Radiohead
Kid A
Capitol

Welcome to the most eagerly awaited album of the year. Not just because OK Computer firmly established Radiohead as the thinking person's pop group, but also because the news was that the band had branched out, wigged out or maybe just lost it altogether.

The rumors turned out to be largely true. Jonny Greenwood's guitars appear on only three tracks, driven out by bleeps, loops and pulses. You will search in vain for verses, choruses, melodies. And Thom Yorke's gorgeous voice is pushed right to the bottom of the priority list. What vocals there are often distorted, the lyrics (where intelligible) running over the same old absence/presence tropes: "That there, that's not me," "I'm not here, this isn't happening." Mostly, Yorke just warbles, beautifully but incoherently.

And what of the logo-free tent tours, the lack of singles and videos, the use of the website to access the fans directly, without recourse to the record company? Is Radiohead just being contrary, "difficult" in corporate-speak, or is there a bigger plan?

Let us hope the latter, because the plain fact is that the music on Kid A is the least interesting thing about it. Some of it – even the most beautiful, most traditional tracks, such as "How to Disappear Completely" or "In Limbo" – are frankly boring. And the more digital pieces fail to live up to their reference points. Autechre, Tortoise and contemporary classical name-drops such as Penderecki and Messiaen achieve more with less fuss than their eager acolytes.

The album sounds muddy. There is a droning "organ" keyboard sound that pervades it, from the atmospheric opener "Everything in its Right Place" to the last two tracks "Morning Bell" and "Motion Picture Soundtrack", that effectively acts as a filler, a smokescreen. It points to a lack of self-confidence – and what good is a timid experimentalist?

It's easy to pass over the awful brass cacophony of "The National Anthem" and the blandly Eno-esque "Treefingers." Things get better on the title track and "Idioteque", where the formal minimalism of the instrumentation is allowed a little more space, a little more elegance, with the vocals acting as an all-too-human counterpoint to the machines. Too often, though, Kid A is simply overproduced.

Which is ironic, as the studio would seem to be Kid A's natural home. The story of the record is that, worn out by the treadmill of success foisted on them by OK Computer, Radiohead decided to do this one on its own terms. Chuck out all the props, swap instruments, sit down at a sequencer and learn how to make music in a new way. It may have been three years of frustration and false starts, but you get the feeling that making Kid A must have been a hell of a lot more fulfilling than sitting at home listening to it.

So why is it important? Because it's a way forward. It promotes "process" over "product." It's about how, rather than what. And thus it throws down a gauntlet to Radiohead's fanbase, to those that sneer at the band, to the record industry and, above all, to the band itself. The legendarily rubbish first album, Pablo Honey, had a track called "Anyone Can Play Guitar." Kid A could be subtitled "Anyone Can Program a Sequencer." The trick, of course, is to do something worthwhile with it once you've programmed it.

Kid A is an interesting experiment in stretching talent, and no doubt useful to the group. But for anyone interested in Radiohead's progress as artists, rather than in a band with a neat line in fuzzy guitars and a cutely angstful frontman with an angelic voice, it is a transitional piece of work. Let them develop their new skills, and then find something worth — if not singing, then — programming about.

— Jonathan Gibbs (jonathangibbs@mail.com)