Radiohead

When "Ok Computer" came out in 1997, Radiohead were considered, to all intents and purposes, a britpop band. Indeed, after the intimate and almost entirely acoustic "The Bends", the Oxford band had established themselves as flag-bearers of this strand of British music, in which an inspiration drawn from the Smiths' melodies underpins entire albums, sometimes rather monotonously (Oasis, Blur).

But Radiohead were tired of that role. To many, they were still just "the 'Creep' band", the teenage anthem that had launched them onto the scene in 1993. The time had come for a change, and "Ok Computer" marks a considerable turning point in Radiohead's music - not a break with the recent past, but a gradual shift towards sonic territory entirely different from that of "The Bends". Their studio craft grows more refined in the process. "We'd been listening to Ennio Morricone, Can and a load of stuff full of studio trickery. We wanted to try it ourselves too," Thom Yorke explained at the time.

The album opens with "Airbag". A searing guitar riff, a hidden arpeggio and drums that come crashing in like a wrecking ball. Over this explosive mix, in total contrast, sits Yorke's sing-song voice, describing his sheer terror of cars. "Airbag" is a meticulously arranged track, with bass and drums locked into syncopated rhythms and a cello enriching the mix by doubling the guitar's main riff. The interplay between bass and drums keeps building until the liberating final chord; then four little "bleeps" usher in the album's masterpiece. "Paranoid Android" is the first single taken from the album, running almost six and a half minutes and accompanied by an utterly surreal video: it's easy to see why MTV never once played it. "Paranoid Android" is a fabulous track, split into three movements plus a final explosion. The lyrics are despairing and critical of the 1980s generation, coke-snorting yuppies and "little piggy" types. But Radiohead's lyrics are often hard to decode... Their music is far more expressive: the first part consists of delicate, suspended chords occasionally punctuated by inventive, imaginative bass lines, while the alternating 4/4 and 7/4 of the central section gives Jonny Greenwood's aggressive guitar fertile ground for a gorgeous, spacey solo. That solo ushers in the saddest section of the song, with a descending chord sequence that Yorke's falsetto exploits to the full. In a mounting swell of unease and desolation, the drawn-out, laconic line "God loves his children, yeah" paves the way for the final sonic explosion, which leaves the listener utterly stunned.

The only way out of the claustrophobic "Paranoid Android" is the brilliant opening arpeggio of "Subterranean Homesick Alien" (whose title echoes an old Bob Dylan hit, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"). It's over this sweet, melancholy melody that the theme of alienation - dominant throughout "Ok Computer" - is developed. This is the only track that can logically follow "Paranoid Android" while also paving the way for "Exit Music (For A Film)", one of the absolute peaks of the band's entire career.

Starting from a slow, obsessive acoustic B minor chord, "Exit Music (For A Film)" holds within it Yorke's deeply sorrowful melody, delivered like a genuine poem, culminating in the trembling voice of the final line ("we hope that you choke").

At this point any album could be considered complete, but after just four tracks that's not an option (Where are you, the '70s?!). To lighten the funereal mood, in comes "Let Down", an ethereal, sweet and melancholy slice of britpop concealing a masterfully crafted arrangement, especially in the backing vocals and guitar phrases.

A flicker of electronics introduces "Karma Police", perhaps the band's best-known song among the general public. It's a classic, catchy melody used once again to describe the chronic depression of the Radiohead aliens ("For a minute there I lost myself"). A welcome release of tension, with a sharply ironic lyric aimed at alarmists who don't hesitate to call the police over fairly unusual offences like "wearing a Hitler hairdo" or "buzzing like a fridge". It's the most Beatles-esque song on the album, and at the same time the dividing line between the record's two halves. Indeed, after the robotic pronouncements of "Fitter Happier", a critique of the utopian idea of the perfect man, the album's more experimental section opens up.

"Electioneering" is the album's most violent moment, as well as a sharply political track: Yorke rails against the false promises of election candidates, which are duly broken once they're in power. Next comes "Climbing Up The Walls", a slow rock track torn apart as if by a full-moon night, in which noisy distortion shields a frightened voice and angry percussion rumbling in the distance.

The contrast Radiohead create between "Climbing..." and the following track is astonishing. A music box. A lullaby-like arpeggio. This is how the xylophone-driven "No Surprises" begins, an extremely sweet, oddly upbeat-sounding track, in which Yorke's voice nonetheless still manages to sound insecure and thinly veiled in sadness. Everything on "Ok Computer" is cyclical. "No Surprises" picks up the thread of "Let Down", hiding behind chocolate-box musical scenery.

In the album's closing stretch, Radiohead don't forget to remind us of life's hardships on "Lucky" and "The Tourist". The former, an ideal continuation of "Exit Music (For A Film)", weaves gorgeous blues-inspired harmonies over which Yorke's voice - sweet and sad at once - once again proves remarkably expressive. "Lucky"'s theme is love, and the whole thing is embellished with Pink Floyd-style backing vocals and Gilmour-esque guitar solos.

"The Tourist", on the other hand, written by Jonny Greenwood, is the final stop on a fantastic journey through the depths of melancholy, an ideal summation of the whole record. The vocal is slow and drawn-out (after all, Yorke sings "slow down"), amid a sense of spatial expansion wrapped in gorgeous jazzy drumming in 3/4.

"Ok Computer" is Radiohead's last album before the electronic turn of "Kid A / Amnesiac", a record of songs steeped in an almost disarming underlying melancholy, light and hard at once, and at the same time extraordinarily, simply beautiful.

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06/11/2006