![]() ![]() As The Bends proves, they were damn good at it. In the years since The Bends, Radiohead have done their best to distance themselves from rock-partly from artistic development, but also out of a disdain for loud guitars and rock culture and a fear of the popularity that drove them to the brink of madness when OK Computer went stratospheric.īut they shouldn’t. Take a song like “Just.” Parts Nirvana, parts Sonic Youth, and yet listen to those queasy chord changes, Jonny Greenwood’s very individual controlled noise, equal parts brain, brawn and ecstatic release! While Radiohead may have only very occasionally “rocked” since, the sound of “Just” is unmistakably that of Radiohead.Įlsewhere, the likes of “Planet Telex,” with its ambient washes of soundscape, and the terrifyingly stark and desolate acoustics of “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” sketch out the obsession with textures and atmosphere that albums like Kid A and The King of Limbs, and songs like “Knives Out” and “In Limbo” make good on (as if you could make good on songs which are already brilliant in their own right, but Radiohead did it all the same). It’s just that the song writing had become so much stronger and idiosyncratic. Yes, the late ’80s/early ’90s college rock stylings and song writing of Pablo Honey are still there to a point. Just thinking of “Bones” now gives me a fizzy little rush of energy. And yet it doesn’t matter: the songs are that good. When I listen to The Bends now, I’m struck by how much songs like the jaunty strum of “Sulk,” the strutting rhythm of “Bones,” the pretty trilling of “Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was” and the extremely ’90s anthemic college rock of “High and Dry” sound almost like a different band. What’s striking about The Bends now, with 25 years of further Radiohead releases allowing us the benefit of hindsight, is that the album isn’t the complete cut-off from their past that something like, say, Kid A, is. Even then, EMI couldn’t help meddling, handing the tapes of the sessions to the producers of previous album Pablo Honey to give the record a “more American-style mix,” according to Billboard. Then 1995 brought The Bends, and change things did.Īn assertion of belief in one’s artistic vision, especially in the face of audience and record label expectation, it took two attempts at recording the album to get it how the band wanted. The My Iron Lung EP, released in 1994, was a notice of intent: things were going to change. This month brings us Radiohead’s The Bends, Faith No More’s King For a Day…Fool For a Lifetime, and Morphine’s Yes.Īs we’ve discussed previously, the band’s biggest hit to that point had become a beast larger than themselves, threatening to erase the band and leave a hit-playing group of mannequins in its wake. Every month, we’ll be looking back at the music from 1995 to explore why these albums are still relevant to us 25 years later. ![]()
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