"I'm back to save the universe"
- Airbag
So here it is, then; after months of speculation,
Radiohead
have returned on a wave of wild loops , intergalactic
interference and Thom Yorke's perpetually
self-analytical
whinging. Marvellous.
See, while it's great to have the Charlatans
back with an
album we can nestle up to and love; to get
bong-brained with
The Chemicals' sandblaster beats; to give
thanks that Primal
Scream have returned, this time with more
psychedelic sun
blaze than a Memphis barn dance; to have been
intrigued by
John Squire's new incarnation as a sea-horse;
and to feel safe
in the knowledge that Oasis will soon be gobbing
off more of
the same old familiar "pub rock" (tm-Noel
Gallagher), what's
been missing is the flip-side of the fun coin,
and Radiohead
are fast becoming the unmatched masters of
self-introspection -
the 90s archivists of, as Leonard Cohen once
described it, "the
miserable human condition". OK Computer
is like the result
of some bizarre experiment involving Kurt
Vonnegut, REM,
Arthur C Clarke and The Smiths: austere, dramatic,
and, at
times, shockingly unexpected.
Opening with Jonny Greenwood's trademark guitar
crunch,
Airbag crashes headlong into a multitude of
melodies. It's
a super-confident sound of loops and spine-tingling
sleigh-bells that takes off like a space-rocket.
Thus, when
Thom makes his bold declaration (above) you
almost believe
he's capable of it. This is, however,
just the beginning of the
trip. What follows are 12 tracks that
are musically
challenging, lyrically complex and emotionally
fraught. It's
a journey into the hyper-world of aliens,
cacophonic
chickens, dumb pop tarts and bogus politicians.
A world of
death, redemption and philosophical freedom.
An album so
resolutely laced with a deliciously down-beat
melancholy
that you won't be playing it at social gatherings
- unless
you're planning one of those late night stoned'n'awestruck
"wow maaan" affairs. Or they get a few
Propellerheads
remixes going on the b-sides. In its
sheer breadth of vision,
it's deconstruction of traditionalist rock
dogma, it's weird
dynamics and neo-classical aspirations, OK
Computer is
nothing if not bravely off the wall.
The line between pomp
and pop is so artfully drawn in a six-and-a-half
minute
single Paranoid Android, that it instantly
calls to mind
Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - the last time
anyone even
attempted a pop symphony so daringly executed.
However,
where Queen relied heavily on ambitious vocal
interleaving,
Radiohead explore evocative instrumentation.
They employ
an arsenal of electro-mutations, found sounds
and stuttering
anti-rhythms, the cut'n'paste crescendo shattering
onto a
chorus of voices so beatific you can almost
smell the incense
through the bonfire of Greenwood's guitar.
At which point, a mere two songs in, the words
Prog and
Rock seem set on an almost unavoidable collision
course.
Huge avant-electric orchestral movements and
metaphysical
musings? Is this intentional or have
Radiohead, locked
away in actress Jane Seymour's genteel Somerset
mansion
(which they rented out to record the album)
lost the plot
completely? Or is life in the info-overload
, sci-fi
enthralled, sound-byte, spin-doctor'd 90s
never more suited
to such dramatic musical bombast? You
can debate this all
you want, for as Yorke has already sneered
on Paranoid
Android "your opinion is of no consequence
at all". This is
a more lyrically confident Yorke, who's not
afraid of being
abducted by aliens - on the somnambulant opulence
of
Subterranean Homesick Alien - in order to
discover some
meaning to our ant-like existence.
Exit Music [For A Film] returns to more familiar
territory.
Ostensibly an update of The Beatles' 'She's
Leaving Home',
Yorke's voice is so infused with emotion that
it's almost
cracking over Phil Selway's broken drum beats.
What
starts out semi-acoustic swells into mounted
ranks of
choirs, rain-like samples, impassioned vocals
and
glorious harmonies. Deep stuff indeed.
Karma Police provides a welcome breeze of brevity
with
it's faux austere, piano-led vitality and
wicked descriptions
of drug-buzzing pop-culture caualities - "Karma
police
arrest this girl / her Hitler hairdo is making
me feel ill".
Surely he's not referring to anyone we know?
Fitter, Happier, a poem, is placed strategically
at the
middle of the record. The curiously
spookily voiced
synthesiser intones a stream of received imagery:
scraps of
media information, interspersed with lifestyle
ad slogans
and private prayers for a healthier existence.
It is the hum
of a world buzzing with words, one of the
messages
seeming to be that we live in such a synthetic
universe we
have grown unable to detect reality from artifice:
even our
own emotions have become obscured by technology.
But,
while trapped in these complex emotional cages,
we can
still discover universes within ourselves.
Contemplation is swiftly kicked into orbit.
A riff the size
of Oasis times ten swaggers into view and
Electioneering
explodes into a fire-breathing one-foot-on-the-amps
dragon of a sneer at contemporary politics.
But it's not
long beforeThom is Climbing Up The Walls of
his own
insecurity again, grappling with his inner
demons. We will,
of course forgive him the odd wallow because
(a) he writes
such beautifully poetic lyrics and (b) the
rest of Radiohead
are like four men pulling in completely different
musical
directions before collapsing back in on themselves:
never
completely coming apart at the seems but teetering
on the
brink of musical mayhem. And that is
precisely why OK
Computer neatly side-steps the abyss of moribund
art-wank, instead managing to project something
of the
panicked confusion and moral chaos that crackles
across
the superhighway-saturated air of the late
20th Century.
So even when the subject is suicide (No Surprises)
Ed
O'Brien's guitar is as soothing balm on red-raw
psyche, the
song rendered like a bittersweet child's prayer.
Penultimate
track Lucky first heard two years ago on the
'Help' album
is not simply a filler, but more of a thematic
companion
piece to Airbag. And by final track,
The Tourist, Thom's
psychosis has come full circle, to a backdrop
of 700
brilliantly different ideas combining into
one cohesive
whole.
On their 'Pablo Honey' debut the Oxford quintet
demonstrated an innate, if not always consistent,
understanding of how to write a great pop
tune (the
anthemic Creep, Anyone Can Play Guitar and
the
heart-melting simplicity of Thinking About
You spring
instantly to mind). Following that with
The Bends, they
married this pop sensibility to a growing
conidence in
stretching musical shape and playing new,
bizarre games
with form and psycho-drama, while everyone
else was
dealing in bright'n'breezy Britpop.
OK Computer is the
next quantum leap of confidence, as career-defining
as
U2's 'The Joshua Tree', albeit beamed aboard
the mothership
of 2001. Radiohead are paying no attention
to polite
convention. They are cruising on warp
factor ten, trailing
sleighbells, synthesisers, whole bloody choirs
of angels, and
an entire neo-Freudian thesis in their wake.
'OK', you ask?
It's awesome. 9/10
Sam Steele.
"I don't really consider this album to be epic.
We didn't
want to make anything you could play in the
background.
If it was played in a hip cafe it'd hopefully
cause people
to choke on their goat's cheese.
"We recorded a lot through the night, getting
up at five in
the afternoon and working until 6am.
But then I was getting
up at 10am to write the words. Sometimes.
"Stuff that meant anything to me came in the
form of what I
call polaroids in my head. The immediate
external world
became very bright and powerful, like it was
on fire, and that
was when I wrote stuff. I was a lot
more unwilling to dig
into my own feelings because I felt much more
part of a
whole going on around me. Even if this
was profoundly
disturbing, it made me smile.
Airbag
"It's about fear of machinery and is very ambivalent. It's
a song
for luddites, but it's also very hopeful. Like, we aren't
scared.
Life goes on everywhere, even in a neo sign".
Paranoid Android
"I was recording to the faces that I saw the night I wrote the words
to the song".
Subterranean Homesick Alien (Uptight)
I believe that there are little ones [aliens] who are buried
underground, waiting to surface. All these fantasy
conspiracy TV shows are great, but the water here is poison.
I just wanna be visited. I wanna see 'em. I wanna see
ghosts.
I want to know. I want to be able to walk down the street
and
laugh at everything, knowing that there are all these little green
creatures with incredibly large brains and beautiful black eyes
looking after us with little video cameras.
Exit Music (For a Film)
The inspiration? Fragments of whatever her name is who plays
Juliet [Claire Danes] when she put up the shiny Colt 45 to her
head. I've always had this thing when I watched the cool
version from the late '60s; that was the most influential film of
my early-teenage years. But, at the age of 13, I could never
work out why Romeo didn't pack a case, grab Juliet that
morning, and jump out the window and take her with him. I
was totally in love with Juliet in that film - Olivia Hussey.
It
just never made sense that Romeo was such a wet bastard.
Let Down
" 'I go to sleep on one beach / wake up on another / boat all
fitted out / tugging against its rope' " - Raymond Carver.
Karma Police
"This is a song for someone who has to work for a large
company. This is a song against bosses, fuck
middle-management! Hahaha."
Fitter Happier
"I had about three months where I couldn't write anything,
but I constantly had lists. Then I realised that it
was the
only way I was going to say what I needed to say. Sometimes,
before you have a genuine feeling it is circumvented by the
outside, your brain is apologising for things that haven't even
happened yet. But me, I listen to the piano bit.
Electioneering
"We live under a world banking system and media that make
it almost irrelevant who is in power. Political systems
worldwide are at the mercy of business and bullshit
economies. I can't recycle any of the polythene packaging
that
fills my house. Why?"
Climbing Up The Walls
"Some people can't sleep with the curtains open in case they
see the eyes they imagine in their heads every night burning
through the glass. Lots of people have panic buttons fitted
in
their bedrooms so they can reach over and set the alarm off
without disturbing the intruder. This song is about the
cupboard monster".
No Surprises
"It was about being poisoned, being full with debris and waste.
We wanted it to sound like 'What a wonderful world' and
Marvin Gaye. There's no hint of suicide in this. It's
the sound
of newly fitted double-glazing: all hopeful, clean and secure."
Lucky
"Maybe all the machinery like aeroplanes and cars, etc, function
because of collective will. There is no way it would get off
the
ground or move forward otherwise".
The Tourist
"Constant nerves, nerve endings fraying like badly-wired plugs.
Trying to take in everything at once. The old woman who sticks
her knife in the toaster to get the toast out when it's still on.
You can't touch her directly because you will also be electrocuted.
So you have to find a broom handle to knock her frying body away".