dollars And Cents (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
12. I Might Be Wrong (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
13. Knives Out (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
14. Pyramid Song (Canal+ Studios - 4/28/01)
15. Like Spinning Plates (Live) (I Might Be Wrong - Live Recordings)



Hail to the Thief – Disc One
1. 2 + 2 = 5
2. Sit Down. Stand Up.
3. Sail To The Moon
4. Backdrifts
5. Go To Sleep
6. Where I End And You Begin
7. We Suck Young Blood
8. The Gloaming
9. There There
10. I Will
11. A punchup At A Wedding
12. Myxomatosis
13. Scatterbrain
14. A Wolf At The Door

Hail to the Thief – Disc Two
1. Paperbag Writer
2. Where Bluebirds Fly
3. I Am Citizen Insane
4. Fog (Again) - Live
5. Gagging Order
6. I Am A Wicked Child
7. Remyxomatosis (Cristian Vogel RMX) (2+2=5)
8. There There (First Demo) (2+2=5)
9. Skttrbrain (Four Tet RMX) (2+2=5)
10. I Will (Los Angeles Version) (2+2=5)
11. Sail To The Moon (Jo Whiley Show - 5/28/03)
12. 2+2=5 (Live At Earls Court, London, 11/26/03) (Com Lag)
13. Go To Sleep (Zane Lowe - 12/8/03)

Radiohead is back with the second batch of special collector’s editions for Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail To the Thief, thanks to Capitol Records and their immense love of double-dipping. It all seems redundant at this point, considering each of these albums already had their own special editions -- all of them with cool, unique packaging. Radiohead fans should have no problem recalling these products:





I have all of these editions, and they’ve been a part of my collection for years. With these new reissues being unleashed, more space will have to be made in order to accompany the ever-expanding Radiohead discography, including the new reissues of Pablo Honey, The Bends, and OK Computer. These albums make the perfect trilogy – and their progression made sense.

With Pablo Honey, the world was introduced to a group of musicians who had love for sorrow, intelligence, and crunchy guitar riffs… all wrapped in one. The Bends expanded that sound even further with improved songwriting, and OK Computer miraculously managed to top that with chaotic experimentation and well-deserved commercial success.

So when lightning strikes the same place three times, how do you follow that up?

The answer: 2000’s Kid A, an album which established new direction for Radiohead. Gone were the acoustic guitars, the prevalent riffs, and the obvious radio-friendly singles. (Kid A never had a single released from it.) The electronic aspects were heavier, the sounds of violins were dominant, and most of the songs had more Pro-Tools layers than a home-cooked lasagna. The calmer side of Radiohead was well-deserved at this point in their discography; if OK Computer was the sound of the apocalypse, then Kid A would be the soundtrack to its quiet aftermath.

Amnesiac has been described as the unwanted lesbian stepsister of Kid A, and while it's the weakest album in Radiohead’s line of work, it’s by no means a bad record. It simply lacks the same cohesion as its predecessor. Kid A is calm and precise, while Amnesiac is a scatter plot of ideas that build on Radiohead’s experimental sound. It worried a lot of fans upon its release, since it found the group finally repeating themselves for the first time. That wasn’t coincidental; most of the songs were taken during the recording sessions of Kid A, so they were doomed to be similar. Still, it was not the follow-up to OK Computer that many fans were hoping for, and most erred on the side of disappointment.

Hail to the Thief turned out to be Radiohead’s final studio album with Capitol Records before going the indie route and turning in 2007’s incredible In Rainbows. The result was a hybrid of traditional and experimental Radiohead: the guitars returned, but the songs remained bold and weird, yet still grounded in reality by Thom Yorke’s melancholy voice. In the story of the Radiohead apocalypse, with Hail to the Thief, civilization slowly rebuilds itself after devastating chaos.

Like the first set of reissues, these albums offer a great assortment of B-Sides, live tracks, and some remixes. My favorite aspects of the first reissues were the live recordings, and the same applies here. Hearing tracks like “Idioteque” performed to an excited crowd is pure excellence, as the song is injected with disco steroids for sheer concert fun. Live songs dominate the reissue of Kid A, but the most worthwhile purchase could be the bizarre Amnesiac, which features seven B-Sides on the second disc – all of them as strange, if not stranger, than the album itself. Tracks like “Cuttooth” and “The Amazing Sounds of Orgy” prove worthwhile if you’re a fan of the experimental, off-the-wall Radiohead. Hail to the Thief has all three kinds of goodies, proving to be the most balanced and consistent of the special collector’s editions. (Even the remixes of “Myxomatosis” and “Scatterbraid” aren’t all that bad.)

Capitol Records has once again given us double-dips worth buying, but the mere fact that the bonus discs can’t be purchased separately is a big no-no in my book. So we’ll have to take these as such – an easy ploy to get you to spend your hard earned cash on the same product. The originals aren’t even re-mastered, so you really will have two copies lying around the house. (Assuming, of course, you purchased the originals.) On the other hand, we should be grateful to the label for gracing us with this assortment of awesome, rare Radiohead material—the discs are thorough and provide hours of enjoyable music-- even if the studio heads drive a tough bargain.

The 411: This trilogy of albums is a lot rockier than the Pablo Honey / The Bends / OK Computer collection, but it's absolutely worth hearing for diehard fans. The live material is worth the price of admission alone, so when you combine all these collector's editions, you can make the ultimate live setlist.These albums may not be the best of Radiohead, but in the world of music, subpar Radiohead is still head and shoulders above a whole lot of other conventional, ordinary music.

Final Score:  9.0   [  Amazing ]