Radiohead

Concert Preview by PHILIP BRASOR If you are conflicted about going to the trouble of obtaining tickets for Radiohead's autumn shows without first hearing their new album, "Amnesiac," which doesn't hit the stores until the end of May, you may be reassured to know that the material was recorded during the same sessions that produced "Kid A."

Then again, such intelligence may not reassure you at all, which means you probably belong to the faction that mourns the further diminution of Johnny Greenwood's scary guitar at the expense of Thom Yorke's Pink Floyd fixation. But for those of us who think Yorke is mostly full of it anyway, it's preferable that he divert as much of his energy away from the lyrics and into his ever-increasing facility with synthesized arrangements.

Whatever one's reservations about "Kid A" as "rock," the songs still exert a strange, awful power, especially when you realize they're about youthful alienation as a permanent condition of the Information Age. There isn't much to lines like "I'm not here any more," or "Everything is in its right place," but when they're sung blankly against a beautiful wash of strings, computerized keyboards and acoustic guitars, they evoke the intended reaction, which is mostly awe.

If "OK Computer" abandoned guitar rock for electronica, "Kid A" leapfrogged techno for a kind of ethereal pop that sounds custom-made for headphones and hockey rinks. Will "Amnesiac" provide the same kind of thrills? Reliable sources say that the new album is more "accessible" than "Kid A," which only has meaning if you think "Kid A" was difficult. You can wait a month to find out for yourself, or you can program your speed dial for the ticket agency of your choice and pray you get through in time.