Radiohead — OK Computer
OK Computer is the best Radiohead album, and is up there for one of the best of all time.
For their third LP, Radiohead at last shook the final remnants of the dying grunge scene and created an art-rock album. At first recording in a converted shed in Oxfordshire, the band soon found this space to be too limiting. Relocating to an estate in Bath, the band had pieces of songs recorded but none finished yet. They received a call from director Baz Luhrmann to write a song for his film Romeo + Juliet (1996). Thus, the first song completed for the album was the fitting “Exit Music (For a Film).” Using the entire mansion as a recording tool, the band recorded everywhere from the ballroom to a staircase. Completed in March and released in May of 1997 the album was an instant success in the UK. Reaching no.1 and going x5 platinum, the album is the band’s second best selling album.
If you read the review yesterday, I said I would reveal what the best Radiohead album is. I’d gone back and forth on this for years, but I believe I’ve at long last settled. Much like I no longer like IPAs, I find Kid A to be a bit too baroque for my tastes when all I want from them is a lager. Kicking off the Eeny side of this x2 LP, “Airbag” is based off a magazine article Yorke read, and also his own brush with death ten years prior. The song features sleigh bells with buzzy drums and guitar. This is a perfect intro song for this album. Yorke describes the superhuman feeling after walking away from a wreck as being born again. In this way we understand the Radiohead we knew is gone, they’re bigger, bolder, and better now. “Paranoid Android” is a musical epic in three parts. The opening is a plucky, acoustic, pensive and building piece. A computerized voice (which will reoccur later) speaks the title of the track: “I may be paranoid, but no android.” This breaks into a darker and heavier section of the song. Grinding guitar and thrashy punctuation and heavy feedback explode until the song breaks down into an angelic bridge before the track disintegrates itself with the same thrash energy. Yorke and co. in a literal sense wrote this about a bar fight they witnessed. However, within the themes of the album it draws comparisons to the human form and the digital world becoming one with dystopian overtones. “Subterranean Homesick Alien” continues the sci-fi allusions but this time of the extra terrestrial variety. Yorke likens himself to an alien among man, and he wants to go back to his home on another planet. The keys and guitar in this song evoke classic B-movie alien sounds while still maintaining a serious vibe. Meeny begins with “Exit Music (For a Film).” Since this was written about Romeo & Juliet, I won’t expound on the themes in the writing here. However, the drum break-in in the latter half of the song is a perfect score moment, I wish it had been used in the film in this way. “Let Down” is one of the most pleasant sounding songs on the album. It is about the perpetual boredom and emotion in life which leave us feeling static.The lyrics are poetic in their depiction of a crushed insect under the boot of time. The song builds to a crescendo of emotive beauty before dwindling out into quiet solitude. “Karma Police” is perhaps the most famous track from this album. This song satirizes modern culture and the annoyances which come with it. Creating a gestapo-like entity which can arrest annoying people, Yorke envisions a world free of minor peeves (which of course, would lead to a world with no one in it). Miney begins with my favorite piece of modernist poetry in the form of “Fitter Happier.” The computerized “Fred” voice from old Macintosh computers lists off several mundane accolades a well adjusted person may use to comfort themselves. The irony being a computer is reading these lines, the listener understands this idealized life is of course not in fact real. The words begin to show signs of darkness as the song winds on. Lyrics like “No chance of escape,” & “Like a cat / Tied to a stick” creep in as the piano gives way to more sinister tones. More chatter, notes played in reverse, somber strings they all build until the song ends, noting you are a pig in a cage, on antibiotics. “Electioneering” is perhaps Radiohead at their most energetic ever. I love political Radiohead, so this mixed with energized instrumentation is perfection for me. Believing corrupt bureaucracies to see themselves as moving forward while sending the rest of society backwards, Yorke quips the two will at least meet in the middle headed in those directions. “Climbing Up the Walls” is perhaps the sole not amazing song on the album, but it is still good. “No Surprises,” again plays into the placid beauty Radiohead can exhibit while making an anti establishment song. On Mo, we begin with “Lucky.” Yorke again relates to his fear of travel, this time in the form of a plane crash. Through this repetition, we see a greater theme throughout the album. Yorke is afraid of moving and of change. The transitory moments scare him, when he would rather stay put and observe the world around him. This leads us into the final track which asks the listener to slow down. “The Tourist” alludes to us all being visitors in one form or another, and to savor where we are while we can.
Must Listen To: Electioneering
This was a hard choice, but this is one of my favorite Radiohead songs, so I have to recommend it.
