I want to tell you something. I want to show you so much more. Like Radiohead does on "OK Computer".
How's that for an understated opener?
Speech is only but a little part of how a human being feels things. It's the verbal expression and a lot of the time it's somewhat meaningless; filled with lies and a coyness that doesn't allow for total understanding. It's rare you can take much of what a human being says for much besides a smoke-screen for what is really going on.
"OK Computer" bucks the frailty in verbal expression by utilizing vague and cryptic lyrics, sung in a barely intelligible manner, with a conglomeration of sounds that combine into something more vivid than should be possible. Sometimes I feel that if I stare into space long enough, the answer to my deepest questions will be written in plain English. They never are, yet the act of staring into oblivion is more meaningful than any explanation my simple being could seek. Same goes for listening to "OK Computer".
With that being said, I don't really
get "OK Computer". It's a concept album made by artists who are not me. A lot of people say that it's about a lot of different things. A lot of people like to pretend that they know what other people's intentions are. Whatever. To me, "OK Computer" creates a replication of my whole existence and fools my worries into thinking that it's the real thing, as they leave me for a facade. Then I get to live in a dangerous reality that says, everything will be okay.
That's me.
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I like to believe that I am loved and cared for. But, as Mike Skinner put it so eloquently on "A Grand Don't Come for Free", you can't expect people to be there, fighting for you until the end. They have their own personal battle to fight.
So, I really am all alone.
We all are. That's why it's so important for us to have vessels for release and relief, such as music; such as "OK Computer". Others putting out the impressions that they care about you can be helpful, but in the end, something has to hit you on the inside and make
you care about
yourself. Merely listening to and fully immersing yourself in "OK Computer", or any other piece of self-validating art, is proof that you do give a damn about yourself. If you didn't, you'd keep solely to the numbness that the vast majority of music seems to convey. Instead, you are opting to exhaust the negativity and bring forth the positivity within yourself. To you, I say congratulations.
To you, I say indulge in the sublime satisfaction of pushing the world off of a cliff with "Paranoid Android". Take a deep breath and let Thom Yorke take away your tightened stomach with "Subterranean Homesick Alien". Feel, at the pit of your spirit, a rekindling of life, with "Lucky".
Then again with the wild popularity of this record and its current 160-some reviews, you probably already have done this and much more. But if you haven't, to you I say, it's not too late; never too late.
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"In an intrastellar burst
I'm back to save the universe!"
The opener, "Airbag", suggests so many things. Maybe this saving the universe is just the beginning of a grand concept coming to fruition. Or maybe Mr. Yorke has just come to save a piece of our minds from being totally warped by mass-marketing and homogenization. It may be a sad irony that Radiohead helped put money into the mass-marketing/homogenization scheme with "OK Computer", but possibly the ends justifies the means; the listener discovering the beauty in individualism and communal love through harsh skepticism and criticism is worth the risk of putting more money into Capitol Records. Either way, with the shimmering guitars, minimal yet perfectly bumbling bass, and the wondrously chaotic effects that highlight this intrastellar blast, "OK Computer" will immediately take its strangle-hold on the willing.
From "Airbag", "OK Computer" diffuses out into a few directions. I take it as a series of missions to keep us from losing our minds in a world that demands such a thing; a world run by those who want to make us clones of one another, until individuality is dead and replaced by nothing but social security and credit card numbers.
"Paranoid Android" provides release to the tortured soul by bringing up all of their aggression toward the world and absolving it through extremely tense rhythm and guitar lines, with warping, spacy effects disorienting you if you focus too hard. Then, of course, Yorke gets right into the heart of this snake-filled world with, "ambition makes you look pretty ugly/ kicking, squealing, gucci little piggy." Eventually, a hard rock section finds its way into relieving you of all that built-up negativity, before a semi-closing section of ambient "ahhhs" squeezes out the lingering numbness that can come for great amounts of stress and disillusion-ment.
There's really no doubt that a song like "Paranoid Android" can make you want to go out and be unique. It may also be able to make you be a bit spiteful to those who want to hold you down, possibly creating a spark for change. So, maybe "OK Computer" should be part of a revolutionary box-set of albums that make us want to make the planet better.
The most bluntly put piece of resentment for those holding the remote control of humanity is within "Exit Music (For A Film)". It comes on soft and gentle; stripped down guitar playing and eventual numb, mechanical "coohs" for Yorke's plead to hear a song to keep us from the ultimate chill. Then what sounds like an overly distorted, synthesized bassline Yorke lays into the oppressors with, "you can laugh a spineless laugh/ we hope your rules and wisdom choke you." After that it breaks out with the feeling of
something happening. As it quiets down, with Yorke's persistent wish for the choking of the evil, your own personal resentment is fully at the surface. Then it rises like steam off of you. Well, most of the time. If it doesn't, just keep listening. Just keep getting all of that off of your chest. It helps. I promise.
I suppose it'd be fit for you to ask, is it all so heavy? Sort of. There is not one frivolous song here. No song that was made specifically for radio play; no song that was meant to take away any feeling of contemplation. But this isn't just for the times when you feel down or feel full of angst. Actually, we always feel that way. Within us is a constant supply of happiness, sadness, and everything in between. When "OK Computer" runs through your auditory nerve, delivering various sensations to you, it pulls those different emotions to the surface, sometimes every one at the same time, sometimes in isolation. In the end, it leaves you feeling marked, but also feeling profoundly whole if you really dig in.
Yet, some songs come across less heavy because they're a bit less taxing on your psyche; a little less drenched in biting reality. "Subterranean Homesick Alien" is laced in thick, twinkling, spacy guitar effects that shimmer in the realization that through our most far-fetched wishes, maybe we are just too damn up-tight. "Lucky" even goes further into some plain ol' optimism that this album sorely needed to keep it even-headed. At least, that's how I perceive it. The music is full of ease with pessimism lurking in spooky background effects, while Yorke finally believes that his luck could change. In the end, however, he admits that we are standing on the edge. But there is a "we" in that. If we do it together, perhaps that edge is really nothing to be afraid of. I fall, you fall. We can make it or not make it but we can do it together.
Still, the overriding mission of "OK Computer" seems to be to antagonize the soul, exorcise negativity, and jump-start us toward greatness. I know that one album can't achieve all of that. But if one could, this would be it.
"No Surprises" is a swell of melancholy that breaks you down with realization that we're all just tools of the economy, then builds you up into, "bring down the government/ they don't...they don't speak for us." Yorke begs for a life of no alarms and no surprises. Don't we all? "Electioneering" gets further into the pits of our political masters, romping all over the notion of us meaning nothing but a mere vote to them. When getting into what makes us sad, what truly brings us down and smothers our spirits, Radiohead does a great job on "OK Computer" of going after the oppressive structure and doing a wonderful critical number on them. Knowing that someone else out there feels the same way as you do about these subjects is yet another way this album is so therapeutic as well as shear genius.
No matter how many times I listen to "OK Computer", however, "Karma Police" is always the cut that hits the closest to home. To revert back to where I began, I can only tell you how this album effects
me. With all the statements I have made about this album and its songs, I have no idea if you'll feel the same way. I can only tell you this is how
I feel. And with "Karma Police", I feel right with the world. I feel right in knowing that you who does wrong to me: you'll get your's. To those who seek to use me as a cog for their machine: you'll get your's. To those who take my kindness for token: you'll get your's. It's the lush humbleness of the acoustic guitars and piano that lets me know everything will work itself out. It's the wailing of "phew, for a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself," that brings me back down to Earth in a relieved sense of proportion. The will to go on and to make things better while realizing that this social structure will have to change or it will collapse, well, that's what makes me want to wake up in the morning.
That's what makes me glad that the next morning comes at all.
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So, you've just read the music of "OK Computer" broken down in the most humanistic way this individual can possibly muster. It's an intricately composed and written album. There is all sorts of technical mumbo-jumbo that I could throw at you if I just got out my "Soulless Music Terms for Dummies" book, but I haven't the will.
Self-love.
Rebellion.
Hope in the face of the hopeless.
This is what you really need to see in an "OK Computer" review.
Some live as robots, catering to the marketed "dream" that is just a tool used to oppress our souls. Some actually want to feel the blood pumping through their veins and try something different; something that will work for
themselves. Those people will struggle the hardest because it's never easy to go against the grain and to live the life you know you were meant to live. For those people, there is "OK Computer", as well as many other artistic expressions like it. Take it or leave it, though I obviously strongly suggest the former.
We are unique creatures of greatness. "OK Computer" makes me believe that some day we'll act like it.
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Radiohead
"OK Computer"
Capitol: 1997
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12 Tracks
53 mins. & 21 secs.
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For more information about Cryptic Cradle and his reviews, please
click here.
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Written by Cryptic Cradle for Spike-A-Delic Productions
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