Am I saying Radiohead makes great art? It’s too early to tell. But I can tell you that you will probably not understand what they're doing with only one listen.  This isn't pop music, a postcard with a readily accessible meaning.  It's an exploration of something new.  It's something to study.

No rock band I’ve encountered are more committed to their particular vision than Radiohead. They’ve followed their muse fearlessly, exploring territory that hasn’t been explored before. Sure, you can find elements of electronic dance music, jazz, and Pink Floyd art-rock. But there’s something that I find hypnotic and completely original in their audacious attempts to discover new song structures, new sounds, and new ways to employ lyrics to meaningful effect. It’s abstract, where words are more like a color than a text.

I’ve been looking for ways to get at the substance that I sense in the turbulent new sounds. Radiohead’s Amnesiac, and its Siamese twin album Kid A, sent me back to high school. My high school English teacher offered some rewarding advice in how to do an archaeological dig in a text. As we studied some great novel, he went to the blackboard and asked us to list the names of characters, to list their conflicts, to list details about the environment of the story. Themes and central questions were included. Then we highlighted those issues that came up recurrently. When two elements were connected—a character and a theme, a place and a problem—he drew a line to connect them. When the book was especially good, the connections just kept revealing themselves. Those elements that had the most lines flowing out of and into them, those became clear as the work’s prime focus. Heart of Darkness’s major centers were words like fear, control, the corrupting influence of power. Etc. Soon the board was a web of crisscrossing lines. The work was before us, a great matrix of meaning, deeper and more complicated than we had ever guessed, and yet it wasn’t chaos…it seemed designed, intended.

Many longtime fans felt put off by the non-formulaic endeavors. What about rock and roll? Buzz quickly built after Kid A’s release, foretelling of the upcoming Amnesiac which would return us to more formulaic rock and roll, the stuff they had mastered on The Bends and OK Computer.

Well, you can forget about the rumors. For the first couple of minutes, Radiohead’s new album Amnesiac does return us to more comfortable territory. But at approximately 2:38 it becomes suddenly clear that these lyrics may as well be an ultimatum to those pining for predictability. Thom Yorke begins ranting a mantra: "I’m a reasonable man. Get off my case."

Jot down, Childhood. Dreams. Fantasies. Fear. Hiding. A longing for peace and reconciliation.  Or write down what comes to your mind.

"Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" is a list poem set to a static-fringed and thunderous rhythm. Yorke’s voice, garbled just enough so you can still understand him, works his way through various types of doors until he says, with a sort of fascination, "And there are trapdoors…that you can’t come back from." Immediately it sounds like he’s fallen through and is sliding down a metal chute to nothingness.

Write down Being lost. Traps.

"You and Whose Army?", perhaps the album’s most memorable track, is a quietly murmured diatribe against some goliath, perhaps corporate…referred to as ‘holy roman empire’. "Come on if you think you can take us on, you and your cronies," sings a soft, resonant voice that sounds like it’s inside of Yorke’s head, his own thoughts ringing in his ears. Perhaps the singer is just too afraid to sing these things out loud…but there’s such emotion in it. What begins as a feeble trickle of sadness builds to a pulse-pounding, power-chord finale. I’d never bet 100% that I’m hearing Yorke’s lyrics right, but it sounds like he’s chanting…"We rise, we rise…."

This is followed by I Could Be Wrong, a thrilling bass-and-drum loop that sounds like it accompanies a suspenseful prison break by night. (Well, that’s what it sounds like to me. What pictures does this music give you?) "Let’s go down a waterfall," he strains, reaching hard for something that sounds like fun. "Let’s think about the good times and never look back…" The shiny dreams for a better day again sound like wishful thinking; there’s no real joy in the anticipation. Fun becomes merely escapism from reality, not an organic part of living.

There are some definite threads becoming visible by now. Children are mentioned, or else the lyrics sound like they’re sung from a child’s perspective. Evil, oppressive authorites come up a lot. Slowly I’m getting the picture of a grown man who is still wrestling with the monsters from his childhood. Perhaps abusive parents or a hellish educational institution. Perhaps it’s the government. Most likely, it’s all three. Now he looks back, mining what feeble veins of happiness he can remember. Were they real?

Knives Out, a dreamy pop nightmare reminiscent of OK Computer’s "Paranoid Android", is the ugliest portrait of wicked and heartless authority you can imagine. It’s drawn as a fearsome predator, without conscience, dining on the small defenseless things…even eating the dead. "If you'd been a dog they would have drowned you at birth…" he croons, like some sadistic parent. And then: "He's bloated and frozen, there's no point in letting it go to waste, so knives out, catch the mouse, cook him up, squash his head, put him in the pot…." It’s the feel-good-song of the summer!!

An all-new version of Kid A’s "Morning Bell" might have been included merely because this version is much better, clearer, and more cleverly orchestrated than the last one. Yorke has said that the lyrics are about a ghost that haunted his house. If that’s true, then I’ll bet it’s the ghost of a divorcee. "Release me…you can keep the furniture…where’d you park the car?…cut the kids in half." That last line was muffled on Kid A, but here it’s chillingly clear. Once again, there’s the suggestion of children being involved. Are they overhearing these things? Are they hiding somewhere in the house?

Now add to the blackboard: Privacy (or lack of it.) As on Kid A, there are several elements that might remind you of 1984.   That horrific future where you’re always being watched...it’s happening. Yorke’s paranoia is at a peak here; he’s paralyzed by a fear of surveillance. "Life in a Glasshouse" is sung over a ragtime band that suggests a smoky bar where Woody Allen might be drowning his blues. It ends the album with a simple straightforward story about falling out of favor with a friend, and the added discomfort of experiencing this in the public eye. Which is worse, the lost relationship, or the wounds on display for the world? Somebody in the song claims to be "hungry for a lynching", ready to pounce at the singer’s first misstep. In closing, he sneers, "I’d love to sit around and chat…but someone’s listening in." He’s become a spectacle, alone, feeling indisposed to spill his guts for such an untrustworthy audience. This could be the autobiography of Thom Yorke, but to listen to him in interviews you get the impression these songs come from voices in his head. Which possibility is more disturbing?

My English teacher used to suggest asking "So what?" Anybody can vent their frustrations. Where does this work lead us, or does it lead us anywhere at all? Is it just an ego trip, or is there something illuminated by all this self-expression? Is the world a richer place, or a poorer place, because this work exists?

You may not find anything redeeming about dwelling on Thom Yorke’s Kafka-esque nightmares. I find them to be revealing, raising the cold hard details of our complicated science-fictions lives to mythic levels…reminding us that, no matter how impressed we are with ourselves, our actions, ambitions, and arrogance will leave our children with burdens to bear. Radiohead as a band just may be the prophet at the gates, tearing their clothes, spouting what sounds like nonsense to passers-by, but really pointing to imminent destruction.