Now, the most burning question that comes to one’s mind when thinking about
Radiohead is, of course: If Thom Yorke were an animal, what animal would he be?
It’s actually a tough one to answer; tougher than you would first imagine anyway. I tend to think he’d be sort of a cross between weasel and badger with quite possibly a little bit of squirrel thrown in there. If you’ve seen the guy, then you’ll know whereof I speak.
There are some albums, that when you approach task of reviewing them, leave you thinking, “How the hell am I ever going to do this justice??” As it happens,
OK Computer is one of these albums, and I _did_ ponder how I was ever going to do it justice – before coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t possible. Thus the insanely irrelevant introduction. Sorry, folks.
The Bends, by all accounts, was a huge critical success. Catapulting
Radiohead in amongst the finer British bands floating around at the time, it was surely successful in throwing the skeletons (i.e.
Pablo Honey) out of the band’s closet. Spawning four relatively successful singles – particularly
High And Dry and
Street Spirit – the men from Oxford were beginning to stop fumbling around and find their niche. Of course, by the time 1997 rolled around, everyone was anticipating the next
Radiohead album. Would it continue on from the previous masterpiece? Would it be a big filthy letdown, reducing the band to “flash in the pan” status? Would it out-do
The Bends, blow us all away, and become _the_ definitive
Radiohead album? Uh… the third one there. Except it didn’t blow us _all_ away. Sure, the critics were drooling over it and bowing down to it, proclaiming it the
Dark Side Of The Moon for the 1990s – but some folks just failed to “get” it.
I would say I was one of those people. Quite apart from the fact that I didn’t actually buy the album in 1997 (more like 2000), around the time when the whole nation was having wet dreams about Thom Yorke and the boys, I still had trouble with it.
The Bends had been my first
Radiohead album, and I had actually loved that one from the very first listen – its kinda hard not to, I think you’ll find. On my first few listens at
OK Computer, I was left drained and emotionless. The literal starkness of the album was difficult to digest at the time, and I couldn’t _feel_ it, I don’t think. After a while, it grew on me a little, and I started to enjoy the helpless, desolate sound that the band had crafted, but I still failed to see what all the fuss was about. I considered it a very good album, bordering on excellent, but nothing to soak my pants about. This attitude probably continued on until early last year – in fact, I wrote about this album as my third review on the site (silly me) and almost didn’t give it five stars.
Oh what a difference a year can make.
Nowadays I feel like the album is actually a part of _me_, almost as if I couldn’t live without it. If this disc got scratched, it’d be comparable to someone switching off my heart monitor when I was in critical condition on a hospital bed. I don’t want to rhapsodise, but I absolutely adore nearly every song on here. About two thirds of the album has a real urgency to it, coupled with a very chiming feel. The rest is stark, disturbing and just plain weird. It was at this stage that Thom Yorke decided to throw away his big, crazily distorted guitar appearances in favour of the occasional diversion to the piano – and it works wonders. He basically lets Johnny Greenwood carry the guitar parts on this CD, with Ed O’Brien having no qualms about backing him up. But this was where the band started to take a turn for the more abstract and artsy. I mentioned earlier that
Radiohead had begun to carve their niche out with
The Bends. Well, with this, they had almost found it. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that this album is _the_ sound of
Radiohead. The fact that – after the electronic weird-out sessions that constructed
Kid A / Amnesiac – the band decided to return to a more
OK Computer-influenced sound on recent outing
Hail To The Thief, only confirms this to me. Here is the place where drummer Phil Selway appears more fleetingly, his drumbeats often chopped-up and syncopated. Johnny Greenwood and Yorke’s obsession with little bleeps and blips and chimes continues to grow. And you can feel the band growing in confidence and pretentiousness. Lots of lovely melodies and beautiful chiming guitar sounds, but also a bleakness, and fearful attitude that lingers over each and every song. That people were _actually_ shocked when
Kid A appeared astounds me.
1997’s
OK Computer will take your breath away. It is – all at once – intimidating, terrifying, inspiring, beautiful, melodic, stark, ferocious, mean and moving. That’s a hell of a list for one album, and I could easily name about a hundred more adjectives to describe its brilliance. In fact, that would be kinda fun…
Track Listing
1.Airbag - 2.Paranoid Android - 3.Subterranean Homesick Alien - 4.Exit Music (For A Film) - 5.Let Down - 6.Karma Police - 7.Fitter Happier - 8.Electioneering - 9.Climbing Up The Walls - 10.No Surprises - 11.Lucky - 12.The Tourist
With an album such as this, it is important to define a central point, and the general focus of the whole CD. For me, this focal point comes with the
Karma Police / Fitter Happier combo. The fact that this couplet rests _exactly_ at the actual centre-point of the album has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Karma Police is probably one of the finest things the band has ever penned, and the best song on this CD bar one. An extremely intimidating tune, featuring frequent chord changes, both on jarring piano parts and acoustic guitar strums. The drums come easing their way in, pounding steadily and methodically along. The verses are a touch of genius, with inspired lyricism:
”Karma police / Arrest this man, he talks in math / He buzzes like a fridge, he’s like a detuned radio”. Particularly chilling are the quiet breaks to bridge the verses into one another, consisting of only softly touched piano, a foreboding atmosphere and Yorke’s repetition of
”This is what you’ll get when you mess with us”. However, the song really springs into action towards the end, when Yorke’s vocals really go into overdrive, again repeating the one line, a decidedly more poignant one this time:
”Phew… for a minute there, I lost myself”. This section sends dirty great chills down my spine without fail, every single time. The guitars begin swaying crazily in the background and you can imagine Yorke, slumped over his piano, pounding out those powerful chords relentlessly. The song eventually ends with some ripping, scratching feedback buzzing. Oh, if you’ve ever seen the video for this one, it’s another minor masterpiece – and very chilling indeed.
The cathartic ending of
Karma Police eventually fades into
Fitter Happier, one of the most confusingly desolate and frightening tracks the band have ever put on an album. All that it consists of is a monotone, robotic voice backed by faint but oppressive piano tones, doling out some apparent instructions for the ideal way of living a human life:
”Will not cry in public / Less chance of illness / Tyres that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat) / A good memory / Still cries at a good film / Still kisses with saliva”. When I first heard this one, I honestly couldn’t see what appeal it held. Now, well my attitude isn’t totally different, but I can sit through it and actually find it charming in a strange way.
Every great album _must_ have an epic, masterpiece of a track, it’s practically a requirement. Fortunately,
OK Computer has its very own little epic in the shape of
Paranoid Android, one of the best singles of the 1990s. True, very few of the casual listening UK public would have been able to _really_ appreciate it, but at least a six-minute song was allowed to be unleashed upon them. Listening to this one is a musical journey. The first little section has quirky, jumpy guitars that intertwine wonderfully as Yorke wails more provocative lyrics such as
”When I am king you will be first against the wall / And your opinion which is of no consequence at all”. It all gradually explodes into a cacophonous, dazzling solo from the master Johnny Greenwood, and again chills go down my spine. But not half as much as they do when it breaks down into a genuinely gorgeous vocal harmony section, in which
“the crackle of pig-skin” is referenced. After this moment of fleeting beauty, we enter another massively distorted solo to close things out. Containing one of my favourite solos _ever_ (well, the two parts combined) – and equal parts chaos and calm – this song is not one to be sniffed at. Just in case I didn’t mention it, it’s my favourite song on here too.
After that one, there are only a few moments of “rocking” left on the album.
Electioneering is definitely one – a genuine hark back to
The Bends and perhaps even
Pablo Honey – and thus feels slightly out of place on here. Not to say that I don’t enjoy it immensely – I do – it has an absolutely addictive, twanging guitar riff and stomping, punching drums. As guitars solo wildly all over the place, Yorke starts to lose the plot, go a bit mad, and his vocals start to sound like one giant sneer because of this. One of the finer rock moments in the band’s oeuvre. Opener
Airbag incorporates a zany, chopped-up and put-back-together drum pattern as it’s main hook. Not to mention the almost sexual bursts of bass that weave their way in and out of the track, and the wintry background percussion. The opening guitar riff is instantly recognisable, almost anthemic – and the trailing chorus of
”In an interstellar burst / I’m back to save the universe” sees Yorke stretching his vocal chords beyond recognition. I guess you could also say penultimate track
Lucky has a slight rock aura to it – but only in the choruses. The verses are slow, methodical, and dirge-like – but driven by droning bass and lilting guitar melodies. The earlier-mentioned choruses are an intoxicating burst of squealing guitar and thudding drums. The solo in this track is to die for, one of the most sublime moments of the entire album. Truly stunning. In fact, this track doesn’t rock at all, and I have no idea why I put it in this paragraph.
The song that urged my sister to compare
Radiohead to “wrist-slitting” music is, in fact,
Exit Music (For A Film). So, who votes we put the girl in for some intensive therapy? Actually, come to think of it, it would appear to the untrained ear as though this was the most depressing thing around. The slow, extremely quiet and spooky feel of the first three minutes, coupled with Yorke’s moaning, yearning vocals could depress even the happiest of people. As could the chilling closing line
”We hope that you choke, that you choke”. But in fact, the song is about Romeo and Juliet, and actually turns out to be rather positive. I especially love the end, when the drums kick in determinedly and the song drives forward on a low buzz of guitar. In the part leading up to this, Greenwood conjures some noises from his guitar that sound like birds tweeting. It’s really quite lovely. At the peak of its powers, this song could blow your speakers out, particularly when the low humming bass line comes droning in towards the end. Again, fabulous is all I can say.
Moving from possibly-depressing to downright eerie and chilling, we encounter the unfriendly
Climbing Up The Walls, one of the most powerful and moving pieces of music on here. Listen to this one and tell me you _don’t_ get chills. Seriously. The echoic, deliberate drumming. The ghostly, evil little noises – almost animal-like, maybe rats – that litter the background. Yorke’s terrifying and unrecognisable falsetto. The twiddling guitar riff. The other, moaning guitar riff. The strings, which rise to prominence near the end. This one has so many layers that it’s tremendous, and genuinely horrifying. It also gets inside the mind of some kind of serial killer (
”Either way you turn, I’ll be there / Open up your skull, I’ll be there”), which makes the song even more uncomfortable than it already is. If there’s something on here guaranteed to make you wet your boxers and cower in the corner like a little baby, it’s this one.
The remainder of the album contains the more friendly, melodic material, my favourite of which is closer
The Tourist. Yorke encourages everyone to
”Slow down”, and the rest of the band certainly do this in possibly the slowest song on the CD. Let me just say that this is one of the most gorgeous songs I have ever heard in my life. The vocals are the pinnacle of the beauty, Yorke has never sounded better in my opinion. Guitars caress the ears, and float in and out of the song wonderfully, coming up with some exhilarating parts nearer the end. The solo is out of this world. And cute little triangle chimes pop up all over the place. That’s what this one ends on in fact – a solitary triangle chime.
Subterranean Homesick Alien is more of the same, but not quite as effective and more reliant on dreamy guitar textures and spacey noises in the background. As for
No Surprises and
Let Down, they’re just insanely melodic tracks incorporating lovely chiming guitar tones to entice the listener in. They work pretty damn well.
After reading this, do you really need any more reasons to go out and buy
OK Computer as soon as you can? You do? Okay then, I’ll give you some more of those adjectives. Gorgeous, dazzling, blistering, horrifying, desolate, chiming, caressing… In fact, forget about adjectives here. All that _you_ need are verbs. Go. Buy. Listen. Enjoy. This remains the best album of
Radiohead’s career – and they’d have to come up with something bloody brilliant to better it.
Excellent: Airbag, Paranoid Android, Exit Music (For A Film), Karma Police, Climbing Up The Walls, Lucky, The Tourist
Good: Subterranean Homesick Alien, Let Down, Electioneering, No Surprises
Average: Fitter Happier
Weak: NONE
Final Rating: 19/20
Next up:
Airbag / How Am I Driving? EP
More on the best band in the world
Pablo Honey
My Iron Lung EP
The Bends
Airbag EP
Kid A
Amnesiac
Hail To The Thief
Com Lag
France
Germany
United Kingdom
Australia
USA
