Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely (Profiles in Popular Music) - Softcover

Letts, Marianne Tatom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253222729 ISBN 13: 9780253222725

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2010

Synopsis

How the British rock band Radiohead subverts the idea of the concept album in order to articulate themes of alienation and anti-capitalism is the focus of Marianne Tatom Letts’s analysis of Kid A and Amnesiac. These experimental albums marked a departure from the band’s standard guitar-driven base layered with complex production effects. Considering the albums in the context of the band’s earlier releases, Letts explores the motivations behind this change. She places the two albums within the concept-album/progressive-rock tradition and shows how both resist that tradition. Unlike most critics of Radiohead, who focus on the band’s lyrics, videos, sociological importance, or audience reception, Letts focuses on the music itself. She investigates Radiohead’s ambivalence toward its own success, as manifested in the vanishing subject of Kid A on these two albums.

About this title

About the Author:

Marianne Tatom Letts holds music degrees from the University of North Texas and the University of Texas at Austin.

Review:

"An objective yet provocative look at a challenging period in the work of one of rock's most adventurous bands."

(Kevin Holm-Hudson, author of Genesis and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway)

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0253222729
• ISBN 13: 9780253222725
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256