After a compelling start, Kid A reaches a more straightforward approach in the middle. That’s not to say it gets boring, quite the opposite, the next two songs check even more boxes when it come to adding sounds to the album. However they way they do it is uniquely simple.

‘Treefingers’ is the outlier amongst outliers. A full ambient track, the synths and electronic mix surround your ears as if you were immersing yourself in a particularly dense liquid. It’s recurring high-note melody is epiphany-inducing and a well-deserved break that nonetheless adds to the alienated sensation of the whole record.

When ‘Treefingers’ lets you go, a song starts that 20 years later puts in question of what is Radiohead’s trademark sound. ‘Optimistic’ delivers, in the context of the album, the quintessential Radiohead song that probably many were expecting while listening to Kid A for the first time. However it is still a marvel on its own. The opening guitars, tom-driven drums and ominous ‘oooohs’ are in line with the album’s aesthetic. But for starters, Thom Yorke’s voice isn’t that much processed as in the previous tracks and is given free reign. The song’s marvelous melody is a lot more immediate and relatable.

One could even state that the song lives up to its name, but it’s hard to be sure. In any case, the repetitive and piercing message in the chorus, perfectly delivered, is a sign of a change of perspective for the band amid the isolation of Kid A as a whole. ‘You can try the best you can, best you can is good enough’ sings Yorke after poetically describing the machinations of a capitalized world and its wrongful system. Honestly, it doesn’t surprise that it had the most radio play of every song in the record. ‘Optimistic’ is the single, a song that we might add to a ‘Radiohead essentials’ playlist. In the end, after all these years, it’s still the beating heart of Kid A.