Robots shouldn't feel this much. Robots shouldn't make someone else feel so warm and comfortable. The ironically gentle whir of a robot's engine shouldn't lull one to sleep over any particularly sleepless night. No! That whir should strike fear into the heart of any man who finds himself so unlucky as to have ended up in its path! A robot's job is to do a man's work for him, not inspire him to create! Goddamn this bastard robot, this contemptible hunk of machinery that has brought about such feelings, such desire to be constructive! Such desire to live!

So is it wrong or perplexing or maybe coincidental (or maybe all three?) that a record so unabashedly robotic is easily one of the most warm and alive records of recent memory? Is that strange? Is it a bit backwards or maybe even a bit ironic that Thom Yorke can croon like a man but clicks and hums like a freezer? Is this irony? At all? Even a little? Or is this only a small part of Radiohead's amazing ability to triumph over all things human? Does it even need other people, this band? Does it subsist solely on the functioning of its electronic innards and the inky blackness of motor oil? How does this exist? Who could have built this machine?

And Why?

I had never heard this. This was all new to me, brand new. And this was something I really didn't much care for when I got it. I still thought that The Bends was just about as good as music could get. Then later I thought that OK Computer was as good as music could get. So I ignored Kid A. Who the fuck wants to be friends with a robot? Robots are cold and fake and would never want to be your friend forever and ever. I'd hardly even listened to it. (Trans: Not at all.) It didn't tear apart the silences the same way those other two did. Instead, it fell into them. The sound didn't explode…it just was. That was not acceptable. I was not impressed. I did not like this album.