RADIOHEAD’S ‘LOST’ SONGS REVEALED
It’s been 21 years since Radiohead stunned the world with their fourth studio album Kid A
– a deep-dive into the electronic unknown that saw Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’brien’s guitars taking more of a background role in their psychedelic lullabies. Its successor, Amnesiac, released the following year, was also recorded during the same 1999-2000 sessions, documenting yet more bold experimentations. And now, as both albums are reissued, there is a companion album, Kid Amnesiae, comprised of previously unreleased tracks from that period.
The first taste of these unheard rarities arrived in September, originally penned under the working title of C-minor Song before the group later settled on If You Say The Word. At the very heart of the track is an acoustic fingerpicked part which almost evaporates underneath the electric guitar motif, effected with the kind of warm glitch you would get by pairing a pitch-shifter with warbly modulation and dialling in more lower mid frequencies through your instrument or amp. Unsurprisingly, given its working title, the track is in the key of C minor and its opening melody plays off the minor third, perfect fifth and minor seventh intervals before sitting on the root. The inclusion of a minor sixth on its third cycle is what cements that sense of melancholy, pointing specifically to the C Aeolian scale, which would be the sixth mode of E flat major. These few choice notes are held and fade out for the verses, the electric guitars returning for the chorus and then disappearing for the Ondes Martenot-led bridge sections.
Overall, however, the six-strings feel more prominent than what we’d have expected from the band during this era of their career and perhaps more evocative of 2003’s Hail To The Thief or their most recent album, A Moon Shaped Pool. Produced by the band and Nigel Godrich, there’s plenty of space in the mix afforded to long reverb trails, most notably on Thom Yorke’s moody vocals, which is what gives it that sense of airy dreaminess and contemplation – key fundamentals of the Radiohead sound from these years through to the present day.