If
you listen to the two one after another, the absurdity of this notion becomes
almost excruciatingly clear, though you’ll have a hard time convincing the
critics. Here’s why: Amnesiac is a better album. Noticing this, people
want to attribute warmth to Amnesiac: humanism retains a chokehold on the
critical imagination, and people would like to hold on to the idea that if you
have two things and one’s demonstrably human and the other isn’t, then
the former must be the better of the two. That this is the presumption of practically
every critic on the planet is a point that has not been lost on Radiohead. Amnesiac’s
ventures into strictly-electronic territory make the Radiohead of Kid A
look like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Whole songs on Amnesiac, “Pull/Pulk
Revolving Doors” among them, owe their entire existence to technology that’s
only been available for a year or two. Its bleakest lyrics venture into territory
that would scorch the earth on which Kid A walks, with the possible exception
of “Morning Bell,” a song which appears on both Amnesiac and
Kid A. Kid A is practically a rock album next to Amnesiac, but since
Amnesiac’s songs are better than those of its predecessor, critics
call it “more human.” This is comparable to the President of the United
States granting honorary citizenship to any person toward whom he feels personal
affinity: it’s intellectually dishonest.