KNIVES OUT
Right.
Some of you readers may have noticed that Radiohead have got a new record coming out. Goodness knows how, there’s barely been a mention of it on the web or in the music press after all. Oh, wait, excuse me while I utter a weak consumptive laugh and spit bloody bile into a handkerchief. Judging by the ever-growing shitstorm of expectations and expectorations around Kid Arse, you’d have thought a second moon had been seen in the sky and Thom Yorke, pinch-faced poster boy for self-pitying prigs the world over, had been the first man to walk on it.
And for what? The oldest trick in the pop star’s book – make that the oldest trick in the history of human fucking culture. You have a hit. You have another one. You then make something difficult in the sure and perfect knowledge that people will buy it anyway, and you look incredibly brave, all the way to the bank. And it works, every bastard time. Yorke, that weeping sore on the face of pop, has taken things a step further, showing a cynicism so monstrous I might find it admirable if he wasn’t such a mealy-mouthed puswit. He’s already dropped strong hints that Kid Atrocious will be swiftly followed up by an album of ‘proper’ songs, administering another fleecing to the fanbase while keeping the little lambs loyal. He has his artistic cake, the fans eat shit.
Believe me, I’m as horrified as Thom’s accountant that I’ve been able to hear Kid Abcess early: three weeks more of my life without this preposterous mewl of a record would have been three sweet, sweet weeks. That said, the Napster thing has certain advantages – the ?14.99 a Radiohead fan might save on Kid Abysmal could possibly go on shampoo, clearasil, Prozac, or maybe just trepannation.
And maybe for some fans this most useless of records will help break Thom’s clammy grip on their tastes. Already some are making disappointed noises – Kid Abominable is the equivalent, they might say, of Shakespeare following up Hamlet with a new play whose characters are a tree and a dead fish, written using only the letter ‘g’. (“10.0! A masterfull piece of stage-crafte!” – Sir Brent Of Crescenzo, Pitche Forke).
These footling sycophants miss the point that OK Cash Register, while a thousand times better than the eternal parade of bum that is Kid Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh, was in itself a dreadful monument to Millennial navel-gazing. Buying it was the cultural equivalent of shagging someone disasterous at a pre-2K doomsday party, and the world needed a new Radiohead record as much as you needed a dose of the crabs come January 1. Kid Actionable‘s title apparently refers to the ‘first human clone’, implying that the lights on the band are really quite blinding when they’re up on stage. The actual content of the record has zero to the power of fuck-all to do with this rotten concept, which is probably the only positive thing you can say about Kid Agony.
So what’s it sound like, Tanya? Like my ears being scraped out by vinegar-tipped apple corers, dear reader. No, it sounds like a crap IDM record, obviously. A really, really, crap one, with electronic tones in every shade of grey and Thom Yorke, Crown Prince Twat of the Royal House of Twat, moaning over the top of it. “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon” he begins. And today you wake up selling a lemon: congratulations. And, oh of course the band try their hand at free jazz (still the surest sign of wankerdom ever devised – when oh when will bands learn that free jazz is called so because no fucker would buy it). Kid Anus is possibly the flattest, drabbest, most shoulder-shrugging pathetic LP I’ve ever had the opportunity to hear. It’s the sound of an unpleasant man wiping his arse on your money and goodwill. He wants you not to buy it, for Christ’s sake! The least you could do is oblige him.