33 rpm (Radiohead)

33 rebellions per minute


"Open your skull and I'll be there, climbing up the walls"




1997

Radiohead, OK COMPUTER
Once upon a time, nobody ever listened to rock critics anyway. The writers would all go say the Sex Pistols and the Stooges and the New York Dolls and the C1ash and Big Star were wonderful, and maybe one of those acts would sell 100,000 copies, but that's not so hot, and usually 10,000 was more like it; the masses were busy making Led Zeppelin and Journey rich. If the Village Voice critics' poll ever did pick a popular album to win, you knew who was pushing around whom: THRILLER got a #1 finish because writers don't get paid well enough to justify being lynched by 43 million rabid breakdancers. But then, somewhere, probably in this decade and in the wake of Nirvana, things changed. Liz Phair went gold, Hole went platinum, Beck went platinum... I don't really think the buying public was clipping the reviews in Spin or anything, but the radio directors and the musicians themselves started paying attention, and that had influence. By the time OK COMPUTER was out for a month, I'd heard enough raves about it that my petulant "who-says-so?" streak was out in full force, screaming "Hey! The Lazer Boy record reveals fascinating details with each listen too! So did INTERBABE CONCERN! So do a lot of records I've never heard of, I bet, and I'm never _going_ to hear about them because you media scum want me to read an umpteenth opinion on Radiohead! Bastards!"
But somehow, as would not have happened ten years earlier, the word started spreading to real people. First my e-friend Gavin discovered OK COMPUTER and started insisting how wonderful it was. Then my friend Sarah did. Then the Loud-fans discussion group voted it album of the year by a wide margin. So at last, I gave in and bought it. But OK COMPUTER, on its first several spins for me, was nonetheless playing itself to a weary audience hostility that neither the band, nor the music itself (I'm a pantheist), had earned. My dialogue with the hype machine went something like:
--This is the kind of music that needs to be played dozens of times so you can catch all the details!
Well, that's certainly _one_ response to music that, on the surface, is ugly undifferentiated noise.
--It's also the first rock record to deal with the subject of modern technology, the disappearing barriers between what is human and what is mechanical, the way that greater technological freedom merely leads to more sophisticated high-tech surveillance and paranoia.
Oh yeah? Several hundred thousand people other bought Gary Numan albums 20 years ago, so I have witnesses: you're wrong! Besides, I strongly doubt there's more insight on those topics in these here lyrics than in the 2:33 of Too Much Joy's "You Will", not that that's criticism.
--Well, c'mon, you have to admit this a huge step forward in sophistication from "Creep".
"Sophistication". This from a Ramones fan. Look, I liked "Creep": clever guitar work, catchy bass screw-up, nice singing.
--Nice singing? On OK COMPUTER, Thom sings like an angel!
I will accept, because it would explain a lot, that angels sing things like "When I am king, you will be first against the wall... kicking, screaming gucci little piggy" and "We hope that you choke" and "Arrest this girl, her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill" and "I am the pick in the ice/ do not cry out or hit the alarm". From "I'm a creep", Yorke has definitely gone on to learn the "show, don't tell" method of writing. I admire that. But do I need it?
--Of course! It's bringing back progressive rock to a whole new generation!
And you think if you just wave the words "progressive rock" at me for long enough, I'll give in and enjoy the record?
--Yes.
.... .... .... yes. But I swear, this is the last time I agree to debate music against a hypothetical construct.
I hate to say this, but: OK COMPUTER is one of those records that you have to listen to a whole bunch of times to understand. The sense of humor came through quickly for me: from opening with "I am back to save the universe" right before the first death-threat song, to the poetic self-amused wordplay of "Fitter Happier" (where a computer voices pleasantly free-associates virtues from "No paranoia/ careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)/ keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)/ will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole-in-wall)" to "still kisses with saliva/ no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied a stick that's driven into frozen winter shit"), to the closing "The Tourist", where we hear the spiritual exact opposite of onomatapoeia: "Wheeeeeeeeerrrre.... theeeee... hellllllll..... Iiiiiiii'm...... goooooo-ing........ at a thoooooouuuuusand feeet..... per seee-eeeecoooond". But Sense Of Humor won't really salvage an album about spiritual emptiness, hatred, government betrayal, personal uptightness, "the yuppies networking/ the panic, the vomit/ God loves his children/ God loves his children, yeah!" all by itself.
The things that end up making this album are just the things that are hard to detect at first. Yorke's vocals seem deeply bored, too bored for exact pitch even, at first, and why is he like this? Eventually the same vocals seem beautiful. The percussion on "Airbag" and "Electioneering", the 7/4 guitar pounding of "Paranoid Android" and the same song's unholy choral "rain down from a great height", the subtle full buildup from "Exit Music (For A Film)"'s folk strum, the music box of "No Surprises": eventually they, or for you it might be other details, emerge from the triple-guitar murk to seem precious, and even the murk starts to distinguish itself as music. Even "Electioneering", the designated fierce rocker, succeeds through ambience and a subtle buoyancy of pulse. The whole thing is intimidating in its masterfulness: I still think Lazer Boy's FORGET NOTHING is sort of similar, and better, and even more inventive, but you can sometimes tell it's an overflow of ideas is being tossed together by rookies. OK COMPUTER is solid and assured and seamless, and sounds like nothing before it. Don't resist. The hive mind is waiting.


(P.S. The race for the first album to sound like OK COMPUTER _after_ the fact has already been won, by the Bogmen, with their sophomore album CLOSE-CAPTIONED RADIO. As a record it's pretty good, as a homage/ imitation it's remarkable, but I still think the Bogmen would show more awareness of their inherent strengths by ripping off Oingo Boingo)


2000

Radiohead, KID A
I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to tell you about Radiohead's KID A that sixteen thousand journalists and fans haven't already tried to tell you, but several very nice people have asked me what I think of it, and I have, after all, been listening to it a lot. It's a really neat album. Let's get the sonic description out of the way: my description won't disagree with anyone else's, but at least then you're a little more trusting of the other descriptions, maybe. Who knows?
KID A sounds bleak and minor-key, like Radiohead, and it has a sadly angelic male singer, like Radiohead, and most of the songs don't have any of the three guitarists playing any guitar, which is unlike earlier Radiohead. The woozy-rhythmed "Everything In Its Right Place" has Yorke's vocals distended and punch-drunk, and he chants the title a lot, and "yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" a lot, and "my mind can only see in two colors/ what was that you tried to say?" a couple of times. "Kid A" is beat-driven and electronic and quiet and then a distorted scraping ruckus comes out of nowhere and returns. "The National Anthem"'s heavy bass-line could come from DISINTEGRATION-era Cure as remixed by a motorcycle gang: notes, not chords, and just a couple of queasy notes revving up from different minor scales. Yorke's singing is a little perkier, although with him you only wonder if maybe you're going to need to transfer him to a padded cell in a _different_ wing, and then some horns start blatting and skronking and eventually they're really loud and then they go away. "How To Disappear Completely" has synthetic strings and mild guitar and is solemn and sad. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, could be a backing track from an old Shriekback ballad: long held crystalline notes from when Barry and the gals who were supposed to be singing a new "Faded Flowers" over it were stuck in the sort of traffic jam that Douglas Adams would imagine, which explains why they haven't been heard of since. Luckily, "Treefingers" is hollow enough to properly mourn their departure.
"Optimistic", the catchy song which radio stations have picked as a single since Radiohead won't pick one for them, pounds with tribal drumming (is there a tribal tympani there? that would be neat), and surges on mulitple waves of guitars. It anthemically sings "You try the best you can/ the best you can is good enough", because Radiohead think "I'd really like to help you now" is a fine sentiment for anthems, as is "the big fish eat the little fish". "In Limbo"'s sparkling bass arpeggiates its way through odd time signatures, the guitars blip like coded messages, and Yorke's vocals ("you're living in a fantasy world") slide among the instruments with jazzlike agility before being processed into long dissolute threads. "Idiotesque" is electronica, classy synth with slow attack/decay envelopes over increasingly twisted lines of Nine Inch Nails-y electronic drums; u-Ziq is a closer comparison if you know his stuff. Yorke's falsetto sounds like an angel and like a hip-hop soothsayer at once as he hurls out "Women and children first", "Ice age coming", "This is really happening", "We're not scared", and "Take the money and run". "Morning Bell" is sedate, almost lounge music assuming that lounges make you beg "releeeeeeaaaaaaase me", but skittering effects bollix things up appealingly, Yorke's voice gets chopped up and set to muttering argument with itself, and the drum machine is in a swaying, syncopated 5/4 time. "Motion Picture Soundtrack", at last, starts with an accordian drone and church organ, and stays really quite pretty. Harps, even! Female soprano choir of really nice Vikings! Yorke even croons. You did remember he was good at that, right?
Of course, KID A is being treated as a cultural event as much as an album, so I'll list some broader thoughts, without any assertion that they mean much.