Radiohead fans who were disappointed with Kid A (most of them, presumably) were told not to worry - another album, recorded at the same time would contain the more listener-friendly material to emerge from those torturous sessions. Now that it's actually here we can see what a misleading rumour that was since Amnesiac contains much the same mixture of electronic bleeps and ambient scrawls, with few guitars and even fewer melodies. That said, there are moments of brilliance here, most notably the elegiac Pyramid Song and the horn-driven Life In A Glasshouse. For these reasons alone, Amnesiac deserves to be seen as a much better album than its predecessor. But even so, the glory days of The Bends seem an awfully long way away.

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