When an album’s shown itself to be an honest-to-God album and not just a collection of songs, one of the questions we end up asking is: where’s the center? Because we are of the Western mind, we figure there must be a center somewhere; all our theology depends on the notion that there is. We assume that there are parameters, and that the structure we’re examining will eventually prove to be symmetrical, and that at some point the narrative, explicit or hidden, will swell to a climax. This is a fair enough assumption, especially if you’re dealing with Englishmen. On Kid A, Radiohead tried hard to defer or deflect this kind of idea, but they didn’t succeed on that head; hands up, now, anybody who thinks that “Motion Picture Soundtrack” could possibly have been put anywhere else besides the closing slot of the album? I rest my case. |
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