 |
Airbag
Paranoid Android
Subterranean Homesick Alien
Exit Music ( for a film)
Let Down
Karma Police
Fitter Happier
Electioneering
Climbing Up the Walls
No Surprises
Lucky
The Tourist |
OK Computer
Released 06/16/97 UK, 06/17/97 Canada, 07/01/97 US
Produced by Radiohead and Nigel Godrich.
OK COMPUTER was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for Album Of The Year and won
the 1998 Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance. OK COMPUTER, Radiohead's third
album, is the bombastic follow-up to 1995's sleeper hit THE BENDS, which left critics
and listeners as impressed with the band's ability as they were curious about their
potential. In spite of its technological-sounding title and apocalyptic sci-fi themes,
OK COMPUTER is firmly grounded in the rock verities. Waves of guitars rage beneath
the haunting melodies and near-hysterical fits of singer Thom Yorke. This complex,
intense swarm of guitars is held aloft by a solid, inventive rhythm section and an
impressive array of piano and keyboard textures.
"Paranoid Android"
is a six-minute-plus epic with alternating time signatures, wild dynamic shifts, drama
and adrenaline to spare. "Let Down," with its double-tracked vocals and rhythmic throb,
may give a brief glimpse back at Radiohead's past, but at no point is OK COMPUTER
anything but a hurtle forward. |
Notes:
Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone 5/13/99,
p.65
Ranked #2 on Spin's list of the "Top 20 Albums Of The Year." Spin 1/98, p.86
Ranked #2 in the Village Voice's 1997 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll. Village Voice 2/24/98
Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 1997." Q Magazine 1/98, p.114 Ranked #2
in NME's 1997 Critics' Poll. New Musical Express 12/20-27/97, pp.78-79
Ranked #2 on Melody Maker's list of 1997's "Albums Of The Year." Melody Maker 12/20-27/97,
pp.66-67
4 Stars (out of 5) - "...OK COMPUTER - a stunning art-rock tour de force - will have
you reeling back to their debut, PABLO HONEY, for insight into the group's dramatic
evolution..." Rolling Stone 7/10-24/97, pp. 117-118
8 (out of 10) - "...Unlike their majestic models U2, Radiohead take on techno without
switching instruments or employing trendy producers....As with post-rockers Tortoise,
Laika, and Seefeel, Radiohead have a fuzzbox or two and obviously know how to use
'em..." Spin 8/97, pp.112-113
"...unlike anything I've ever heard....I
definitley know it isn't good for me, and I'm certain it says more about my life than
I'd like....in terms of composition and performance, it's very impressive. Radiohead
have excelled themselves. They've seen the future." Melody Maker 6/14/97, p.49
"...Shrouded in wafting guitars, swoony rhythms, and moody-blue strings, it
shrugs off mosh-pit conventions for a poignant delicacy and breadth, with Yorke's
cracked-throat voice the album's melancholy center....For all of Radiohead's growing
pains...their aim--to take British pop to a heavenly new level--is true..." - Rating:
B+ Entertainment Weekly 7/11/97, pp.65-66 |
Rolling Stone review
Radiohead's third album is one of the best rock records of the year in large part
because it is the most inscrutable. "OK Computer" vigorously defies fast analysis,
flip judgment and easy interpretation. Singer Thom Yorke doesn't pretend to be likable
about it, either. "Ambition makes you look very ugly," he sneers amid the "Bohemian
Rhapsody"-style seizures of "Paranoid Android," a slur that works both ways if you
have major objections to arty sonic clutter and prog-rock pretensions. But there is
nothing linear about cracking up. "OK Computer," ostensibly a concept LP about a zombie
world of hard law and infernal software, is a song cycle about serial fear and suffocating
routine, laid out in mad leaps of melody, tempo and pathos that slowly accrue their
queer beauty: the bleak, R.E.M.-ish clatter of "Electioneering," the languid dive
of Yorke's croon in the melted-Beatles carol "Lucky." Radiohead try too hard to be
nonconformist -- as if they're embarrassed to just be *pop* -- but ambition hardly
makes them ogres. It makes them special. (RS 776/777) |
