Radiohead. You don't need to know who they are, what
they think or how they voted in order to love them. You
don't need a poster of them on your wall. You don't even
need to know who plays what; in fact you love them all
the more when you know them all the less. This is the
band let's remember, who didn't get their first NME cover
until 8 months after The Bends was released (and a good
year-and-a-half after Creep had hit). And the band hadn't
been lying either when they dismissed their first album as
useless and quietly predicted the next one would be
amazing. Pablo Honey *was* very average and The
Bends *was* extraordinary. Fans quickly learned not to
bang on about how brilliant it was, though - they soon
released that some things are best not put into words.
Since having a song or two on Romeo & Juliet, however,
the Radiohead enigma has inevitably been put under
scrutiny, and the band have been tipped as a mainstream
force to rival U2. That said, Ok Computer (Parlophone)
is anything but mainstream, and Radiohead have made an
album that could easily be classed as pretentious or indulgent.
The songs that make up the new LP are minutely textured
yet spartan. There are ballads, but no swirling melodies.
Much of it is choppy and harsh, and Thom Yorke's lyrics,
like Elvis Costello's, stay on the brighter side of
misogynistic conveying not a hatred but a genuine fear of
and underlying desire for women. The real genius of OK
Computer is that everyone sounds like they're playing in
different bands: the bass player sounds like he's in a soul
group, the singer goes off so country/folky he could almost
be James Taylor, while the one who plays jazz on his
electric guitar clearly wants to join Sonic Youth. Yes,
Radiohead are proving themselves to be risk-takers, but
surely not pretentious or indulgent. This band are all in
different films, competing to pin down their genres, yet
there is still something about them that always sounds
very close. We should treasure that, not pull it apart.
-Emma Forrest-
Chez moi