Marvin Lin Radiohead's Kid A Paperback Music Book (33 1/3) 2005

By pulling Kid A from its canonical status and grounding the album in various contexts, Marvin Lin explains not only why Radiohead suddenly adopted a new songwriting methodology, but also how properties like "genre" and "authenticity" distracted us from understanding our reactions to it. From bovine growth hormones and neurological impulses to Dada poetry and bandwidth throttling, the book articulated the politics behind both Radiohead's music and our listening experiences. But in a period of socio-political unrest, is listening to Kid A a waste of time? In and through the album, Lin seeks to answer this question by examining what Kid A does to us over time, what Kid A tells us about the future, and whether it's possible (or even desirable) to use Kid A to transcend time altogether.

'For a ridiculously daunting subject, Lin does an extraordinary job of engaging the reader in the labyrinth of excursions and theories that Kid A offers. … he asks a combination of all the right questions that music critics and theorists should ask but never becomes muddled by the highbrow concepts and myths of Kid A.' --Stereosubversion.com