SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-OK Computer (1998).
The Bends showed amazing maturation for Radiohead, but OK Computer was like going from black and white to color. It opens with “Airbag” a blast of music, oddly off kilter and unsettling but which immediately brings you into a great riff. About midway through, the song splits in stereo with two competing solos vying for attention. It ends with a loud stretched out chord. And then comes one of the most bizarre singles around. A nearly 7 minute multi-segmented song which, the first time I heard it, I couldn’t even find a melody. I rather wish I could go back to that naive time, because my mind was blown away by the outlandishness of the song. Now I know all the melodies and I think it’s just brilliant.
The minor chords of “Subterranean Homesick Alien” are accented with outer space sounds and yet despite its subject (alien abduction), the song is pretty well grounded: a simple, easy rocking track. It’s followed by “Exit Music (for a Film)”, a gorgeous building minor chord song that opens with simple acoustic guitars and slowly builds to a scorching rocker (when the drums kick in at nearly 3 minutes, it’s like a wake up call).
“Let Down” is another slow builder, although it features a much more singable verse and chorus structure (it’s incredibly catchy). It’s followed by “Karma Police” another catchy monster of a song. It starts with a pleasant enough piano riff and features the politely sung threat: “this is what you get when you mess with us” and the beautiful falsettoed apology: “for a minute there I lost myself.”
It segues into the odd 2 minute computer-voice-recited (and barely listed as a track) “Fitter, Happier.” This song foreshadows future Radiohead experiments. It seems like a blow-off track, a filler, and yet like so many of the newer Radiohead songs, it works like glue holding the big hits together. Check out how weird, wild and intricate the music behind the voice is.
“Electioneering” is one of the noisiest, most raucous songs in the Radiohead catalog. It opens with this steel guitar sounding riff and crashes in with loud, distorted guitars and all kinds of drums. Thom Yorke’s vocals are really loud in the mix, so when he gets to the bridge it’s practically a wall of noise, but listen to the great ascending and descending guitar riffs behind his vocals. They’re really intriguing. As is the skronking noisy guitar solo.
“Climbing Up the Walls” has all kinds of insane sound effects going on in the background of one ear (as befitting the title). It’s a drum-heavy track with eerie almost unadorned vocals (until the very end when Yorke goes berserk). It segues into the most delicate track on the disc, “No Surprises.” The chorus of “no alarms and no surprises, please,” has always been very affecting. And the delicate bells that adorn the verses are a very nice touch. The penultimate track, “Lucky” is a sort of optimistic track, despite its mellow music and, I suspect, really not very optimistic ending. But the utterly uplifting scream of “it’s going to be a glorious day, I feel my luck could change” is spine tingling.
I feel like “Lucky” is such a great ending song that I tend to forget the final track, “The Tourist”. It’s a slow, drawn out track…”idiot, slow down.” It’s probably my least favorite song on the disc, but it’s kind of a good ending after all of the high points of the disc.
And with the final bell of the final song, Radiohead became untouchable.
[READ: December 29, 2010] “Escape from Spiderhead”
George Saunders must live in a dark, dark world. His comedy is dark (but very funny) yet I feel he is often quite under-served when people refer to his as a funny storyteller. This story, which actually has many funny elements, is incredibly dark. And even though I laughed out loud at a few things, no one comes away from this story happy.
One of the great things about Saunders is his almost obsessive mockery of corporate/medical culture. He has more trademarks in his story than anyone I’ve ever read (even if they are all for things he has made up). Now to me, that’s funny in itself (especially the names he gives them), but it serves a much more telling purpose: a portent of a very dark future.
This story is set in a lab, where the main character, Jeff, is being communicated with by Mr Abnesti (a very hard name to keep straight). Jeff is in a room with Heather, and both are being fed the experimental drug ED556, a shame inhibitor. And so they rip off their clothes and have at it (he was obviously given some Visistif™ because they do it three times). They are also given some Verbaluce™ which helps them elucidate their experience (from more than just grunts and moans). This Verbaluce™ is essential to all of their experiments because without their comments, the proceedings are undocumented.
Then the story gets much darker, as we learn that while they are obviously testing the un-trademark-named ED556, they also have a product called Darkenfloxx™ which instills an overwhelming feeling of despair. Mr Abnesti is trying to gauge Jeff’s reaction to the possibility of them giving Darkenfloxx™ to Heather.
While they were making love, Jeff was in love with Heather , but once they removed the drug, his feelings toward her were neutral. They want to see if he has any residual feelings for her after the drug. But he himself has experienced Darkenfloxx™ so he knows how awful it is, and he doesn’t want anyone no matter how he feels about her to experience it.
There’s a lot more to this story than this summary, and more details add more intensity and conflict to this very dark, very engaging story. I haven’t loved everything that Saunders has written, but this story is exceptional.
I Just Read About That... 
I am thoroughly enjoying your trawl through Radiohead, especially now you’re getting to the intresting stuff. My memories of OK Computer are numerous: I got an advance copy of the disc the same day I bought an impossibly expensive CD player and spent hours unpacking Paranoid Android. My favourite bit: the really low bass backing vocals on the Rain Down… section. Amazing stuff. One track on the album which gets overlooked is Climbing Up the Walls. There are a couple of mixes of this on the Karma Police single, but to do justice to it you have to hear it live from that period.
I saw Radiohead with Massive Attack the week OK Computer came out, and it was one of those shows where you see a band arrive at greatness. When you get to open with Lucky and follow Paranoid Android with Fake Plastic Trees you’re in luck. Interesting coda, though, is that Thom Yorke didn’t exactly dig on the concert or the gig or the greatness; he wrote “How To Disappear Completely” as a result. I floated down the Liffey too, that night, but for completely different reasons.
All of this, however, is a mere preamble to the purpose of this post: an experiment I’m currently engaged in over here on this craggy island. I received a link suggesting that Radiohead mixed In Rainbows to sync with OK Computer to form a ten-song album of its own. The clues, apparently, are in the way Rad 10 head is written on the newer album’s cover, and in a couple of other ways. So what you do is alternate the tracks from the two albums and mix them together with a ten second overlap (easy on iTunes, sorry Paul). The entry with full instructions is here: http://puddlegum.net/radiohead-01-and-10/
I think there’s an amount of coincidence to it, but the segues are mainly right on the money. Someone noted that Yorke expressed surprise that it took people so long to discover, but that’s the sort of thing he might say.
Can’t wait for Kid A, Paul. Do you have the edition with the secret booklet behind the CD tray?
Advance copy? Wow. I like “Climbing” especially the end. It sounds so cacophonous that it’s hard to pick it apart.
I have not heard of this experiment and will absolutely give it a try. And although I eschew MP3s, I absolutely love iTunes, for burning, copying and, yes, occasional conversions. So, this is within my grasp (And thanks for the link).
I do have a copy of Kid A with the booklet (and one without). I remember scouring the stores in Boston to look for the disc with the tray that looked like it was bulging out a bit (you could usually find one or two in the pile). It was a lot of work for a book I haven’t looked at in ten years. 🙂
This is what we do, brother.
Oh, and I’ll tell you what I made of the mix thing when I’ve done it. Going to try the Kid A one later when Hannah’s asleep.
[…] “Victory Lap” (which I really liked) and “Escape from Spiderhead” (which I also really liked) and “Tenth of December” (which I also also really liked) as masterpieces. Other […]