You'd be hard pressed to find a more critically lauded music group right now than British pop rockers Radiohead.

The quintet, who play Maple Leaf Gardens on Sunday night for a show that sold out in an hour and a half, were recently named band of the year by both SPIN and Rolling Stone. They can include Madonna, Marilyn Manson, Courtney Love and Michael Stipe among their famous fans.

Most of the heat surrounding Radiohead stems from their most recent album, OK Computer, a sprawling, melancholy collection that has spawned four singles. It crossed over into the mainstream in a big way when it was nominated for album of the year at the Grammys.

"I think people got very excited about (Radiohead's 1995 album) The Bends and were anticipating this one," lead guitarist-keyboardist Jonny Greenwood is saying down the line from L.A. recently.

"And because this one isn't worse than The Bends and they kind of thought they were as good as each other, that explains the excitement. It had raised hopes and it's not been a disaster."

Despite losing out to Bob Dylan's Time Out Of Mind in the best album category, OK Computer still managed to pick up a Grammy for best alternative performance. Radiohead's third album has also sold four million copies worldwide (including 200,000 in Canada) and made every top 10 list of 1997 (mine included). British music magazine Q went so far as to name it "the best album ever recorded."

"They had the same poll a year earlier and Pet Sounds won. It was No. 5 this year, so I mean it's all a bit irrelevant really," says Greenwood about the Q poll. "For instance, Revolver, which amazingly came in at No. 2, is - in all sorts of ways - far more the better album. It's like it doesn't really mean as much to me as some Pixies records I got when I was at college. People have just gone berserk, haven't they?"

In fact, Greenwood sounds so tentative about Radiohead's overwhelmingly great press over the past year that you start to wonder if the accolades have made any impact at all.

"I don't think it's that good an album, really," he continues. "There are good songs on it but there are songs that just sound like dead ends, that sound like it's the last time we can do like that. I don't think we've finished yet."

Greenwood is also unimpressed by the number of stars trying to get into Radiohead's live shows.

"We're in Hollywood and we've just had the phone call - 'Can these people come to the show tonight?' A list of actors, basically. It's a bit odd, and I don't think actors know anything more about music that anyone else. It only happens here. Everything is so unreal in this city anyway. It will be good to get north of the border again."

As for the followup to OK Computer, Greenwood says the band keeps changing their mind about the sound.

In the meantime, Radiohead, who are scheduled to play the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C., June 13-14, have two projects coming up. First, there's the seven-song EP Airbag-How Am I Driving?, which is due in stores Tuesday, followed this summer by a documentary (working title: Meeting People Is Easy) by British filmmaker Grant Gee. The band's initial plan to make videos for each song on OK Computer "ran out of time and money."

"He's filmed hundreds and hundreds of hours of stuff," says Greenwood of Gee. "But it's good because, so far, there's no commentary on it. There's no speaking really. There's not much story behind it. You know the film 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould? That was kind of a reference point."