I'll go with Optimistic. Dem guitars. 

I love this album. The shocking opener sets the tone. A statement of purpose, a clearing of the deck. This is a band known for their perfect opening tracks (Planet Telex, Airbag) - and this one is their best. Great tracks on this - Kid A, Idioteque, The National Anthem - but I have to go with that stunning first track.

Same here. Optimistic and How to Disappear Completely are the most pre-Kid A tracks on this album. Guitar songs - electric and acoustic, respectively. As many critics had noted at the time, if the album had led off with those 2 tracks, it wouldn't have seemed such a radical departure from The Bends and OK Computer. Good songs though.

I think people who love the track Kid A prob. voted for the first track, like I did. It's such a perfect one-two punch.

You should do an Amnesiac poll next. I think of these two CDs as being a double album. They have a nice symmetry to them: the IDM tracks that begin both albums, the horns songs that frame it (National Anthem in the front, Greenhouse in the back), the two Morning Bells, two ambient pieces (Treefingers and Hunting Bears - both evoking pastoral settings in their titles), two great not-quite EDM-ish tracks (Idioteque and Spinning Plates), two rockers (Optimistic and Knives Out), and two lovely/frightening songs (How to Disappear and Pyramid Song).

Other outstanding tracks from this awesome album:

The National Anthem- one of Radiohead's most ambitious and epic (the real definition) songs

How to Disappear Completely- beautiful, earthy, and haunting

Idioteque- Thom Yorke puts so much emotion into this; it's really incredible to hear

I prefer some live versions of Idioteque. That track really comes alive at concerts.

I wonder whether you've heard the albums AFTER Kid A.    And worse than Pablo Honey...wow, that's a bit difficult to work out.

Oh, I am not hating on their later albums but I suspect resurrection hasn't heard them.   Because if he disliked Kid A, then these albums depart even further from their 90s sound. 

I see Kid A as a sequel to OK Computer - and a brilliant one at that. I can't imagine enjoying one without the other. OK Computer is a fin-de-siecle work, charting the end of an age, and the world on the cusp of a new, virtual reality. Pyramid Song is key: "I jumped in the river... All my lovers were there with me, all my past and futures... There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt." OK, computer. You win. Erasing oneself by escaping into virtual reality. What's interesting is that in Radiohead's scenario, it's not robots forcing us into virtual reality (a la Matrix), but man himself willingly seeking the blessed relief from the disapointments recounted in "Let Down."

A philosopher has published a terrifying book, arguing that the statistical odds are that we are all probably computer programs. I think that Radiohead's work expresses these anxieties. Radiohead has continued to explore this theme about erasure ("The Eraser") beyond Kid A/Amensiac; see, for example, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi: "Why should I stay here? Why should I stay?... / I follow to the end of the earth and fall off ... / I'll hit the bottom and escape / Weird fishes." (Which sounds a lot like "we're fishes.")

It's no accident that "Everything In Its Right Place" was featured prominently in the sci-fi film "Vanilla Sky," in which Tom Cruise's character is living a virtual world, without his knowing it.

I'm a huge fan of Radiohead. I started getting into them when Pablo Honey came out (which I liked a lot, and thought that the band was clearly going places; this is a better album than normally given credit for, although clearly it's dated now). Concerning In Rainbows, this album is over-hyped. I get why. The marketing strategy, the pay-what-you-want - it was huge, and scored the band all kinds of respect. I get all that. But I just don't consider the album itself top tier Radiohead. It certainly has some awesome songs. It also has some really annoying ones. I'll take the best songs off of Hail to the Thief over the best songs on In Rainbows. And I think The Eraser is a better album than both.

I do. I don't know if we're supposed to or not... Some see it as like a B-sides collection, or discarded songs... If Kid A is like one re-born in a kind of matrix or virtual reality, then Amnesiac is about the 'amnesia' or forgetting the past...? Haha. Maybe it wasn't quite that thought out as I'm making it seem. I don't think Yorke was trying to make concept albums like DSOTM, but I do think he had some kind of singular vision that he's been following...