Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely
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Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253222725 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/08/2010 |
| Series: | Profiles in Popular Music |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album
How to Disappear Completely
By Marianne Tatom Letts
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2010 Marianne Tatom LettsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-35570-6
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Popular music of recent decades has emphasized the individual's isolation in modern society. Bands that address the anxieties provoked by contemporary culture are the darlings of critics, and music about alienation has, ironically, proven to have a strong market worldwide. The hero-worship that successful artists experience can spill over into their self-perception, creating most commonly either an overblown sense of their own importance or an ambivalent attitude toward their success. Some artists (such as Sting, Bono, and Peter Gabriel) embrace the opportunity to use their music as a platform to address such global issues as deforestation or third-world debt. Others (most drastically Kurt Cobain, but also the Manic Street Preachers' Richey Edwards, Alice in Chains' Layne Staley, and more recently Amy Winehouse) collapse under the pressure, unable to come to terms with the audience's refusal to believe that, as the Moody Blues said, "I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band."
Radiohead has been perceived by audiences, critics, and scholars alike as one of the most important bands in popular music today. Though the band's seven studio albums to date have dealt extensively with aspects of alienation in a society of mass consumption, the band has also reaped the benefits of enormous success within this culture. The band repeatedly articulates an anxiety about being consumed, both literally and figuratively, yet it continues to produce goods for mass consumption. While decrying the effects of modern technology, Radiohead takes full advantage of its promotional abilities, reaching listeners through not only conventional CDs, but also internet downloads, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, chatbots, and an archive of continually updated and redesigned websites. In 2007 the band shook up the music industry by releasing the album In Rainbows initially as a download for which fans could specify the amount they wanted to pay, starting at nothing at all. Radiohead did eventually release the album as an actual CD as well, thus having it both ways and possibly earning even more money along with all the publicity. Although the releases of Kid A and Amnesiac in 2000 and 2001, respectively, were not such drastic leaps in a financial sense, at the time they represented a bold lashing out against commercialism and the record industry. The goal of this book is twofold: to examine in detail Radiohead's "experimental" concept albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, and to investigate the band's ambivalence and resistance toward its own success, as manifested in the vanishing subject on these two albums.
In order to comprehend Radiohead's position within and attitude toward capitalism, it is helpful to understand how contemporary theorists think about the formation of subjectivity (that is, individual consciousness and identity) in the modern capitalist system. Critical theory compares the "values" of modern society (freedom of the individual and equality for all) to the practices that often result from that system (social inequality and the subjugation of the individual by the government and/or economic forces). This critique can be expanded to include the wasting of resources that could be used to improve the environment and life in it, e.g., using technology to destroy nature rather than to conserve it. Critical theorists simultaneously comment on the modern condition of alienation and seek to combat it by working toward a more democratic and socially egalitarian society. The industrialized Western civilization is based on technological advances that purport to make life easier for humankind. Yet this system at its worst turns modern life instead into a machine dominated by governmental and economic forces, which reduces individual humans to mere drones. Capitalism, ostensibly a system of buying and selling goods, has the capacity to destroy political consciousness, turning everything into a commodity and giving every person in society a price. When everything and everyone can be bought and sold, then any motivation or tendency toward political activism is suppressed. The domination of nature (and thus of humankind) is a central aspect of Western civilization, which works toward bringing all of nature under the control of the human subject — who in the process is himself swallowed up by forces beyond his control. Theodor Adorno states:
For since the overwhelming objectivity of historical movement in its present phase consists so far only in the dissolution of the subject, without yet giving rise to a new one, individual experience necessarily bases itself on the old subject, now historically condemned, which is still for-itself, but no longer in-itself. The subject still feels sure of its autonomy, but the nullity demonstrated to subjects by the concentration camp is already overtaking the form of subjectivity itself.
In other words, the subject — that is, the human being — may still feel autonomous, but his thoughts and actions are in reality nullified by the societal forces that work to repress him. He may think he is acting of his own accord, but he is actually functioning under the influence of the conditions in which he lives. His actions and his very opinions are shaped and even dictated by market forces. He is told what and how to consume.
Adorno further states that popular culture makes people lazy because of the easy access to pleasure through the commodity; that is, anything that can be bought or sold. In the capitalist system, anything can be assigned a market value and owned by virtue of paying for it, be it food, clothing, shelter, or a pop star — thus, all of these things take on the form of the commodity. In contrast to real needs such as freedom and happiness, which are more difficult to satisfy on a mass level, culture creates false needs that can be more easily satisfied through capitalism. When people can buy pleasure on the cheap, they are able to ignore the appalling conditions in which they live and work. If they can relax with a TV dinner and a cold beer in front of a reality show after a long day of pushing paper or flipping burgers, then the needs created by mass culture have been satisfied with the consumer goods of mass culture, a cycle that effectively distracts citizens from any need to think about the higher aims of freedom or creativity. Frederic Jameson writes: "What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to aeroplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation." Savvy producers continually reinvent their products so that the urge to consume is perpetually renewed. Scarcely has the latest winner of American Idol been crowned than the audience is being primed to watch the next season — with even more appalling first-round auditions, even more scathing criticism by the judges, and even more praise heaped on the heads of the newest talent. As long as the audience receives ever-new talent (and can buy the iTunes release the day after an episode), they stay satisfied.
The success of bands that express alienation from and frustration with modern culture is ironic within this culture of commodification. With enough marketing skill, people can be convinced to buy the music of bands that articulate a resistance against commercialism yet still reap the monetary rewards of the capitalist system. Audiences are urged to conform by buying nonconformist music, T-shirts, and the like. By pushing products that purport to resist the mainstream, artists (and the companies behind them) create an insider culture of resistance that is actually united through its conformity to capitalism. Radiohead is not the only band that exists in this dichotomy between complaining about capitalism and benefiting from it, but their albums Kid A and Amnesiac present an interesting case study within the culture of anxiety created by life in the twenty-first century.
ANYONE CAN PLAY GUITAR: A BRIEF HISTORY OF RADIOHEAD
Radiohead was formed by brothers Jonny and Colin Greenwood with their friends Thom Yorke, Phil Selway, and Ed O'Brien at the exclusive Abingdon School in Oxford, England. Various members had played together in other bands, but the present lineup had solidified by 1986. The five musicians were encouraged at Abingdon to learn to play instruments; they even practiced for a time at the school, though their sound was not particularly appreciated by the conservative faculty and students. Even after members of the band graduated and went off to college, the group still practiced together on weekends and played occasional gigs. Remarkably, even with the coming and going of members, the band managed to maintain its creative energy. Guitarist Ed O'Brien stated in 1997 that "there was never any question that we weren't going to do it. ... Looking back on it, what was amazing was the commitment. Ten years ago, we talked about it. We knew we wanted to do this."
The members of Radiohead have varying amounts of formal musical training. As a classically trained violist, guitarist Jonny Greenwood has the most, having played in the Thames Valley Youth Orchestra and later holding a composer-in-residence appointment at BBC Radio 3 and scoring the soundtrack to the films Bodysong (2003) and There Will Be Blood (2007). The band's English public school background led some in the music press to take the attitude that Radiohead had not "paid their dues," and that their lack of professional experience before being signed by a major label meant they were somehow not qualified to produce music at that level. Dai Griffiths has noted that the band members' experience at public school might have influenced their "profound sense of being cut off from the rest of ordinary society," which they have expressed in their music throughout their career. Griffith states, however, that "the particular discourse of class is not available [to Radiohead] since of course in educational terms the band members were pretty solid beneficiaries of the capitalist system." William Stone likewise observes:
Some see the struggle of bands to avoid losing their honesty, their integrity, their souls in the heart of the corporate machine as being one of the great spectator sports of the late Twentieth Century. ... Radiohead had to make a decision. Would they release their records on Parlophone straight and risk accusations of being nothing more than capitalist whores ...? Or would they release through some new label set up by the major to fake indie credibility? To their eternal credit they said it like it was — major they were, major they would be.
This early effort toward major-label success would later turn to ambivalence toward the mainstream record industry as the band members found that they needed to subvert popular and audience expectations to remain true to their musical goals.
Radiohead exhibited fairly steady stylistic growth from their first album, Pablo Honey (1993), through The Bends (1995) and OK Computer (1997), adding increasingly complex layers of production effects to an essentially guitar-driven sound. Pablo Honey's success was due in large part to the single "Creep," which reached number 4 on the Billboard charts for Modern Rock Tracks of 1993, and ranked number 1 or 2 in various Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, and New Musical Express (NME) polls for that year. (When "Creep" was initially released in the U.K., it reached only number 78 on the charts, but its rerelease after success in the U.S. charted at number 7. The single "Anyone Can Play Guitar" from the same album peaked at number 32 on the U.K. charts.) Touring in support of one single wore the band members down. Jonny Greenwood stated in Q magazine that "We joined this band to write songs and be musicians, but we spent a year being jukeboxes instead. We felt in a creative stasis because we couldn't release anything new." After the tepid reception of the album's other singles (the third being "Stop Whispering"), some in the industry predicted that Radiohead would be simply a one-hit wonder, but instead the band's popularity increased immensely over the period that saw the reception of The Bends and OK Computer.
During the recording sessions for The Bends, the band felt enormous pressure to try to duplicate the success of "Creep." Jonny Greenwood stated: "We were playing like paranoid little mice in cages. We were scared of our instruments, scared of every note not being right." According to bassist Colin Greenwood, the band tried to record the album's prospective singles first, but he thought in retrospect that they "might have done better to have completed the LP and chosen the singles to be taken from it later." The experience of trying to predict which songs would sell most successfully would influence the band's later attitude toward the music industry that resulted in the single-less Kid A. Radiohead had been called a "band to watch out for" by Melody Maker and NME in 1993, and two years later The Bends marked what Martin Clarke called "the start of a remarkable growth in commercial success and critical applause that transformed Radiohead from a band that was highly revered into one that was being talked of as a historically classic group." This sentiment was echoed throughout the music press. NME stated that "Radiohead's new stuff appears to be all but classic," and "The Bends will be one of, and quite possibly the, indie rock album of the year [1995]." Melody Maker described the album as a "powerful, bruised and desperate record of frightening intensity ... almost unbearably, brilliantly, physically tortured by the facts of being human." The Bends has also been described as "the depressives' soundtrack to the nineties," a characterization that singer Thom Yorke has countered with statements such as "I did not write this album for people to slash their fucking wrists to" and "The Bends isn't my confessional." The "culture of despair" prevalent in the years surrounding The Bends' release, which had given rise to the popularity of grunge bands like Nirvana and culminated in Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, might well have contributed to the album's popularity. Stone states: "[T]here was an entire generation of people with no heroes, no prospects, no faith in government or religion. Deafened and poisoned by corporate lies and pollution, they watched helplessly as the world was systematically deprived of any means of natural regeneration. ... They had no real reason to stay alive."
Despite the depressed cultural environment that may have helped boost Radiohead's sales, the press heaped accolades on the band. After the release of the single "Lucky" for the compilation album Help! (later included on OK Computer), which raised money for the charity War Child to benefit victims of war in the former Yugoslavia, Melody Maker wrote that "Radiohead are no longer capable of anything other than brilliance." Stone states that "the beginning of 1996 saw Radiohead take their place at the very top of British Music." The band's next album, OK Computer, was recognized as Album of the Year (1997) by Q magazine and NME, and the band garnered Band of the Year accolades from Rolling Stone and Spin, as well as receiving a Grammy for the Best Alternative Music Performance for the album. (Radiohead would also later win the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album for Kid A in 2001 and In Rainbows in 2009, and would be nominated in the same category for Amnesiac in 2002 and Hail to the Thief in 2004.) In addition to receiving critical acclaim, OK Computer drew comparisons with the art/prog rock albums of the 1970s, a sign that in addition to having widespread appeal the band was being perceived as more serious or intellectual than the typical pop-rock group. This marked its difference from such bands as Nirvana and Oasis, which consciously aligned themselves with the working class. Radiohead's English public school background and classical musical training also undoubtedly furthered the comparison to progressive rock, as did the fact that all the members of the band had attended university, and four of the five had graduated. (Jonny Greenwood dropped out of college after only a few weeks, by which time Radiohead was being courted by Capitol/EMI.) Griffiths notes certain of the album's musical elements as being typical of "public schoolboy music" — rhythmic complexity, sustained ostinato, quasi-modal harmony, common-note progressions (pivot tones, or moving from one key to another by way of a pitch that both keys have in common), electronic music as background, and pitch/tonal continuity — and compares the band to Genesis, an earlier group of "public schoolboys" known for taking themselves more seriously than the average pop band.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album by Marianne Tatom Letts. Copyright © 2010 Marianne Tatom Letts. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Musical Examples xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Back to Save the Universe: The Reception of OK Computer and Kid A 28
3 Everything in Its Right Place: Musical Elements in Kid A 45
4 Cut the Kids in Half: The Second Death of Kid A 81
5 After Years of Waiting, Nothing Came: Amnesiac as Antidote 114
6 I Might Be Wrong: Amnesiac and Beyond 144
7 We Are the Dollars and Cents: Radiohead as Commodity 177
Notes 299
Bibliography 215
Select Discography 223
Index 225
What People are Saying About This
"An objective yet provocative look at a challenging period in the work of one of rock's most adventurous bands."
An objective yet provocative look at a challenging period in the work of one of rock's most adventurous bands.
An objective yet provocative look at a challenging period in the work of one of rock's most adventurous bands.