It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I remember going to see Romeo + Juliet with a group of friends and refusing to leave the cinema when it started playing over the end titles. It being 1997 there was barely any such thing as the Internet so I had no idea the song was going to be in the film, and OK Computer was still a month or so from release.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Amazing album, to this day.
The whole show has ruined my pet "Thom Yorke's Head" theory of Radiohead mixing- you can often hear instruments panned left, right and centre in a way that can often plausibly sound like Jonny (left), Thom (centre) and Ed (right), then drums and bass centre (or maybe just a tiny bit to the left...), just as they'd sound if you were able to hear a Radiohead gig from inside Thom Yorke's head.
Only that's not really how it works. Of course it isn't.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Controversially though, I think The Bends is a better album than OK Computer.
Finest.
Album.
Ever.
I think those two albums are Radiohead at their most zeitgeist-y . They wanted to be liked, or at least the music they wanted to make was still pop music, or by sheer cultural momentum they managed to force the mainstream to intersect with their music. Or something. They've never managed to be quite so anthemic or so "now" since.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
https://thesmile.ffm.to/alfaa
I'm going to pick it up on CD in a couple of weeks. Incorporeal release was several weeks ahead of physical for some reason.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
I kinda knew Godrich was roughly the same age as the band but hadn't really crystalised that it means he was also about 24 when they started making the record.
As for Radiohead's catalogue overall, The Bends is utterly brilliant, but is also only about their 5th best record. OKC, KidA, In Rainbows are unquestionably better, but I'd argue HTTT, Amnesiac, TKOL and AMSP are all similarly good, albeit all very different records.
However, if you stack them up track-by-track, there really isn't much in it.
I consider The Bends/OK Computer/Kid A as the sort of "Radiohead Trilogy" - there is a huge part of the musical jigsaw of 90s British indie rock in those three albums.
The Bends - "this is how we do rock chaps, with our influences on our sleeves" - a bit like Definitely Maybe, or Generation Terrorists, or Modern Life is Rubbish or Suede, or I Should Coco, or A Northern Soul
OK Computer - "what if we double down on the us, and make our definitive statement".. like the Holy Bible, or Parklife, WTSMG or Dog Man Star, or In it for the Money, or Urban Hymns, ironically the Stone Roses did this with their debut, helps to have a whole unreleased record.
Kid A - "Back again but with DIFFERENT influences"... The Manics coming back with their huge stadium rock influence, Blur's self-titled 1997 album, Supergrass' self titled under-rated third album....
You get my meaning anyhow.
Got the vinyl on pre-order. Their approach seems very DIY, ie direct to consumer, which must be a nightmare at that scale