Radiohead
Paranoid Android
(Parlophone)

Rating: Single of the Week

Oh, happy, happy! Joy, and indeed, joy! For here comes young Thom Yorke and he is glowering and grimacing and he is singing - all casual, like - "when I am king you will be first against the wall/ your opinion is of no consequence at all." Well, that's us f---ed, then! Thanks, Thom! But seriously, folks...

The first Radiohead single for a million years, then. Lasts for six-and-a-half minutes. Sprawls out like a plump man on a small sofa, featuring all manner of crypto-flamenco shufflings, medieval wailings, furiously wrenched guitars and ravishingly over-ambitious ideas. Possesses one of the most unorthodox 'axe' solos known to mankind. Therefore sounds not unlike 'Bohemian Rhapsody' being played backwards by a bunch of Vietnam vets high on king's cross-quality crack, ie, a record designed to: a) baffle the living shite out of punters; and b) make EMI's marketing personnel - still reeling, one presumes, from labelmates Blur and their quite literally pavemental new musical direction - poo poo cacka cacka their rather expensiive threads. Not 'Creep', then.

Can I say 'bloody marvin-ous' now?

Simon Williams

N.M.E.
24.05.97