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Radiohead released their long awaited 3rd album
"Ok Computer" last year, the follow up to the hugely successful
"The Bends", which sold copies by the bucket-full and zipped up
and down the UK album chart for about a year after its release.
It was a truly monumental record which saw Radiohead become one
of the most well respected groups of recent years. After
recording their first album, "Pablo Honey", and "The Bends" in
relatively short periods of time, they opted for a change and
spent about a year in the studio recording "Ok Computer". After
"The Bends" and their last other recorded output, the track
"Lucky", recorded in a day and contributed to the "Help" War
Child album, expectations were running high. The time was well
spent, resulting in a collection of intricate and carefully
crafted songs equally as good as anything they've done before.
Speaking about the recording Bass player Colin Greenwood said
the tracks were "more laid back, like a stoned Radiohead", also
adding "we knew we'd finished it when Jonny (Greenwood) walked
into the studio and said `That's it, I can't do anymore.'"
While recording, Radiohead played the occasional live
gig. At one in their hometown of Oxford they played some new
material. Titles include "I Promise", "Lift" and "Subterranean
Homesick Alien", the latter having a country-ish feel to it
(a nod to Bob Dylan?)
More new Radiohead material was
previewed when Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood played a surprise
semi-acoustic set at London Tramshed on October 10th '96. They
played 4 new tracks, each similar in feeling to the songs on
"The Bends". Old songs they played included "My Iron Lung" (A
slower version) and "Fake Plastic Trees". Of the new songs,
"Lift" was again played, sounding closest to "Nice Dream". The
second new song "Let Down", was most like "Black Star", and
brought a good response from the crowd. Then came the slightly
psychedelic sounding "No Surprises", which included the lines
"This is the final fake / your final bellyache" and for the
chorus "No alarms and no surprises". The short set ended with
"Exit Music", described as `a delicate folk tinged melody',
building to a `crescendo of claustrophobic despair' with the
repeated line, `we hope that you choke'.
Technically the second single (after the War Child release of "Lucky")
from Ok Computer was "Paranoid Android",
a six and a half minute track with choiral arrangements, and was
released on the 26th of May. It entered the UK charts at #3,
making it the bands biggest hit to date.
The sound is fairly typical of the bands new material,
though most of the other new songs are less epic. The new album
features "Lucky", the track recorded in 1995 for the Help album.
Also featured is "Exit Music (for a film)" which was featured
over the closing credits to "Romeo and Juliet". "Talk Show Host",
which was also featured in the film and appeared on the
soundtrack album, is not featured on the LP as it was originally
one of the b-sides to the Street Spirit single. It is still
sometimes played during live shows.
"Ok Computer" was released in the UK on June 16th. The complete tracklisting is: "Airbag", "Paranoid Android", "Subterranean Homesick Alien", "Exit Music (for a film)", "Let Down", "Karma Police", "Fitter, Happier", "Electioneering", "Climbing Up the Walls", "No Surprises", "Lucky" and "The Tourist". The LP entered the UK album charts at number 1, above Jon Bon Jovi's latest. The overall sound of the album seems very much a natural progression from "The Bends", with a number of stand out points. "Airbag" is described by Thom as "the first Radiohead track you can dance to". Though you would never call it a dance track the band say it was inspired by DJ Shadow. It sounds quite unlike the rest of the LP. "Paranoid Android" is, of course, a sprawling epic. "Climbing up the Walls" is a very dark and creepy song containing the lines "In the crack of your waning smile/15 blows to the skull". "No Surprises" features a Xylophone part played by Jonny and based on the chiming of a jewellery box. The final song, "The Tourist" was written by Jonny and has minimal vocals and a very mellow sound. The band intend to make a separate video for each song on the album, though no details have yet been announced.
Thom Yorke recently contributed vocals to a track being worked on by DJ Shadow. We have heard nothing of how the session went, but the track should appear on the forthcoming DJ Shadow record "Unkle", which will be released this year and will feature contributions from a number of artists.
Radiohead plan to have remixes of an number of tracks from Ok Computer done, perhaps eventually emerging in the form of a remix album. They have given DJ Shadow "Subterranean Homesick Alien" to work on, and plan to offer the whole LP to Massive Attack for dissection. That will have to wait until Massive Attack have finished working on their new LP.
The next single taken from the album was "Karma Police", released across 2 CD's as usual, with new songs and remixes of "Climbing Up the Walls" on the b-sides. It was released on August 25th and entered the UK charts at number 8. The video to accompany it features Thom Yorke in a weird fiery car-crash / narrow escape type thing, and is apparently very good indeed.
Radiohead now have OK Computer producer Nigel Goodrich with them
on tour to help record new material while on the road. New tracks in the pipeline
include the titles "Man-O-War", "Motion Picture Soundtrack", "I Promise", "True Love
Waits" and "Nude/Neut". Though they will be on tour for about another year, reports
say that the next LP will not be as long as that may suggest.
"No Surprises" was released in the UK in January and reached #5 in the charts.
Radiohead are due to begin a tour in America soon. It was originally planned that they would tour with Bjork, as co-headliners, for the dates, but this plan has been scrapped because the time taken to dismantle her stage set and put Radiohead's up in it's place would be too great. They will now tour with Spiritualised.
At the recent Grammy awards held in New York on February 25th Radiohead were told they could not perform alone because they would be bad for ratings. They were instead offered a slot to perform alongside David Bowie which they refused as 'a not very Radiohead thing to do'. The band were nominated in the Best Album and Best Alternative Performance categories, winning the latter for "Ok Computer". They did not attend the ceremony.
Thom contributed guest vocals on Drugstore's new single "El President", due for release on April 20th on Roadrunner records. The two bands have been friends for a while since touring together a couple of times in the past through Europe and America.
A tape of Radiohead's more recent videos will be released on April 27th. Titled "7 Television Commercials" it will feature the promo videos to "Paranoid Android", "Street Spirit", "No Surprises", "Just", "High and Dry (U.S. Version)", "Karma Police" and "Fake Plastic Trees".
Radiohead picked up two prizes at this years Ivor Novello awards, firstly
"Best Contemporary Song" for Karma Police, and also "Best Song Musically and
Lyrically" for Paranoid Android. Ed O'Brien and Colin Greenwood were there to
collect the award, and also gave out a little news.
Their forthcoming 'on the road' documentary will be titled
"Meeting People is Easy" and has been recorded over the course of the last
years world tour with the director of the "No Surprises" video, Grant Gee.
Ed has said the main thrust of the film was to convey the strange life of a
rock group on the road - but certainly not like This Is Spinal Tap. They have
been playing around with and demoing new songs in the back of the tourbus, and
should begin recording a 4th LP in November of this year. Apparrently a good deal
of material and song ideas were left over after the Ok Computer sessions.
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