FEATURE:
Groovelines
Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely
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IT is the strange thing…
IN THIS PHOTO: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke
when it comes to Radiohead’s 2000 album, Kid A. It did get some mixed reviews. There were those who saw it as an inspired and necessary evolution for the band. Different from their 1997 album, OK Computer, Kid A is more Electronic in terms of its influence. Perhaps less Rock-based, some critics were disappointed. Maybe seeing the 1997 album as a high watermark, anything new or unlike OK Computer was unwelcomed. In years since, Kid A has been seen as one of Radiohead’s best albums. Maybe some were confounded, but Kid A progressed Rock and Electronic music. Over twenty-two years since it was released, Kid A still sounds remarkable, bold and like nothing else. One of the greatest tracks Radiohead ever recorded is on that album. With strings and composition largely guided by Jonny Greenwood, Thom Yorke’s lyrics makes How to Disappear Completely sound utterly haunting and beautiful. Radiohead did not release any singles from Kid A, which is quite a shame. Songs like The National Anthem, Everything in Its Right Place, and Kid A would have benefited from some incredible videos. That is definitely true of How to Disappear Completely. Yorke began writing it in June 1997, in Toronto. Later that month, Radiohead performed a huge show at the RDS Arena in Dublin. There was a lot of wind and rain that night. Yorke was terrified and anxious, recalling that he dreamt of being swept up by a tidal wave.
That feeling and fear featured in a dream that led to the creation of the song. It sounded like a tense show, as there were technical issues that almost pushed Yorke to leaving. It was a really hectic and pressured time for Radiohead following OK Computer’s release and enormous success. The lyrics were partly inspired by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. At such a draining and unhappy time for Yorke, he rang Stipe up who offered some advice. Stipe said (to Yorke) to pull the shutters down and say to himself “I’m not here, this isn’t happening”. Although a video has been made for the track (by David Herrera) and it has been viewed over nine million times on YouTube, it is sort of okay. It is interesting in places - although I feel that something a bit different could have been created. I imagine a Kid A Visualised concept, where directors come and provide music videos to tracks on the album. The ten-track album has so many wonderfully vivid and arresting songs. It would benefit each of them if they got their own treatment and look. I always picture something in black-and-white for a How to Disappear Completely video. Maybe similar in look and feel to the Jonathan Glazer-directed video for Street Spirit (Fade Out) (from their 1995 album, The Bends), it would feature an actor in the lead role. Thom Yorke and the band would not appear, but it would be awesome to see a new visualisation and interpretation of one of Radiohead’s best songs. Yorke has said in interviews how it was the most beautiful thing the band recorded. It is among the fans’ favourites from the band…and How to Disappear Completely still sends shivers to this day!
Before wrapping up, I wanted to bring in something from Wikipedia, where they have collated reception to the amazing How to Disappear Completely. There is no denying the power and transcendence of this incredible and ethereal song. One that is very personal to Thom Yorke:
“How to Disappear Completely" was released as the fourth track on Kid A, released on 27 September 2000. The music press predicted that the song would be released as a single due to its potential to be a hit, but Radiohead eventually did not release singles from the album. However, "How to Disappear Completely" was released in 2000 as a CD promotional single in Poland on Parlophone and in Belgium on EMI Belgium. In the US, it was released as a double A-side promotional single with "Idioteque" on Capitol Records. Along with "Idioteque", "How to Disappear Completely" was included on the compilation album 2001: A Sound Odyssey, released in the US in 2000 on Capitol. The song was included on the special edition of the greatest hits album Radiohead: The Best Of (2008) and the Kid A Mnesia reissue.
In a 2000 article published prior to the release of Kid A, Melody Maker's Andre Paine described "How to Disappear Completely" as "several minutes of music that sounds like the Smiths produced by DJ Shadow". Reviewing Kid A in 2000, NME's Keith Cameron wrote that the song sees Radiohead's "return to the big ballad template, as massed strings swoon and Yorke's voice soars transcendentally for the first time". The Rolling Stone critic, David Fricke, wrote that the song "moves like an ice floe: cold-blue folk rock with just a faint hint of heartbeat.” Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork stated that the song "boil[ed] down [OK Computer tracks] 'Let Down' and 'Karma Police' to their spectral essence", claiming it "comes closest to bridging Yorke's lyrical sentiment to the instrumental effect. [...] The strings melt and weep as the album shifts into its underwater mode."
Billboard called "How to Disappear Completely" "haunting", noting that "vocalist Thom Yorke is as tortured as ever, proclaiming 'I'm not here/This isn't happening' [...] as if he'd already vanished long ago." Cam Lindsay of Exclaim! described the song as "a moody acoustic number" and "the most radio compatible track" on Kid A, comparing it to the OK Computer track "Exit Music (For a Film)". The Uncut journalist, Simon Reynolds, described the song as a "missing link" between Scott Walker's orchestral music and the "swoonily amorphous" ballads on My Bloody Valentine's album Isn't Anything (1988). He also likened it to a Walker ballad composed by Penderecki, in an article for another magazine, The Wire. The Morning Call likened the song's "haunting and calming" sound to the sound of the ocean. The author Greg Kot wrote it sounds like a lost soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo. The author Steven Hyden believes that the song could have been on OK Computer if Walker had produced it. He also compared the acoustic guitar, which "slowly builds to an operatic emotional climax", to previous Radiohead songs such as "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Exit Music".
The mesmeric How to Disappear Completely was released as a promotional single in the U.S., Poland, and Belgium. Radiohead first performed the track in 1998 whilst on tour. An early soundcheck performance features in the 1998 documentary, Meeting People Is Easy. During the Kid A sessions in 1999, Radiohead recorded some demos for the song around various studios, before they recorded it at their Oxfordshire studio at the end of January 2000. In early February, strings were recorded and performed by the Orchestra of St John's in a church near to the band's studio, which were arranged by the brilliant Jonny Greenwood. I love the fact that How to Disappear Completely inspired Michael Stipe to write the R.E.M. single, Disappear. That song appears on their 2001 album, Reveal. Stipe did phone Yorke in 2004 to apologise for ‘stealing’ the concept for Disappear from Radiohead’s song. Yorke in turn revealed that it was Stipe who inspired lyrics for How to Disappear Completely! I hope that another video for the song is made one day. It is a sensational song that ranks alongside the very best from Radiohead. Out of a time of depression and anxiety from Thom Yorke came this…
UTTERLY beguiling moment.