Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [114]
A Large Rock Saved My Life
It’s pretty simple to resolve one issue we can see between Camus and Radiohead—they are each responding to the absurdity of the world in their own, different ways. But isn’t Radiohead’s response, on its own terms, still puzzling and contradictory? How can Radiohead want to escape from technology when they’ve chosen to be a part of it all the while? It’s not as though they changed their mind, after all. The lyrical search for escape from technology and the musical embrace of it happen simultaneously—and they are presented to us together. So, we need to ask ourselves if this contradiction matters. At the end of the day, does it make sense for Radiohead to simultaneously want escape and immersion in the technological world?
Of course it does, and for at least two different reasons. One, if you really come to terms with the kind of world that both Camus and Radiohead see—not an irrational world as much as an a-rational world (the “gentle indifference of the world,” as Camus’s Mersault put it) then there really isn’t a sensible response to alienation in the first place. We may seek a reason, a strategy, and underlying logic, but they remain ours. The world does not participate in our logic, our categories, ideas and arguments. It’s neither against us nor for us.
On the other hand, Radiohead might be responding to the alienating world in much the way Camus did (though Camus probably wouldn’t admit that this was what he was doing). Sure, it might seem contradictory for Radiohead to yearn for escape from the alienating world while choosing to be musically immersed in it, but there’s nothing paradoxical about working within the technology (or instances of it) that alienates us from the world in an effort to overcome that very alienation. Camus wrote novels about an alienating world and overcame alienation by connecting with his readers. So, too, Radiohead use their music, their instruments and computers and synthesizers, to connect with their fellow band members and, by extension, us.
If Sisyphus’s rock is our modern technology, Radiohead have shown us one way to respond—to carve it up, to make new and marvelous sounds with it. After them, there’s no way that rolling it up the hill over and over will be as boring, or as alienating, as it was for Sisyphus.
Radiohead and the Postmodern. (Not Here. Isn’t Happening.)
20.
“Kid A” as a Musing on the Postmodern Condition
BRADLEY KAYE
It’s difficult to classify Kid A. Musically, it has everything from the hard rock anthems and free jazz of “National Anthem” to the poppy dance-techno on “Idioteque.” There’s even the sappy film-score melodrama of “Motion Picture Soundtrack.” The album is a motley painting of many types of music, mixed and bended in playful and satirical ways, that cannot be boxed into any neat compartment.
However, despite all of the musical challenges it presented to its audience, the album won a Grammy in 2001 for Best Alternative Album of the Year. Traditionally, the “alternative” label has been used to categorize music that exists outside of the more established genres such as rock, pop, country, or jazz. Ever since the rise of grunge, this category has helped the music industry make sense of albums that defy standard musical clichés. So there’s a certain irony in trying to label such a kaleidoscopic artistic creation like Kid A as “alternative” when its very existence, it seems, is an attempt to transcend all contemporaneous labels and move beyond the status quo. In essence, Kid A is Radiohead’s answer to the astronomical worldwide success of OK Computer. It’s an attempt to play,