KID A

Compare it to these: Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd), A Trick of the Tail (Genesis) and Fragile (Yes). If these are considered prog, then Kid A obviously is a prog album too, maybe even more so than some named above.

Just from looking at the cover the album appears to have harsh tones. The icy mountains underneath a black sky, and what appears to be a grid (or inside the booklet, fields.) And that is what the album is. Icy, dark, isolated.

Everything in it's right place leads us in, with the rich sound of the Rhodes piano and the looping vocals. Kid A is a suitably dark song, seems to deal with parents ("standing in the shadows at the end of my bed" - an image commonly related to someones mother. If Kid A is the first human clone, this could be some defect in 'it'.) The National Anthem may be an appropriate comment "everyone has got the fear / just holding on" - isolating people rather than unifying.

How to Disappear Completely - seems sorrowful. When you don't really want to be there. Instrumental treefingers features some beautiful, echoey synth. Very calm but also brings a sense of isolation again. Being in a wood with no one else there.

Optimistic is suitably more upbeat for it's title but the lyrics suggest otherwise. Seems to me this is just about trying to get on with life, or helping someone. In Limbo is someone who is lost, hence the "lundy, fastnet, Irish sea" - from the shipping forecast, which also relates to "lost at sea." According to the band it is to do with that sense of being lost in a relationship.

Idioteque with it's electronica continues the cold tone and also maybe some paranoia... "who's in bunker," "ice age coming." Morning bell is almost like the calm after the storm, but grows intense and the lyrics sounding like someone in a delusional state. Motion Picture Soundtrack closes it all off with the isolated organ/synth sound and lyrics, a perfect ending to the album.

I only hope people can be open minded and see it like this.