Editor's Note: We actually hadn't planned on reviewing Amnesiac, but our search engine reports suggest that a lot of you have been looking for a review of Radiohead's latest opus. Never let it be said that we don't give the people what they want...

Nobody in the history of music has been able to sulk as eloquently as Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. In the short amount of time he spent on this earth Curtis continually stared into the abyss, searching for answers that simply were not there. The search haunted him until the bitter end; it was as though his was a pain that no one else could fathom -- nobody except Thom Yorke, it seems. With each successive album, Radiohead’s frangible frontman peers further out into the darkness, questing after that same guiding light that eluded Curtis many years ago.

Amnesiac, the fifth Radiohead album proper, continues the Oxford quintet's quest for the true meaning of the words beauty and solitude. It also finds them embracing, for the first time, the much-romanticized notion that perhaps the world we inhabit is not such a terrible place after all.

Yorke’s alien cry has always been the focal point of the Radiohead attack. While Kid A buried his croon beneath layers of gloomy synths and stuttering electronics, Amnesiac returns him to center stage. On the first track, "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box", Yorke insists that he's "a reasonable man/get off my case", as if he’s somehow issuing a reply to the thousands of music journalists who branded him as "difficult" and "introverted" without ever meeting him face to face. Yorke vents to his heart’s content on the sardonic "You and Whose Army", while "Knives Out" allows his voice to guide the song into territory it otherwise wouldn’t have dared to approach. On Amnesiac we are once again treated to glimpses of the Yorke of old, while simultaneously witnessing the re-birth of one of the music world’s most captivating artists. (Fortunately, you don't have to watch this re-birth on an IMAX screen. - Ed.)

Yorke can’t do it all on his own, and as usual his bandmates are there to help him with every tough decision, and to reinforce his clarity. Lead guitarist/all-around noisemonger Jonny Greenwood’s stamp is all over the extraterrestrial weirdness of "Hunting Bears" and the backwards-looping free-for-all "Like Spinning Plates". His brother Colin adds warbling bass figures and ghastly keyboards throughout the album, most evidently on the filthy, blues-inspired romp "I Might be Wrong". In seeming contradiction, rhythm guitarist and unabashed Smiths enthusiast Ed O’Brien brings an altogether pop-oriented approach to the proceedings, dropping jaunty fills and dollops of melody into otherwise foreboding tracks like "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Dollars & Cents". And we mustn't forget the stellar efforts of drummer/percussionist Phil Selway, the forgotten hero of the Radiohead hutch. His shape-shifting rhythms allow the songs to ebb and flow effortlessly, while his somnambulant clatter propels both the chiming "Knives Out" (the track that sounds most like "classic" Radiohead) and the dreamy, free-jazz inspired closer "Life in a Glasshouse". It is more than fair to say that Amnesiac once again shows Radiohead to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Folks expecting the full-throttle rock of The Bends, or the experimental-leaning, guitar-laden anti-rock of OK Computer will, by and large, be unimpressed by Amnesiac. Its staunchly non-rocking veneer and fondness for all things electronic will undoubtedly put it into the same category as its immediate predecessor, Kid A (from whose sessions the bulk of Amnesiac’s material is culled) or Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. In the end, its classification will matter little, for Amnesiac is just the latest chapter in the ever-changing career of the planet’s most unlikely superstars.

Somehow, you get the feeling that Ian Curtis is up there in Heaven smiling down on Radiohead, finding at least a little bit of comfort in the fact that his kindred spirits were finally able to find the light for which he searched throughout his earthly existence.