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8:40 · 1,453 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The pitch is consistency. Five albums with no real misses, and a sixth on the way already shaping up as their strongest since Get to Heaven.
▶ 00:00:26
- The band's name comes from the first two words of Kid A, which the host found out after already loving them.
▶ 00:01:05
- Two of the four members studied popular music at school, which is offered as the explanation for why the hooks stick despite how eccentric everything around them is.
▶ 00:01:46
- Man Alive is defended as underrated, polished with a punk edge, and the whistle sample in one of its hooks is the detail that lodges.
▶ 00:02:26
- Jonathan Higgs moves between singing, rapping, spoken word and strange vocal inflections in a nasal falsetto, which is the single thing that decides whether a listener stays.
▶ 00:03:13
- The split in reception is stark: Man Alive was nominated for the Mercury Prize and Pitchfork gave it a 3.8.
▶ 00:03:34
- Get to Heaven was made under the influence of Yeezus and a working rule of no calm songs, and that is the record where the audience grew.
▶ 00:04:09
- The deluxe edition is recommended specifically, because the extra tracks hold the same standard as the album proper.
▶ 00:04:31
- A Fever Dream works as a companion piece, darker and more tender, and unusually for this band every song sounds like it belongs to one era.
▶ 00:05:10
- Raw Data Feel was written alongside an AI, feeding concepts and ideas into a program to generate lyrics, which is a joke on itself given how computer-generated Higgs's writing already sounds.
▶ 00:06:54