Recorded at the same time as the far-superior Kid A, Amnesiac follows directly in the footsteps of the previous album's (pseudo-)experimentalist ambient noise, robotic cacophony, and distorted, repetitive vocals. Not surprisingly, both albums sound very similar at times; however, whereas Kid A's songs complement each other, forming what turns out in the end to be a coherent whole, Amnesiac comes out as more uneven, fragmented and directionless than its predecessor. Consequently, as it lacks the continuity and fluidity of an album, it sounds more like a collection of B-sides and studio outtakes.

On a positive note, Amnesiac contains a handful of truly decent material. The album starts strong, with the minimalist drumbeats and keyboards of "Packt like sardines in a crushd tin box". "Pyramid song" is the best song on the album, with some fine piano and vocals by Thom Yorke. Other highlights include the more mainstream "I Might be Wrong" and "Knives Out", which, much to this reviewer's surprise (!), feature guitars quite prominently in the mix.

The rest of the album, however, is mired in mediocrity, and is less consistent. "Pulk/pull revolving doors", with its stop/start rhythm and mangled vocals, is reminiscent of Kid A's title track; however, the experiment was more original and successful the first time around. "You and whose army", "Dollars & cents", and "Life in a glass house", while they are beautifully arranged songs, are crippled by some of Yorke's most whiny, annoying vocal efforts to date.

The remaining songs are throwaways. The alternate version of "Morning bell" is far weaker than the one that appears on Kid A, and should not have been included in this collection. "Like spinning plates" is merely an experiment in studio effects, and is more of a curiosity than an album track. "Hunting bears", however, is perhaps the most frustrating song on the entire album. It is a two-minute guitar/bass buildup to nothing that might have been developed into an epic, but is instead utterly disposable.

With Amnesiac, Radiohead has quite obviously made an album out of the leftovers from the Kid A sessions. There are still some good songs (after all, a bad Radiohead album is still a Radiohead album!), but on the whole this is less an album than a collection of cutting-room floor artifacts. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate if it had been called Kid B.

I'm a Reasonable Man
There seem to be various and sundry reviews about Amnesiac: those that claim it to be the most astounding example of Radiohead's brilliance, and those that were less impressed by the collage of texture it presents. So, I offer more noise to the already confused clamor by examining the points of contention.
Well, I don't really see Amnesiac as a sequel to Kid A, but the two albums are obviously linked (hence, the revisted 'Morning Bell' as title cut). Many of the songs, such as 'I Might Be Wrong' and 'Knives Out,' first appeared during the Kid A tour and were probably penned around that album's production. Apples from the same tree, you could say.
While Kid A was a cohesive whole where each song led into the other, Amnesiac is more a complilation as each song exists in independent musical space. The crunchy bass textures of 'Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors' provides a claustrophobic backdrop to the processed vocals, while the thick piano chords of 'Pyramid Song' are adrift on ambient synth swoops and orchestral strings. 'Life in a Glasshouse' takes a trip to the swing era with a horn section, while 'Like Spinning Plates' plays the background backward while Yorke sing the melody foward but makes it sound backward with phrasing (confused yet?). One thing is for sure: there's a lot going on in every track!
I think Radiohead was trying to expand their creative boundaries here (if they have any :) by trying different approaches and techniques. The focus seems to be on the production methods and sound textures, as if they wanted to see what they could come up with. As a result, some songs are great (like 'Knives Out,' one of their most straight-foward melodies highlighted by clear arpeggios) and others fall short (like 'Hunting Bears,' a guitar instrumental which is just kind of "there," although it's very similar to the melody of 'I Might Be Wrong,' so maybe I'm missing the point).
All that being said, Amnesiac is a good CD that any Radiohead fan or fan of avant rock will want to pick up, and most will find it a satisfying 45 minutes; however, if you're looking for the conceptual and thematic sweep of OK Computer or Kid A, I'm afraid you won't find it.

misunderstood
Pyramid Song is one of the most quietly beautiful songs EVER.
That being said, I find the rest of this album slightly harder to understand as a single unit than Kid A, which cannot be touched or repeated even though these songs were made at the same time. Maybe that's because this album really just doesn't fit together as well, although many of the songs have textures which Kid A made familiar. There are songs that stand out, like the last one, the reworking of Morning Bell, and Dollars & Cents (which really had to grow on me), and Pulk/Pull Revolving doors. I really like You and Whose Army because it kind of looks forward to we suck young blood, the way it crescendos. Spinning Plates is cool and trippy and Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box is very calm and well constructed; in short, all the electronic songs are well done. But the other rock tracks: I Might Be Wrong and Knives Out, are pretty good, but feel lacking somehow in placement or maybe they just aren't as great because they've kind of been done before, or maybe my instinct is wrong.
It's like Kid A was made for the middle of the night and Amnesiac was made for facing dawn, with bits of the past still lingering and affecting the present but everything having a different tint to it and being a little bit easier to do. Amnesiac is not Kid A part two, it's more like Kid A's brother. With each Radiohead album, it gets harder to categorize them in relation to their predecessors, so just listen to it and see what you think.

Hunting Bears
I would agree with some others that "Amnesiac" is not as good Kid A. It's slightly below the level of the other records Radiohead has releasted in the past half decade. However, even if it's a lessor effort, it is still a very good album. As a whole, the album isn't as strong or profound as their other works, but it does have a few individual sounds that are quite amazing.

Rathern than go into a long-winded review of the album, and analyze every aspect of the album, I'll leave that to the other reviews here.

However, I must take the opportunity to defend the track "Hunting Bears." Reading many of these reviews, most of them unfairly criticize this song, condemning it as mere "filler" and "a boring two-minute repetitive guitar bit." It's much more than that. Yes, it's just an instrumental, it's bascially two minute-long guitar bits played back to back--what's wrong with that? I find it altogether enigmatic, atmospheric, and tranquil. I also like how they throw in a soft whooshing sound in the background to support the guitar.

There is also a short instrumental on Kid A, "Treefingers." That song is also often unfairly dismissed. Both "Treefingers" and "Hunting Bears" are astounding, trance-inducing instrumentals that hit inner strings inside me that few other songs can.
More song-driven and acoustic than Kid A, Radiohead's Amnesiac isn't quite "Kid B," but it is unquestionably cut from the same far-out cloth, as the band revels in fascinating quirks and abject nihilism. It's also the first time in Radiohead's career that a new record hasn't meant a complete shift in artistic priorities. Surely, however, regardless of which was released first, they both deserve recognition; after all, Amnesiac, like Kid A, is an amazing piece of work.

Only lightly augmented with electronics, songs like "You and Whose Army?" and "I Might Be Wrong" almost sound like they came from a typical five-piece rock band. You may even believe the band still employs a guitarist after hearing Jonny Greenwood's wistful surf-guitar lead on "Knives Out" or his subtle but noticeable contributions to the anticapitalist rant "Dollars and Cents." But inevitably, the band continually shifts gears, moving into Boards of Canada territory on "Like Spinning Plates" and delivering dark, bass-laden oddities like "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," a fuzzed-out piece of avant-garde techno that could just as easily be on an Autechre or Aphex Twin record. The song's half-sung, half-spoken vocal was laid down by either a heavily distorted Thom Yorke or, just perhaps, a loquacious microwave oven. Either way, the music always has momentum, regardless of whether propelled by man or appliance. Radiohead as a band understand how to make rock interesting again, and in the end, that's all they set out to do when they recorded Amnesiac, as well as Kid A. It's more than can be said for the bad frat-punk, teen-pop and soulless techno that currently rules the charts, and for that alone, Radiohead's astonishing exploration of 21st-century anguish deserves credit. --Matthew Cooke