Radiohead Amnesiac

Radiohead: Thom Yorke, Ed O'Brien, Jon Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Phil Selway. Additional personnel: Jimmy Hastings (clarinet); Humphrey Lyttelton (trumpet); Pete Strange (trombone); Paul Bridge (double bass); Adrian MacIntosh (drums); St. John's Orchestra. Engineers: Nigel Godrich, Dan Grech-Marguerat. The Limited version of AMNESIAC won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. This second helping from the sessions that produced the preceding KID A will probably strike close listeners as a bit more structured, though it'll be difficult to determine whether that's simply because the peregrinations of the last album have prepared them for the trips to the outer limits taken here. Those expecting a U2-like return to tuneful, anthemic guitar-rock will have their hopes dashed upon a rock of colorful electronic experimentation and moody, studio-enhanced madness. The piano-based "Pyramid Song" and the Martian-gospel-choir ballad "You and Whose Army?" might placate verse-chorus-verse traditionalists slightly, but the sampler-in-a-trash-compactor "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and the pointillistic ambience of "Hunting Bears" attest to Radiohead's continued nonconformist tendencies. AMNESIAC opens with the claustrophobic, synth-bedecked "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" and closes with the Dixieland funeral march "Life in a Glass House." Along the way, the band engages in the kind of fearless, pretension-risking (but highly successful) sonic experimentation that made a cultural artifact out of SGT. PEPPER. There are less apt comparisons.