Copyright by Marianne Tatom Letts 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Marianne Tatom Letts certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: “How to Disappear Completely”: Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album Committee: James Buhler, Supervisor David Neumeyer Andrew Dell’Antonio Byron Almén Fred Maus “How to Disappear Completely”: Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album by Marianne Tatom Letts, B.A., M.Mus. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December, 2005 Acknowledgements I would like to thank first and foremost my husband, Richard Letts, for his love and support (both emotional and technical) throughout this entire process. Thanks also to my mother, Ruth Tatom, and grandmother, Marian Tatom, for their conviction that I could succeed in whatever I tried. I could not have completed this project without the support and belief of my advisor, Jim Buhler, and the members of my committee, whose insightful critique improved my work immeasurably. Nick Sibicky was of great help in setting my musical examples. Thanks to those friends and colleagues who read this dissertation at various stages, and whose comments informed and enhanced the final product: Kevin Clifton, Walt Everett, Mark Spicer, Patrice Sarath, Rev. Bryan Sale, Steve Bonham, and of course Richard Letts. And thanks finally to those friends in addition to the above who kept me grounded and somewhat sane—Lakshmi Bollini, Johnny Language, Mark Pittman—and to the Austin contra-dance community, for dancing me to distraction. iv Preface The band Radiohead has dealt extensively with aspects of alienation in modern society over the course of its six albums. Despite consistently articulating an anxiety about capitalist culture, the band continues to produce its own commodity for mass consumption. In this dissertation I examine in detail Radiohead’s two “experimental” albums, Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), and investigate the ways in which the band’s ambivalence toward its own success manifests in the albums’ vanishing subject. In chapter one, I describe the origins of Radiohead as a popular music group from Oxford, England, and discuss the critical reception of their albums Pablo Honey (1993) and The Bends (1995). I then review the analytical attention paid to the concept album in popular music, including its relation to notions of narrative and its lack of definition in scholarly work. The first concept album to be widely recognized as such was the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper (1967). The musical form peaked in the progressive-rock era with bands such as Jethro Tull and Yes, though various artists (including Radiohead) continue to produce albums with varying degrees of conceptual unity. Concept albums can be broadly categorized as either narrative or thematic. Narrative concept albums generally have a clear plot with characters or some type of protagonist who undergoes some kind of dramatic action. Thematic concept albums can be classified as either musical or lyrical and achieve unity through a recurring instrumental motive or cohesive lyrics on a given theme. An additional category of concept album is the resistant album, which expands the boundaries of the traditional concept album by obscuring the concept and subverting expectations of narrative and character development. Chapter one concludes with an examination of Radiohead’s third album, OK Computer (1997), which brought the band even greater acclaim. OK Computer has been noted as an album that simultaneously reached back to the progressive-rock era for its influences (Mellotron, hypermetric complexity, cerebral lyrics), was very much an account of its time (technological v alienation of the 1990s), and looked forward to the future (projecting a nihilist view of modern society to come). Most critics and music scholars have treated the album as a concept album, though the band members themselves have largely dismissed this notion. In chapter two, I examine the conditions that precipitated Radiohead’s fourth album, Kid A (2000). The global popularity of the band’s earlier albums, particularly of OK Computer, created an ambivalence within the band members of trying to duplicate their known formula for success or striking out in a different direction that was perhaps truer to their musical and creative standards. Radiohead recorded material that was used to create two albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, which were released within six months of each other and have been taken for the most part as companion pieces. Kid A also drew many comparisons with OK Computer; while the later album continued the same themes of technological alienation, it did so without the use of conventional pop songs. The band carried through Kid A’s musical and lyrical obscurity into the album’s packaging and accompanying website; such deliberate ambiguity has become a hallmark of Radiohead’s presentation and has created a community of fans joined by their shared interpretations of the band’s products. I next turn to a consideration of the first half of Kid A, the songs leading up to the full articulation and immediate dissolution of the subject. More traditional concept albums present a subject that is clearly delineated and embodied within the singer; in Kid A, the presence of the subject is masked by electronic effects as well as obtuse, half- audible lyrics. Four songs into the album, in “How to Disappear Completely,” the subject is finally given full voice but is immediately erased by the other instruments as the voice climbs into a falsetto vocalese. This existential “death” of the subject, halfway through the album, presents a problem in constructing any narrative and recalls the work of Jacques Lacan on the subject requiring two deaths if it is not laid to rest properly the first time. Kid A goes on to present a more literal second “death” at the end of the album. The musical elements on Kid A can be divided into the binary oppositions of music and noise, vi sense and nonsense, and organic and technological. The sounds often cross categories, so that new correlations are made. “Noise” represents an intrusion into the existing soundscape such that the existence of the voice-as-subject is threatened. Because the subject is consumed by the instrumental texture, he must be reconstituted for the second half of the album and begin his struggles anew. In chapter three, I examine “Treefingers,” the song that represents the midpoint of Kid A, both in music-analytical terms and as an allegory for Radiohead’s ambivalence toward its own success. The eruption of noise in “How to Disappear Completely” has ungrounded the subject and results in an amorphous musical space in which the voice exists only in the far background of the ambient texture. The subject must be reconstituted in order for the album to continue. In addition to marking an imaginary dividing line between album sides that formerly existed as the turning-over of an LP, “Treefingers” also anticipates the hiatus Radiohead took between Kid A and Amnesiac in order to react, reflect, and reproduce its musical commodity. The conflict the subject of Kid A feels is a mirror of the band’s own feelings toward its success and whether to continue reproducing its old sound or proceed in a more experimental musical direction. The failure of Kid A’s subject to subjugate technology as noise thus becomes a critique for Radiohead’s own failure to exist outside the corporate record industry. Chapter four contains an analysis of the second half of Kid A, beginning with “Optimistic,” the album’s first “single” (though this perception is false, as it was never officially released as such). The subject is revived and given a second chance at negotiating life’s travails, but ultimately fails again and “dies” at the end of the album. This second “death” is a theatrical enacting of suicide, in which the subject melodramatically proclaims his leave-taking. In chapter five, I present some larger observations about Kid A as a whole. One way of looking at the album’s subject is as a sort of homme fatal—as voiced by a male singer, our awareness of the subject is as a male. Lacan’s notion of the femme fatale informs my discussion of Kid A’s subject; the vii vanishing subject can also be traced through the recurring 3-2-1 musical motive that first surfaces on “How to Disappear Completely” and then reappears on the album’s second half. Another way of looking at Kid A is to link together the songs that appear on either side of the hollow midpoint of “Treefingers.” Common lyrical and musical elements can be found in each of the song pairs formed in this fashion. Folding the songs across this midpoint produces an epitaph to the entire album in the form of “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” the song in which the subject dramatically exits the album’s stage. In chapter six, I examine the follow-up album to Kid A, Amnesiac (2001), as a companion piece, synthesis of musical influences, and possible antidote (a literal erasing of memory) to the former album’s alienation. Radiohead had claimed that this album would present a return to the band’s old sound, but instead it presented further musical experimentation, although several of its songs were released as singles. Much of the critical reception of Amnesiac has treated it as more accessible, but the album’s subject remains the same: alienation amid modern technology and the horrors of capitalist culture. Rather than tentatively building up the subject and then erasing him, the album presents a subject that is present from the beginning, if spiritually dead. Ultimately this image works as a symbol of the commodity itself. In the concluding chapter, I make additional observations about the tour Radiohead undertook after releasing both Kid A and Amnesiac and about the contextualization of the band’s sixth album, Hail to the Thief (2003). viii “How to Disappear Completely”: Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album Publication No._____________ Marianne Tatom Letts, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisor: James Buhler The band Radiohead has consistently articulated an anxiety about capitalist culture, despite producing its own commodity for mass consumption. In this dissertation I examine in detail Radiohead’s two “experimental” albums, Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), and investigate the ways in which the band’s ambivalence toward its own success manifests in the albums’ vanishing subject. I review the analytical attention paid to the concept album in popular music, which can be broadly categorized as either narrative or thematic. An additional category of concept album is the resistant album, which expands the boundaries of the traditional concept album by subverting expectations of narrative. The global popularity of Radiohead’s first three albums created an ambivalence within the band members of trying to duplicate their known formula for success or striking out in a new direction. Kid A and Amnesiac were released within six months of each other and have been taken for the most part as companion pieces. Contrary to earlier concept albums, Kid A presents a tentative subject that is finally given full voice on the album’s fourth song but is immediately erased by the other instruments. This existential “death” of the subject, halfway through the album, presents a problem in constructing any ix narrative. Because the subject is consumed by the instrumental texture, he must be reconstituted for the second half of the album and begin his struggles anew. The conflict the subject of Kid A feels is a mirror of the band’s own feelings toward its success. The subject ultimately “dies” again at the end of the album, in a theatrical enacting of suicide. Amnesiac has been described as a companion piece, a synthesis of musical influences, and a possible antidote to Kid A’s alienation. Rather than tentatively building up the subject and then erasing him, Amnesiac presents a subject that, although present from the beginning, is spiritually dead. Ultimately this image stands as a symbol for the commodity itself, and for Radiohead’s failure to exist outside the corporate record industry. x