Radiohead Announce 'Kid A/Amnesiac' Reissue | ROCK SQUAD - Episode 24

Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac are getting a 20th-anniversary reissue called Kid Amnesiac, and the announcement sent the two hosts of Rock Squad—Nick and Dave—spiraling into a familiar kind of grief: the slow drift away from a band they once loved. The set includes the original two albums plus a third disc of unreleased session material called Kid Amnesiac, featuring the long-unheard “Follow Me Around” and a brand-new song, “If You Say the Word.” But the reissue isn’t the real story. The real story is what happened to Radiohead after these records, and what it feels like to be left behind by a band that used to define you.

The left turn that became a dead end

Nick remembers buying Kid A and Amnesiac on CD at Lime Ridge Mall in Hamilton during grade 11. He was immediately into the electronic pivot—songs like “Everything in Its Right Place,” “How to Disappear Completely,” and “Idioteque” felt like a revelation. At the time, it was a controversial move. Radiohead were coming off OK Computer, a masterpiece of anxious rock, and Kid A was a deliberate, alien departure. But Nick loved it. The problem, he says, is that Radiohead never made another departure after that. “They were so known for being this band that was very experimental and always evolving,” he says. “But once they hit that mode of being that more electronic driven band, that's really the mode they